You were supposed to have a fake marriage with the diva, so how did you become her father?

So, Lu Ran started a second storyline.

The second task is to have the player record more environmental information.

This isn't about collecting privacy; it's about giving those location points an "environmental label."

For example, if a player catches a creature in a certain location, the system can ask if they would like to take a picture of the surrounding environment as a background for their encyclopedia entry.

Whether or not to take the photo is entirely voluntary. No personal information will be uploaded after taking the photo. Only a low-resolution image that has been automatically blurred will be uploaded. The image will only retain general lighting information and terrain outlines, and will not retain identifiable features such as faces, license plates, or house numbers.

The technical implementation of this feature is not complicated; the difficulty lies in persuading players to use it voluntarily.

Lu Ran's solution was to link environmental records and biological atlases together.

Each legendary creature will have extra collectible value if it is accompanied by a real-world photo taken by the player as the background for the encyclopedia, compared to the default background image.

Players can view each other's environment photos in their encyclopedias and compare the differences in the spawn environments of the same creature in different areas. This design itself has a natural incentive to share, requiring no additional incentives.

He retrieved the low-resolution image uploading and automatic blurring function module from the system, integrated it with the existing positioning system, and spent an entire night debugging the interface.

As the progress bar on the screen climbed forward step by step, he leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes for a while. The notification sound when the progress bar was complete pulled him back. He opened his eyes, glanced at it to confirm that it had passed, and then saved the configuration.

The next morning, he sent a message to the project team, briefly explaining the direction of the new feature adjustments, and asking the development team to prioritize embedding these changes into the next minor version.

Zhao Yiming replied in the group, "Okay, let's start today." Zhou Mingzhe added, "After these changes are released, provide the operations department with a simple explanatory document so they don't not know how to explain them to the players."

Lu Ran replied, "I'll write the document," and then closed the group chat.

The data curve on the day the new version was launched was very stable, without the surge in downloads seen on the first day.

Because the changes are subtle, most players won't notice the changes in the background logic. They will only find that rare creatures that they haven't seen before suddenly start spawning in several locations on the map, and that the information cards of those creatures have an additional "Environmental Collection" button.

After clicking, you will be prompted whether to allow taking photos.

Most people chose "allow," while a small number chose "disallow." The percentage of people who chose "allow" was slightly higher than he expected, indicating that the psychological barrier for players to "take photos" was not as high as he had imagined.

In the following days, the backend data began to show new changes.

At the edges of those previously empty areas, the density of location signals is slowly increasing. On the first day, only a few scattered signals appeared near the boundaries, as if someone happened to pass by and casually turned on their location service.

The number of signals doubled on the second day and doubled again on the third day.

Someone posted on the forum, "I caught a legendary one in that location in the suburbs yesterday, but I went again today and didn't get one." Someone replied, "I went three times before I got one. That location is indeed not fixed, but the range is in that area."

That post was repeatedly quoted in the regional channel, and more and more people began to move in the same direction.

This is exactly the effect Lu Ran wants: one person can influence many others, but not too many, or it might arouse suspicion.

TUTU's back-end system is also precisely controlling the minute details.

At the same time, the backend began receiving the first batch of environmental image data.

Most of the scenes are normal city street views, with a few shots of the suburbs, trees, grass, and distant mountain ridges.

After being automatically blurred, the images are almost devoid of detail, showing only color blocks and outlines. However, when viewed together, they can roughly depict the weather, lighting, and vegetation cover of those areas.

On the fourth day, Lu Ran received a message from Wang Anguo. The message was brief: "New batch of data received. Several regions show a high degree of agreement. Continue."

He didn't reply to the message; he simply reviewed the newly collected environmental images in the background and then closed the page.

The September sunlight in Shanghai shines on the desk outside the window, coating the edges of the keyboard and mouse with a thin layer of gold.

Someone was moving things in the hallway; the wheels rolled across the floor with a clattering sound, and they passed by the door and gradually disappeared into the distance.

He sat there, his fingers resting on the mouse, watching the silhouette of the sycamore tree outside the window sway slightly in the wind as it appeared on the computer screen.

There were no new messages on the phone in my pocket.

Tomorrow, more players should walk across the edges of those blank areas. A few days later, the first group should cross that invisible boundary.

He did what he could.

The rest is up to time and the dots on the map.

...

After the new version was launched, the increase in backend data was smoother than Lu Ran had expected.

There are no sudden spikes, but steady growth can be seen every day. The edges of those originally blank areas gradually change color on the heat map, like ink drops on rice paper, slowly seeping outwards.

On the fifth day, a new signal appeared at the edge of a blank area within Japan.

The signal was closer to that area than ever before, almost touching the boundary line.

Lu Ran clicked on the user information corresponding to that signal and took a look. It was an ordinary account with a low level. The activity record showed that he had been circling around that area for nearly forty minutes that afternoon. His trajectory first circled around the outer road, then stopped at a certain position for a while, and then walked back.

The spot where we stopped was exactly where the boundary line was.

That account only uploaded one environmental photo. After blurring the image, you could see a gray-green patch, which looked like the outline of some kind of forest or bushes.

I didn't capture any buildings or man-made structures, just trees and the sky.

Lu Ran exported the image from the system backend, and without zooming in, looked at it as is for a while.

Then he closed the image preview window and wrote a line in his notebook: Japan, Region 3, edge location, approached once but did not cross.

...