Species Hunt Minigame

Museum Age for Explorer Created work

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Re: Species Hunt Minigame

Postby Raider7 » Wed Aug 27, 2008 5:48 am

Ardent red,
That is a great idea with your page. This is what I came up with when I thought about the idea more, I was thinking along the lines of a Diary/Journal book that you carried with you with the names of Trees, plants and animals and having a space where you can tick what you have seen.
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Re: Species Hunt Minigame

Postby teedyo » Wed Aug 27, 2008 12:25 pm

I think this is a pretty cool idea!

While having a "master" journal that gets filled in as explorers find wildlife would be most realistic; it would ruin the game play for late comers. Sooo.... I was thinking perhaps every explorer gets a personal journal (by clicking/examining the master journal) to fill out that will eventually be transferred to this master journal. Say if all explorers have found creature "A" and there are no new explorers for some time period(a month, quarter?); it gets added to the master journal annotated to whom made the first discovery. 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. More critters could even be added later. Maybe some animal sightings can be "triggered" by shaking a plant/tree. This (hopefully)allows an explorer to have a lasting IC effect on the age without leaving everybody else out.

Coding nightmare anyone? :D
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Re: Species Hunt Minigame

Postby Rils » Wed Aug 27, 2008 1:35 pm

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.

Uru players are all about finding ways around inconveniences anyways... ;)
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Re: Species Hunt Minigame

Postby Jennifer_P » Wed Aug 27, 2008 2:00 pm

Ack! I'll never get this posted before someone else puts up a new post! :D
But yeah, coding nightmare is right, teedyo; the little hairs on the back of my neck are even beginning to stand on end. :lol: 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. :D I'm pretty sure that I would do that just as soon as I was having trouble finding species XYZ. :oops:

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... :|
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Re: Species Hunt Minigame

Postby Raider7 » Wed Aug 27, 2008 3:43 pm

There are some great points here. What else needs to be done to finish the ERC Age? A KI Expansion pack sounds good so does a Nexus-like holographic interface.
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Re: Species Hunt Minigame

Postby ardent red » Wed Aug 27, 2008 10:53 pm

While having a "master" journal that gets filled in as explorers find wildlife would be most realistic; it would ruin the game play for late comers. Sooo.... I was thinking perhaps every explorer gets a personal journal (by clicking/examining the master journal) to fill out that will eventually be transferred to this master journal. Say if all explorers have found creature "A" and there are no new explorers for some time period(a month, quarter?); it gets added to the master journal annotated to whom made the first discovery. 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. More critters could even be added later. Maybe some animal sightings can be "triggered" by shaking a plant/tree. This (hopefully)allows an explorer to have a lasting IC effect on the age without leaving everybody else out.


I'm pretty sure that a journal that the player could carry around with them would be possible- think about the KI journal, or, even better, the CC bookshelf journal that was given to the player by Yeesha, which could be carried around and filled in. Things like that can also be picked up- CC relto book, for example.
I really like the idea of the master journal being added to if a certain number of players had located the animal! I'm not so sure if it would be wise to do this only when there was inactivity, which could be better spent working on new things for the age, rather than content that the users have generated themselves, and, as a result, already know. If it were updated once or twice a month, regardless of activity, I think it would work just as well. The triggers is also a very good idea, and we'd have to be careful to design interactions which were logical, unlike the pod age buttons, which I never understood.

The machine... would be frightening to code. I can think of an easy (well, easy-ish) way to get passwords, though: as every username is unique, make a numerical password by substituting letters in the name for numbers. As we don't want mega-passwords, the password could be generated from the first five letters. If the avatar happened to have a name shorter than five letters, like my MOUL friend Wuy, the last few could be randomly generated. So that no one could crack the passwords, I guess there would need to be a few substitution patterns, one of which is randomly selected to be used for each avatar. I'll have a go at writing a test version of the program soon. (though, before anyone gets their hopes up, I know hardly any python- someone else'd have to make the coding for the rest of the machine).

Oh, wait- we don't really need passwords OR usernames. If the machine was logged into via a KI slot, everything could be automatically done for the player. However, I don't think this would be very easy, as a database field for the KI would have to be made every time a KI is made, which would require a big upgrade of the whole KI, and I doubt Cyan would let us mess around with the KI creation process.

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. :D I'm pretty sure that I would do that just as soon as I was having trouble finding species XYZ.


Hmm, I hadn't thought about that. Maybe- and I know this goes slightly against the current concept- there could be regions around the animals, which cause the appropriate box to be ticked in the journal/machine index when entered. However, this wouldn't be as satisfying as clicking a box when an animal was sighted.

