Hello mappers! In the Theocratic People’s Kingdom of Belphenia, Belphenian Airlines is on an expansion project by the Belphenian government regarding international air destinations since January 3rd, 2015. Right now, the airliner is serving Reback, Remiville, Shirahoshi and Shadowsnow City, but I am seeking permission from other mappers to expand the airline’s international routes to other cities beyond the TPKB.

If you would like to have your city or airport be listed on our map, please let me know.

Around January 29th, 2015, I am planning to renovate the Reback-Duranth International Airport by adding new access roads, terminals, hotels, a welcome center, and parking garages. If completed, the Reback-Duranth International Airport would be the biggest airport, and also has the world’s longest runways being 5 miles in length on OpenGeofiction.

It has been almost exactly one year since I first signed up for OGF - I found the website in January last year, and I joined and got the email confirming my ownership of AR025 at the start of February, 2014. At that time, there were only two countries available. All the other countries were taken. The OGF world seemed very crowded, but since then, Thilo has weeded the garden substantially. At first I thought I would have preferred a larger country and felt I was late to the party, but in retrospect, even a tiny country is a huge project.

My intention had been to use AR025, which I named Ardisphere after a fictional country I once mentioned in a short story I never finished writing, as a kind of experimental place to perfect my mapping skills and learn the tools. Then I intended to apply what I had learned to focus on my “main” country, Mahhal (AN160). Mahhal is a country I invented in my childhood and has a lot of well-developed background. I want to use OGF to try to recreate a complex “atlas” of Mahhal that I had made on paper which I later lost, but which I recall vividly.

I still intend to build Mahhal, but I am taking it very slowly. I am approaching it perfectionistically and, mostly, “historically” - meaning I want to build the country “in order”: first building the coasts, hydrology and topography, then ecology and plant cover, then agriculture, then hamlets, then cowpaths, then roads, then markets, then towns, then highways, factories, railroads. . . you get the picture. In trying to follow this historical order, however, things go slowly. I have already broken my own “rules” in many cases, e.g. when I went on an airport-building binge, or my detailed work on the capital, Rewk Mahhal.

Anyway, in fact… I have ended up spending about 90% of my time on the Ardisphere. The project took on a life of its own, and despite my disorganized approach, it has ended up pleasingly organic in growth and conception. I have developed a kind “cartographer-crush” on it.

… See full entry

PETERSBURGH- The districts of North and South Vienna are Drevet’s fastest growing regions. Roads are paved, hospitals are top of the line and the local economy is in excellent condition. However, all across the country major construction projects have been seemingly forgotten, and Viennites are taking notice.

As Petersburgh and St. John’s City step out onto the world stage, courting overseas developers and international sports, local officials say the lack of federal investment is hindering their opportunities.

“We have pumped billions of dollars into making North Vienna and South Vienna attractive to companies from abroad. But all of our combined investments will have been wasted if Reback doesn’t start putting shovels in the dirt.” Says South Vienna Representative Bundy Markt.

Twelve years ago in a joint multi-million dollar project, North Vienna and South Vienna completed their sections of Motorway 91, as well as Route 1, and the Arlington & Petersburgh Railroad. This effort was hailed as a major step forward in uniting Drevet’s largest centers. However, the Purcell district has yet to start construction on any of these projects.

Elsewhere, growth in Moulis and Nanets has been stalled for years and carrying extra fuel is essential if one driving between Dahler and Reback, and Reback to Moulis.

“In order for this country to grow, we need leaders to step up and make Drevet a premier world player.” Said Markt.

Last night, I looked at the world map, the territory names like UL019, UL020 showed up. Then I looked at the world map, all the territory reference names like TA019, TA018, etc. showed up. What happened was that on the Openstreetmap’s end, they made some changes to the look of the world map, was the reason why OpenGeofiction got the changes. I seen the airport symbols are now marked purple instead of blue, and the world map no longer supports country names being nodes. (I was planning to go to Drevet and start mapping Reback, but I found Drevet’s name was reverted back to TA020.)

Speaking of naming countries and territories, we are used to name them by using nodes to get the territory names to show on the world map. And today, node-based country names are no longer supported by the OSM tech. The new and only method of naming territories and states, is to edit the borders’ relations to get the names to show on the world map. Because of the changes at OSM’s end, this is mandatory.

To do this in JOSM, you must select the outlines of countries and states. Then you click the gear icon that will take you to the Create New Relation settings. In the Tags and Members section, click the plus button and JOSM will create a new tag.

For states or provinces, you will need to type in the keys and values to get the name of the state to show on the world map: admin_level - 4 type - boundary boundary - administrative name - State or Province Name

For countries, you will need to select all the outlines of the territory and type in the keys and values to display the territory’s name on the world map: admin_level - 2 type - boundary boundary - administrative ogf:id - Your territory’s reference name such as UL055 ogf:owner - Your username goes here name - Your territory’s name goes here name:en - Your territory’s native name goes here

… See full entry

If you’re not familiar with contour lines on topo maps, this diary is not for you.

