Steampunk Road Dispatch

You may have noticed the foreign languages at the bottom of the home screen of Steampunk Road: German, Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, and Portuguese. If you select one of these languages, you will see most of the menus in that language.

We write “most” because far from all of Steampunk Road has been translated. Our translation method consists of putting words and phrases into Google Translate and then working back and forth between English and the other language until we appear to have a stable translation. We are still not certain about “Russian”, a surprisingly difficult word to translate into Russian. And ask us sometime about the joys of trying to write Cyrillic in PHP.

We would like to add Chinese to the list, but we decided to stick to languages that 1) we could actually see their words’ connection to their English counterparts, and that 2) read from left to right. We don’t want to end up like all of those people with tattoos on the Internet who have no idea what they really say.

In short, translation is a very time-consuming task. We can not afford to purchase help from a translation service. So our choices are: English-only, the time-consuming Google Translate and a limited number of languages, or volunteers. If you have a passion for translation and want to help out in the language of your choice, drop us a line at translate@steampunkroad.com. Thanks!

I (dropping the royal “we” for the moment) was fortunate to come across some genuine antique top hats last month at a C & C Trading Post. The proprietor Mr. Jim Farley, who is based in Tampa, Florida but takes his trading post on the road, was a very gracious and knowledgeable host who was willing to share. I was particularly taken by the hat pictured below, dating from 1892:

1892 Top Hat

Inside the hat was this note:

Note

I was able to find an obituary in the January 19, 1942 issue of the North Adams Transcript for Lincoln Stephen Hickox, Sr., the only child of State Senator Stephen A. Hickox to survive past infancy. The funeral was held in the home of Harold Hickox. The listing was under the heading “Williamstown News Section”. Williamstown, MA is in Berkshire County. Given those points of connection to the letter (“Senator Stephen Hickox”, Berkshire County, “Mr. and Mrs. Harold Hickox”, along with the appropriate time frame) , I am very confident that this hat belonged to this particular (State) Senator Stephen Hickox.

You may not know that the felt covering the hat is made from is beaver fur, and indeed “beaver hat” is another term for top hat. Beaver fur was used because it has naturally serrated edges that make the fur mat easily into a felt. Eventually, beaver fur fell out of favor (perhaps due to the declining availability of beaver fur) and silk became the preferred covering.

You probably would not wish to risk wearing an antique hat like this one, and even if you did, it probably would not fit you. Most of the surviving hats from this era are very small, because heads of this era were very small. In addition to the antique beaver hats, Mr. Farley also had a modern felt hat and a modern leather hat for sale. Here is a picture of all of his toppers:

Top Hats at C & C Trading Post

As you may have noticed, our Steampunk Road logo is a top hat set at a jaunty angle. We have grown rather fond of it, but we want to know what you think about it. Our original top hat was a collapsible silk hat from the 1920’s. We replaced it today with a filtered version of Senator Hickox’s hat.

New Logo

The jaunty top hat has a lot going for it as a logo. It is simple, instantly recognizable, scalable, and it works well in a single color. What it does not do is particularly say Steampunk Road without the accompanying text.

One issue with logos is this: Most clip-art, stock photography, and share-with-attribution artwork is not licensed for use as a logo. In the future, we would very much like to offer merchandise with our logo on it as promotional material, prizes, and perhaps even for sale. That means we either have to develop the logo in-house or pay for a work-made-for-hire logo.

So we are asking you to weigh in with your opinions once more. Help us by answering the question in this survey. Thank you!

And for those who want to know about last week’s survey, the current consensus is to keep travel the way it works now.

Note: We are also contemplating the creation of a new home screen which better conveys the feel of Steampunk Road. The new home screen would feature a steamship, steam engine, penny farthing bicycle, and a zeppelin, all going places. We would still need a different graphic for a logo since the home screen image would be much too complex for small sizes.

First off, here is a really simple opportunity for you to help out. We need to test our browser-based chat system under as heavy a load as we can wrangle up. We will have two test sessions. The first session will be at 4 PM UTC (12 noon EDT) on Friday, August 23. The second will be at 2 AM UTC on Saturday, August 24 (which is 10 PM EDT, Friday, August 23). Use your favorite online world time converter to find those times in your neck of the woods (EDT = Eastern Daylight Saving Time = New York, USA time).

You will need to do the following to help us test the chat:

1. Login to Steampunk Road
2. Launch your vessel (using “Set Destination”) if you are currently docked (stationary)
   (This is very important. Different chats take place in different ports. We want everybody on the “Travel Chatter” chat used for those in transit, because the more the merrier.)
3. Click the “Chat” button.

“Theatre Chat” is our unique chat system that addresses a problem frequently encountered with other chat clients. When engaging in a chat with a featured guest, you want to focus on what the featured guest has to say. Whereas there are methods to highlight certain speakers’ text in other chat clients, they are often ad hoc and rely upon the cooperation of everyone involved.

Even with highlighting in place, it is too easy for the featured speaker’s posts to get lost among the chatter of the other people attending. “Theatre Chat” solves this problem by dividing the chat into two parts: the stage and the (peanut) gallery. Featured speakers, known as “actors”, have their text appear on the stage: Everyone else is a “guest”, and their posts go to the gallery. In this way, important dialog is kept separate from the less-important (but usually equally entertaining) side conversations. What is more, only actors have access to HTML features that can be useful in the right hands but annoying or dangerous in the wrong hands.

