Ack! I'll never get this posted before someone else puts up a new post!
But yeah, coding nightmare is right, teedyo; the little hairs on the back of my neck are even beginning to stand on end.
But yeah, I agree that a personal journal is a good idea, and that it would indeed work best if you could carry it around with you like Sue suggested. But, if that turns out to be impossible for all intents and purposes, here are some other alternatives that might work:
1. A KI expansion pack. (the coding here is still scary)
2. A Nexus-like holographic interface, accessible at the ERC (or perhaps in the pavilion?). It would have to be a username/password situation and each person would need to have a personal account. (eek)
The advantage of a computerized interface is that people don't have to flip five pages over to find what they want; they can just scroll right down and find it, or use the back and forward buttons to advance pages instantly rather than having to deal with the entire page flip animation you have in a journal--a computerized interface can be simpler and more convenient. The drawback to a computerized interface is that even in a game people often prefer "real" things to virtual things, feeling that they have more history, more value, and more interest than a virtual thing.
Teedyo's got the right idea here too I think; it would need to be a personal checklist system rather than a public one. People are much more interested in the question of "Have I seen this animal yet?" than in the question "Have someone else seen this animal yet?"
I guess we need to get a coder over here to advise us of the easiest route.
Maybe the animals/plants which have not been found are in silhouette/monochromatic/lower detail form in the checklist, but when they have been found the silouhette turns into a colour photo? I suppose that could be another incentive for going out there and looking for the animals: the reward isn't just a four second glimpse of the big toe of an indigenous snake and a little tick beside some text.
Well, the problem is that players will be strongly tempted to help themselves to the reward early by filling in the check blank, looking at the picture, and then unfilling it again.
I'm pretty sure that I would do that just as soon as I was having trouble finding species XYZ.
If you introduced cute baby animals, you wouldn't be able to get me out of there, hehe. Having the animals change a little (hey, a bit like Delin winter/summer)is a good idea, and I tihnk that it would make people want to visit again and again.
Yeah, it would be kind of like how snowshoe hares and grouse change from brown to white in the winter, or how salmon change color to spawn.
We could also change the creatures' calls to reflect courtship or nesting times--that would probably be the easiest thing of all to change.
There should also be some "ultra rare" creatures that aren't even noted from the start which would give more explorers the chance of discovery.
I think having a few ultrarare creatures would be an excellent way to keep people walking around through the age.
It would be nice though, to have a way so that once in awhile everybody will have a reasonable chance of seeing the "speckled unicorn." Like say, every six months is the speckled unicorn migration, and they're as thick as flies. (This is about the same as Cyan did with the bahro, making sightings of them really rare at first, then making it possible for everyone to get a chance to see them, and then returning to the rare state.)
Great idea, I really love it! One thing to consider is that people have been taking out-of-game notes in Uru for a long time. Maybe you just provide the checklist as a clickable object on the desk (like the Negilahn silouette sheet), and can just copy it down or take a screenie and print it out. There's a long history of doing this, from all the maps and clues in the original Myst game all the way through the Minkata orientation books... While a clickable sheet or book is cool, I don't think you'll have a huge outcry if you don't put all that effort into it.
That's a good point Rils...It's dead simple, and if nothing else works we'll go with that idea. The big drawback is that unfortunately, people who aren't connected with the forums, or aren't computer literate, or who are just plain lazy, aren't likely to play. /shrug With six pages of checklist to go through (with pictures that would have to be drawn), copying it all down or taking six screenshots is going to be somewhat time consuming. So unless people go to a website to print off their own copy...