I had mapper’s block in the capital of New Woolly (inspired by Washington, D.C.). I had created the irregular grid, but had no way to pick out major streets or anything else.

So I decided to add terrain, including hills and valleys with streams. If you download the city in JOSM, you’ll see that I abused the piste:difficulty tag to color-code every-25-foot contour lines (alternating between red and green).

The Wool River flows south to north through the middle. Millions of years ago, it was a bit to the west, but a landslide in the valley that now contains North D Place forced the river to cut a canyon to the east.

… See full entry

I have finally finished my first city completely besides schools and other important buildings and also some minor road edits etc. The only thing I need to work on is Old City. There is almost zero references to Nigeria in Avewood except for the suburb of am ants. For a more Nigerian city see nearby Novograd’s north side. Where I workrdd with my friend alb19. Honorable mentions goes to BMSOUZA who helped with my highways I will post links for Avewood and Novograd in Avewood I named every street in Novograd We only named a few streets. Please give some constructive criticism. The area is everything within the 2 prefectures of Avewood and Okugun. MPC stands for MPC as the rich live their you can also also find populations on the wiki the inner city is very high dense. The only thing I need to know is the areas of towns and cities in the region and also neighborhoods so I can see the population density and make it more realistic. The city is a city with the ethnic diversity of Lagos and population Density with way bigger buildings so up to even 2-3 times the population density of Lagos in many areas. This is a city like Istanbul a city of apartments but with Nigerian density so 10+ people to a 1000-2000 square foot apartment in the poorest areas (Umuofia,Azonto refugee camp some parts of Northend and very few buildings in North Coast.

Avewood http://opengeofiction.net/#map=11/14.0557/95.6655 Novograd http://opengeofiction.net/#map=13/14.6063/96.2181

Hello!

The Womack Medical Park is now complete in the suburbs of St. John’s City. If you have a medical business you’d like to expand, this medical park has large parcels available.

Also, if you have a retail chain or professional company looking to expand, frontage parcels are available along MW 91. Parcels are also available around Bay Mall and may expand if demand is present.

http://opengeofiction.net/#map=14/18.0683/3.8744

PS- Industrial Developers: Warehouse, Distribution and Light Industrial Development opportunities are available in East Petersburgh between Petersburgh-St. John’s City International Airport and Petersburgh Union Station.

http://opengeofiction.net/#map=14/18.2940/4.1812

I know this is really, really late, but I was going to do it beforehand anyway.

I wish all of the members of OpenGeofiction a happy new year. Let’s hope that 2015 is a great year and that a lot of progress is made in all aspects of the project without too much bumpiness. There are still a lot of topics and areas that haven’t been thought about much, so let’s also hope progress is made in that way. I should also add we should hope for the well being of everyone. Cheers!

Hi everyone! I’ve been editing since October using Windows 8 and Chrome, but I’ve noticed a big problem; sometimes, I can’t edit. I can move junction points around, but I can’t select lines to get the editor menu. Does anyone know a way to fix this? I should also note that this happens at the same time when I go onto OpenStreetMap (and when it stops, it stops there too) Thanks!

Hello all,

Having mentioned these in my last entry, thilo has now enabled sound files to be included on the wiki. Therefore, I am open to requests to compose and produce sound files of national anthems for as many countries that want them. Please send either a private message or reply below.

Guidelines:

• If you have words to your anthem or a title, please include these with your request, and indicate if any bits are repeated, if there is a chorus, etc. I can only produce instrumental versions of the anthem to go on the page, as I don’t possess the expensive software needed to synthesise vocal sounds. Anthems that do not have words are fine, but if you don’t include any I will assume I am free to write the tune as I like.

• If you want, include what sort of style and speed you want the melody of the anthem to be. Most in the real world tend to be either a quick march (France, China), a hymn (Germany, Canada), or some kind of solemn procession (UK, Russia, North Korea). I would like the OGF anthems to be a bit more unique than the slow and generic dirges most countries have, but bear in mind that the melody should still be suitable for several thousand people to sing together at a coronation or football match, for example. Also bear in mind your anthem was most likely ‘written’ at the time your country was founded.

• It’s currently the holidays, but as I am a teacher things get pretty busy once term starts again. Therefore please understand that your anthem could take some time to complete and synthesise. I will write them in the order that I receive them. Of course, if you’re really not happy with the result, you can say so and I’ll have another go. Also, if you really have no ideas about what you want your anthem to sound like, I can write some generic ones and let you pick one.

Would anyone like to collab on a country?

Omniville is now a community territory!!!

Hi everybody, I’m sure a few of you may have seen me or know me from other places, but for those who don’t, my name is Matt (people call me Zeffy), and I’m a 20 (nearly 21)-year old who unfortunately is unemployed and spends most of his time in front of a computer screen. One of my favorite (if not my favorite) hobbies is studying roads and highways - specifically creating highway signs, looking at numbering patterns, fantasizing about new highways, making interchanges, looking at old highway photos, etc. I’m also a global moderator on AARoads.com forum, and I help with some internal stuff over there as well. To top it off, creating fictional cities is another one of my favorite hobbies, of course after seeing other people’s creations on here I realize that my versions are absolute crap. Artistic talent was never anything I once had…

Right now my project on OGF is the Republic of Hiltonia. I was introduced to OGF by other members of AARoads, and thought it was a cool idea, since I essentially had the idea of something very much like this site except as a forum community thing - of course I couldn’t figure out how the heck to actually make something like this, so I was quite delighted when I found OGF.

