Steampunk Road Dispatch

New Year’s Day we are launching all ships that have been in port for three months or longer. If you want to avoid being sent to a random port in a random vessel, all you need to do is log in between now and January 1st.

While doing research and testing for our first tutorial blog post, we noticed that some email notifications were not necessarily getting through to their intended recipients. Since that time, we have been investigating the problem and looking for a solution. That solution has now been found, implemented, and tested. Emails should now always reach their intended recipients. Now, if for some reason you are expecting an email message from Steampunk Road and it never arrives, please notify us at Administrator at SteampunkRoad.com or just leave a comment here and we will do everything in our power to rectify the situation. Thank you for your understanding, and for your assistance!

It’s the journey and not the destination, so let’s get there in style. There are lots of places to go. Just click on “Set Destination” in the main menu, pick a city from the list (they are listed alphabetically), and then click the “Set Destination” button. You are on your way!

But wait! You might as well get there in style – your style! Click on “Choose Vessel” in the main menu, pick a means of conveyance from the list (they are also listed alphabetically), and then click the “Choose Vessel” button. You are on your way in style!

Here is a listing of the vessels available at the time of this writing. Don’t see your preferred choice of locomotion? Leave a comment or send us an email. There are always more to come.

• balloon
• bicycle
• camel
• donkey
• elephant
• gondola
• horse
• hovercraft
• llama
• reindeer
• sleigh
• steamship
• submarine
• tank
• train
• turkey
• velociraptor
• zeppelin

So you have registered and logged in to Steampunk Road. “What next?” you ask.

Well, the best place to start is the “Settings” menu to personalize your experience. Simply click on the “Settings” button from any of the menus. Once there, you can view your settings or change any of the following:

• Your name
  • This should be your name in the real world. Like all of the other settings under the “Private Settings” category, it is not available to the other traders plying the Steampunk Road.
• Your email address
  • This should be a real email address where you want to receive important announcements about Steampunk Road.
• Your message notification preference
  • If you provided your email address, you can also receive notifications whenever you receive a message from another trader in Steampunk Road.
• Your game notification preference
  • Same as above, you can receive notifications of any important status changes in any of the games you are playing in Steampunk Road.
• Your default map zoom
  • You may want a satellite’s view of what is going on in Steampunk Road. Or perhaps you are more down-to-Earth. You can zoom in or out on the map at any time, but you can also set your default zoom such that your spyglass starts at exactly just the right magnification.
• Your avatar name
  • This should be your trader name on the Steampunk Road. Like the remainder of these settings, your avatar name is visible publicly.
• Your avatar image
  • This should be a picture of you as you appear on the Steampunk Road. Or perhaps you are a mysterious figure, known only by the flag you fly. No matter which image you pick, this is how you will be seen by other traders. Please keep images at least PG-13 or younger and at a 3:4 (width-to-height) ratio for best results.
• Your language
  • This will change the language in which menus, messages, and other things are displayed.
• Your time zone
  • Time zones are listed by continent/city. If your real-world city is not listed, find a nearby city that shares your time zone.
• Auto-Reply
  • Need to take a break from the Steampunk Road, but don’t want to leave other traders in the dark? Leave a message for them here. Don’t forget to come back and turn it off when you are ready to interact with others again.

Is there something else you want personalized in Steampunk Road? Let us know in the comments or send us a message!

Q: How hard is it to get started playing “Steampunk Road”?

A: Not hard at all!

First, go to http://www.steampunkroad.com/index.html and gaze upon that beautiful, nineteenth-century, genuine-beaver-fur top hat at a jaunty angle. We recently heard from the new owner of that hat in the comments to our earlier posting about it.

You have more than a dozen different things you can click on here, but nearly half of them just change the language of the site. One of them takes you here to this blog, one of them plays a lovely tune to put you in a steampunk mood, and a small host of others take you to interesting places and things. The two links we are interested in here are the two nearest the top: Login and Register. Now, you can’t login until you register, so let us look there first.

You have a much-more-manageable three choices at the registration page. You can either register using a valid email address, using your Facebook login, or using your Twitter login. (Want a different login option? Just ask and we will add it for you!) Facebook and Twitter are your easiest options, but which option you choose is entirely up to you. Once you have successfully registered (and received your password, if you chose to register with an email address), then next time you can login directly using the Login link.

That’s it for getting started! Take a look at the map and see if you can find yourself floating off the west coast of Africa. You are on your way!

“On my way to where?” I hear you ask. Ah, that is a question for Part II.

Note: While preparing this post, it was determined that there may be an issue with registering via email. If you are trying to register and are unable to do so, please leave a comment here or send an email to the Administrator at Steampunk Road.

Follow-up Note: I believe the email issues have all been resolved. Still, if you are trying to register and unable to do so, please leave a comment here or send an email to the Administrator at Steampunk Road.

My goodness, where has the time gone?! It seems like I can’t start one of these blog posts without apologizing for one thing or another. And this time, like most others, I am apologizing for the long stretch of time between blog posts and any other advancement of Steampunk Road.

Let us not look back though, but instead to the future. I am making a commitment here and now to once again make progress. Listed in no particular order, here are the things I am going to accomplish over the next weeks and months:

• a mobile-friendly web interface
• an iOS app interface
• add a puzzle dealing with towers
• further flesh-out the overall mystery story
• add a text notification system for port arrivals
• launch the Guild Wars
• grow the audience
• open up the development system so others can launch their own adventures
• add more ports of call, starting with all the capitals of all the nations
• add more collectibles
• improve the passports

I am certain there is more to be done, but that is all I have time to write about right now. Because right now I need to go and get started!

Not exactly a glitch and not quite a thousand ships, but I apologize for inadvertently launching everybody’s vessels in celebration of New Year’s Day.

There is currently no easy way for me to inactivate periodic events, so instead I set them to happen annually at midnight each January 1st, the idea being that just before January 1st I would change the date to July 1st and then change it back soon afterward. To make a long story short, I forgot. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you. In the meantime, enjoy the show!

My apologies again for the long delay, but the map (which had been dark) is now fixed.

My apologies for the long hiatus. I regret that I still won’t have much (any!) time for Steampunk Road until 2014. My life recently went from the 0 km/h of a lead balloon to a high-flying, Zeppliny 120 km/h with almost no warning. I am now working at a new job I absolutely love, which is a good thing considering it consumes 13 hours of every weekday. But I am also rehearsing every night for a play (I am Chief Inspector Hubbard in “Dial ‘M’ for Murder”) and taking three online graduate courses in online education! Unfortunately that leaves almost no time for eating, sleeping, or breathing, let alone working on Steampunk Road, until the final curtain falls on the play and the last virtual paper has been submitted.

I found just a few minutes this morning to post this update. I am asking you to fill out another survey, this time on which browser you use/will use to access Steampunk Road. It used to be that if a web site worked at all, it worked with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser. These last few weeks, I have come across two fairly-major web sites that absolutely do not work with IE, but do work with Google Chrome. And according to this article, those who use the web use Google’s Chrome web browser more than twice as much as any other. (Fine print: most people still use Microsoft IE, but those who use Google Chrome access far more many pages per person.) How about you? What is your preferred browser for accessing Steampunk Road? Please answer the question here. Thank you!

We regret to inform you that Steampunk Road is going on an indefinite hiatus as another opportunity has taken precedence.