If a choice had to be made right now, I'd lean towards the journal, not only because it would be much simpler to implement, but also that it has a more personal touch to it, and is less convoluted and removed from the wildlife than the machine, like Jeniffer mentioned.
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Re: Species Hunt Minigame

Postby Raider7 » Thu Aug 28, 2008 4:36 pm

That's not a bad idea Ardent Red. I did think of something like the relto book at first. A master journal sounds good. I never really understood the pod age buttons either. I've noticed you are from NZ. I'm from New South Wales, Australia. We live in the outback.
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Re: Species Hunt Minigame

Postby ardent red » Thu Aug 28, 2008 9:43 pm

omg! no way! I lived in NSW for two years- 2006 and 2007, at a nice little beach 30 minutes away from Wollongong and about an hours drive from Sydney 8-) , and only just moved back to NZ this year! Right.... that's /me counts... eight possible MORE players who write in my timezone, yey!

I loved Australia. The Australians had a different manner to the new zealanders I had known... more laid back and relaxed. The weather was great, and food was tastier on the whole... except icecream and chocolate. If you ever meet the manager of cadbury australia, tell them to use more fatty sugary goodness in their milk chocolate, along with more cocoa solids (though I prefer dark). Oh, and Oz has a special place in my heart becuse it's where first discovered Uru! You might have met me running around in MOUL as Seltahn (I managed to cause a mass panic in Ae'gura when I unintentionally made people believe that the Jalak book had arrived :oops:, were you caught in the confusion? If so, I apologise.).

*mod pops out of passing kangaroo* AR, stop hijaking the thread already!
aww... (but no crazy 'foo messes with a mod, so...) *puts thread back on track and hands flight controls to... whoever's steering this thing*

EDIT: general grammatical madness
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Re: Species Hunt Minigame

Postby Jennifer_P » Fri Aug 29, 2008 4:42 am

There are some great points here. What else needs to be done to finish the ERC Age?

hehe, lots! :D I'm not listing everything, but here are a few things: plant ideas need to be come up with, scene and path descriptions need to be written, detailed concept art of the ERC needs to be drawn, the interior of the pavilion needs to be thought up, models of the current completed concept art need to be created, textures need to be improved on some of the existing models, ambient sounds need to be found and put into a loop, the Age layout needs to be modeled and exported...
I try not to think of it all at once, it gets scary quick when you do that! :lol:
I'm pretty sure that a journal that the player could carry around with them would be possible- think about the KI journal, or, even better, the CC bookshelf journal that was given to the player by Yeesha, which could be carried around and filled in. Things like that can also be picked up- CC relto book, for example.

Yeah, the thing that makes me worried about this though, is that Cyan never implemented it despite the fact that many players requested their own journals. :? This leads me to believe that it could be a pretty difficult task...
Tell you what, let's get one of the PyPRP programmers over here to comment on the situation and advise us of what would be the best way to proceed. Hopefully they'll be able to point us in the right direction. :)

One more idea I'll throw out is that Cyan has said that we might be able to add objects that could be added to our Reltos. (Not Relto pages, just objects that you can pick up.) If the checklist was kept in a person's Relto, there would be no need for an ID or a password.

Hmm, I hadn't thought about that. Maybe- and I know this goes slightly against the current concept- there could be regions around the animals, which cause the appropriate box to be ticked in the journal/machine index when entered. However, this wouldn't be as satisfying as clicking a box when an animal was sighted.

Well, there's one big problem...imagine that the explorer is stumbling around looking for the rare green viper goose. Without spotting it (because it is really camouflaged) they pass by and unknowingly pass through the sensor region surrounding the animal. Then when they go back to check on their journal, they'll see a check by the Green Goose Viper and think, "Wha? I never saw that..." :| If we did that, we'd have to make it so that the player clicks on the animal to actively acknowledge and prove that they see it. But then imagine that the player sees the animal from a distance of 80 feet, running rapidly into dense underbrush...And they don't have time to click it. Then they would be angry because they would be cheated of their check mark, even though they actually did see the animal.

You might have met me running around in MOUL as Seltahn (I managed to cause a mass panic in Ae'gura when I unintentionally made people believe that the Jalak book had arrived , were you caught in the confusion? If so, I apologise.).

lol, I wish I'd been there! :D

*mod pops out of passing kangaroo* AR, stop hijaking the thread already!
aww... (but no crazy 'foo messes with a mod, so...) *puts thread back on track and hands flight controls to... whoever's steering this thing*

Heh, no worries ardent red, as one of the eight mods on this forum I will tell you that we actually approve of off-topicness...It gives everybody a chance to get to know everybody else. See, 5 minutes ago I had no idea that you were a fellow lover of dark chocolate, and now we know that we both have excellent taste. :D *steers thread into Bermuda triangle*
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Re: Species Hunt Minigame

Postby Robert The Rebuilder » Fri Aug 29, 2008 4:51 am

What a great idea!

If you put regions around the areas where the player would "observe" the flora/fauna, the region can detect the presence of the player and automatically check the appropriate box in their field journal. This can be done on a per-player basis so that, say, Sammy's discovery of the rare Medusa plant doesn't benefit everyone currently in the age. These type of regions can be done with the current plugin.
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