Unfortunately, I have severe AD(H)D, and that means many things in my country are… sporadic and often thought up at a random moment then forgotten. Realizing that my country, in its current form, is quite a mess, I decided to try and reconstruct it using a lot more planning - something that, as you can probably imagine, is very hard for me to stay focused on. With that being said, I would like to ask a few questions for the community here, so that I may ultimately build a better country:

… See full entry

While reading Rasmus Rasmusson’s Introduction to Řots post, I realized that I haven’t thought about wind directions that much when mapping my country when Rasmus mentioned his friend advising him to think about wind directions when building an industrial zone in order to not make the capital city too smelly. Has anyone thought about wind directions much in the community?

Hi,

Recently I discovered Open Geofiction and I have been enjoying creating the Kingdom of Řots on the southern half of Archanta (1). Although technically a kingdom, most of the country behaves like a republic, whereas the royal and other noble families have locked themselves up in their ancient traditions and are hardly ever seen in public.

Řots may have some features similar to a Scandinavian countries (the similarity between the name ‘Řots’ and the Finnish and Estonian names for Sweden, ‘Ruotsi’, resp. ‘Rootsi’, is however coincidence). I imagine that it is relatively cold there, due to its location, but it should be a first world country (2) and more or less a democracy, although I intend to make it not exactly the same as the known systems in western societies on the real earth.

The capital is Nekkar, in the north-west. Nekkar should become a modern city, and I planned to add an industrial area + large harbour in the north-western area, until a friend pointed out that I should consider the general direction of wind, in order to avoid Nekkar becoming too smelly. Are the wind directions the same as on our earth?

The national language, Řotsnan, is in fact a language that I already created for another project, which however discontinued a few years ago. I added the first parts of its description to the wiki. (The phonology part will be added, but the ‘ř’ is pronounced as ‘r’ in ‘dark’ (American-English pronunciation), whereas ‘r’ is pronounced as a sharp ‘rr’ as in Spanish ‘perro’.)

Regards, Rasmus

(1) Archanta seems however to have disappeared since yesterday; is that an error at Open Geofiction or is my computer having trouble displaying the map? - Edit: I read below that flooding of Archanta happens quite often; is that a bug or mistakes made by users? In the latter case: I hope it wasn’t me..

(2) Are there any second or third world countries on these continents?

I started drawing a city (yes, real paper and real pencils !) called Tilia, 1 year ago. I’m drawing maps for years and I’m doing it better everyday, Tilia is a kind of goal of the big city I would love to live in. It is inspired from many different european cities and has a great history that I’m still writing. When I learn good facts about a real city, I try to apply them to Tilia. You can see more about it on : http://urbangeofiction.stadtkreation.com/tilia/

I’m still drawing it, an update will be added in a few weeks. I’m also drawing other cities and villages of my country on paper.

I’m talking to thilo by messages to make Sathria’s relief / economy / roads / languages / currency… and UL203’s correspond (not to be the same, but to keep things logical).

And I have a very important question : As I started drawing cities and my country on paper, how can I reproduce them on the OGF map ?

Here you can see UL203 : http://opengeofiction.net/#map=7/31.653/33.838

And here you can see the paper map : http://hpics.li/d7bee75

I’d like to add the regions, the rivers and the highways to the OGF map.

How can I copy exactly things that I draw on the map ?

I hope you’ll understand.

clik

Today is exactly one year since I joined OGF and drew the first streets in the city of Fontjana to start the country of Karolia. So here are some thoughts and observations on the project:

… See full entry

For the country I’m working on, Lallemand, my friend and I are developing its background story. So far, a big part is that the country was divided in two after a civil war, and each side was backed by one of the super powers.

I’ve been looking around the wiki, but there’s not much on world history. I was wondering which countries are considered the world powers(such as US, Russia, and China), and if there’s any large world wide rivalries between such countries.

I was also wondering if there are any world wide organizations, or political blocs, such as the UN, or EU.

Any information is appreciated, and sorry in advance if its already in the wiki and I just didn’t see it.

thanks,

alb120

I have been working on the country of Lallemand, along with my friend Portopolis, and it seems I made city blocks 50 meters rather than 100 meters. I did this when I originally started OGF and did not really know what I was doing. I now realize that much, if not all, of a city, Port Arenas, is not proportional.

I was wondering if there was a way to use Josm to proportionally increase everything(except coastline, of course) in a city by 100%(x2).

The city in question, Port Arenas is here:

http://opengeofiction.net/#map=16/14.9158/96.3717

Thanks, alb120

Recently I’ve noticed that this website is slow to load up anything. It’s just this website, not any other one, so it’s not my connection. DId anyone else notice this, and if so, what do you think is going on?