“Theatre Chat” is available for use outside of Steampunk Road as a drop-in feature for any web site. Make inquiries here in the comments, in the forums, drop us a line, or just ask in the chat while we are testing. See you there and then, and thank you for your assistance!

I have added the ability for you to view avatar images and guild crests in more detail whenever you list them (“List Traders” and “List Guilds”). To do so, simply click on the image of interest. The image will then appear in front of the list, on a black background, scaled up as large as possible to still fit in the window and preserve its aspect ratio (but not exceeding 100% of its native size). Click on the “X (Close)” button to return to the list. Check out some of the amazing avatars (and hopefully soon, guild crests) with this feature that enables you to appreciate them in all of their glory.

When you register (or as of now, if you have previously registered), you automatically become a CoG – “Chief of Guild” – of your very own guild with a membership of one: you. You can then name your guild, craft a motto, develop a description, and design your very own guild crest. (Or at any time really. Just click on “Guilds” over in the menu.)  In the future you will be able to recruit others to your guild and challenge other CoGs for members.

Steampunk Road is, by design, a non-competitive game. There is a mystery to be solved, but the rewards for being first are minimal and do not preclude others from successfully completing the game. We understand however that some people thrive on competition, and we wanted to offer something for them without taking away from the experience for the non-competitive. Enter the Guild Wars.

The Guild Wars is a game within the game, pitting CoG against CoG in a struggle to gain the most members and control the largest guild. Those who do not wish to compete do not need to do so. They can join with another guild or simply acquiesce to a takeover, thereby renouncing their CoGness and becoming just a regular guild member.

CoGs gain members for their guild through either recruiting (by perhaps offering something in trade, for example) or by challenging other CoGs for members through dueling. (We will cover dueling in a future missive.) Lose all of your members and you lose your guild.

Take some time this weekend to build your guild’s identity through the “Guilds” menu. We hope to start the Guild Wars early next week, but don’t worry. Although you may lose your guild in the Guild Wars, your original guild’s identity will be preserved and restored to you whenever the game resets.

We have been creatively cursing at Internet Explorer 10 all day for the fits it has been giving us, particularly with this blog. Ever since we posted our inline survey, the opening page of The Steampunk Road Dispatch has been automatically jumping down to the first option of the survey in IE10. The browser may think it is being helpful, but it is not. To add insult to injury, there is a fine box around our window to the world at the top of the page if you set the zoom to anything larger than 100%. Other browsers do not have these problems.

So it was with great bias that we started looking at another problem having to do with file uploads. The page was working wonderfully under Google Chrome, but essentially doing nothing under IE10. Though it pains us greatly to admit it, IE10 got this one right while Chrome was letting us get away with murder, for the fault lies not in the browsers but in ourselves (and our code). We won’t bore you all with the technical details, but if you do want them then just ask and we will share with those interested individually.

We will apologize to IE10 just as soon as it stops auto-scrolling down to the survey.

We are working on a subsystem that includes a graphic element that you, the good people of Steampunk Road, create. It is always difficult to figure out how to handle user-generated graphics because of the difficulties of size and proportion. While researching the issue, we came across the fact that avatar images on Steampunk Road were being displayed with an odd ratio of width to height. Portraits are usually 2:3 for 35 mm film, 3:4 for older point-and-shoot digital cameras, 4:5 for some portraits (“8 x 10 glossy”), and 9:16 for widescreen digital cameras. After much debate, it has been decided to display avatar images at the 3:4 ratio. We recommend using an image that is at least 120 pixels by 160 pixels. We have also increased the limit on file size by a factor of ten: from 1 MB before to 10 MB now. In the near future, you will be able to click on an image to see it at a higher resolution, so that extra storage will come in handy. If you have not created an avatar image yet, or if you just want to touch it up, consider this your invitation to do so.

You may wonder about the speed at which we travel the Steampunk Road. North, South, East, or West, over land or sea, the speed is 120 kilometers per hour. This is both an easy number to work with (two kilometers per minute, ten every five minutes) and also the top speed of a Zeppelin (our favorite mode of travel). How a llama can travel that speed over water or a steamship over land, we do not know, but they do.

Vessels follow a great circle from port to port, so they may not look like they are headed straight there, but they are making the trip in a minimal amount of time. Positions are not updated continuously on the map, but rather every five minutes. You can see the difference if you set the map to maximum zoom over a vessel.

We originally toyed with the idea that all travel would be restricted to established trade routes on approved vessels at realistic speeds. Weigh in here on whether this change in transportation is an essential feature, something nice to have after everything else is done, inconsequential, or if you prefer the way travel works now.

<Click Here For Survey>

These surveys will be a regular weekly feature of the blog. If you are curious about last week’s survey on mobile, the consensus is that mobile would be a nice feature to have after everything else is finished.

Thanks to Google for pointing out that today is Erwin Schrödinger’s birthday. Schrödinger is the physicist who originated the thought experiment known as Schrödinger’s Cat, which featured prominently in Steampunk Road’s first puzzle. (We will be moving that particular puzzle to later in the game, due to its difficulty.)

In preparation for our beta launch, still scheduled for September 2^nd, we will be resetting all of the achievements, puzzles, etc. – everything really except odometers – both in the near future and closer to the launch.  The puzzles will be locked safely away from prying eyes for the next couple weeks, so if you are planning on solving them before the game starts, then you had better hurry! Otherwise, they will be back in some form in September.