This may be a strange one:

When editing, the upper left part of my screen is totally unresponsive. When i move my mouse to that part, objects do not ‘light up’ to be selected, nor can I connect points there. P2 has this issue, ID strangely not; the graphics on my laptop prohibit me from using JOSM. Is this my (not too new) laptop starting to desintegrate or something else ? Anyone has an idea ?

a wondering

Marcello

Just discovered another wild mapping approach in my country. I love the totally unrealistic alignment to vanishing points.

Hello fellow mappers! If you’re new to OGF, or if you just haven’t checked out southern Archanta in awhile, allow me to (re)introduce you to the Federal States of Archanta, one of the OGF community’s largest collaborative mapping projects. The FSA is home to a variety of North American-style mapping, consisting of 62 separate states and two territories.

In case you missed it, the FSA is now home to an open collaborative “blue” state, Michisaukee, where all mappers are welcome to join us, no prior approval required! Be sure to check out the information page about Michisaukee for more information.

If you’re interested in something more collaborative, we have a wide variety of collaborative states (and Huntington, our capital city) including some recent additions. If you are interested in participating in one of these collaborative states, please reach out to the appropriate project coordinator to get started.

If you want to dive in and be a full stateowner, you’re in luck: we do have some vacant states available that are ready for you. State (and West Massodeya county) requests do have to go through the usual OGF territory request process; before requesting a vacant state I encourage interested potential stateowners to send me a message to discuss what you have in mind and where your vision could be a good fit in the Federal States.

If you’d like more information about the Federal States project and who we are, visit the FSA Dashboard.

Happy mapping! -Mayor

Hello, fellow geofictioneers!

(The last time I wrote, I was responsible for a different country. I thought I’d mentioned that at the top to avoid confusion and questions about that)

So, I’m working on my new country - more specifically, one of it’s northern states. I thought I should start detailing with the biggest city / capital, and then spread out towards the rest of the state.

Since I haven’t mapped a big city in detail before, I thought I should use OGF’s guide on making realistic cities. It recommends to pick a model city. The problem is that I haven’t been able to find one that fits well.

So this is where I turn to you people. I’d really appreciate if you could take a look at my city and recommend me real life cities to model after. Any kind of related tips are welcome, too!

Here’s everything you need to know:

The city in question is Skarvienne. It’s about 196 km2 in size. The population is supposed to be anywhere between 300K and 700K (probably somewhere in the middle).

I don’t know the exact topography yet, but it lies in the 0 to 200 metres zone. Since it’s surrounded by rivers, I’m gonna say it’s pretty flat. The only exception being a hill in the middle of the city, by the river. That’s where the old town would be.

Culturally, the area is a mix of Baltic and eastern Nordic (Swedo-Finnish).

Cities I’ve given serious consideration to:

Berlin - flat, several confluences of rivers, vaguely northeastern. However, its old town is kind of weird and, uh, overly modernised? I’m also not a fan of the trams. There are too many marshlands surrounding it, as well.

Kaunas - flat with low hills, a confluence of rivers, hill fort/castle old town. However, there’s only one confluence, and I don’t like the reservoir.

Wrocław - fairly flat, somewhat of a hill fort (but not really), and I just like how the core of the city looks on the map. However, as I said, it’s not really a hill fort-type old town. Also, have I mentioned that I don’t like trams?

… See full entry

Natural Cover. A topic that is sometimes controversial in how it should be implemented, and other times a great boon for someone’s mapping.

But, what I bring up today is that I think for purposes of map beautification there should be more colorings for different natural land uses. While I know this can be achieved it history mode, it would also be (unfeasibly) nice to have this in the standard OSM layer.

Why do I make this point? When doing rural farm areas, I thought it would look nicest with a multitude of different colors mixed in, while still having a land use related to farming (i.e. for Red I could always make a square a hospital grounds, but that just does not feel right using that space as farming.

Currently the only 4 colors I can find to use are Heath, Meadow, Farmland, and Orchard. I think it would be great to have 6+ different options.

Finally, regarding histor mode: It would be really great if Histor mode displayed Scree! Currently only default OSM does, and I plan to use scree a lot. While it looks rocky on the standard, its just a big blank patch along rivers in my state on Histor mode.

Hiya,

I’m thinking about making a Nuclear Exclusion Zone just west of Elizabeth in my country. The layers won’t have loaded at the time of writing this but when they do feel free to have a look and give some feedback on the area size.

I’m just wondering if anyone has made a nuclear exclusion zone in their region which I could have a look at?

For information, the disaster which occured in 2017 would be a category 4 - so not as bad as Chernobyl but like the one I have linked down below:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokaimura_nuclear_accident

Thank you in advance :)

P.S: Please correct me if the co-ordinates are wrong, my layers weren’t loaded in so I couldn’t remember where I put it lol

The icon for the arcade in OSM: osm.org/#map=19/52.11473/4.28342 and in OGF: https://opengeofiction.net/#map=19/-33.16006/-136.46549

It seems that the size is wrong, like squeezed to 3x3 pixels. The same for hospitals and casinos.

Isn’t our style carto supposed to be just a copy?

Hi all.

Let me introduce you to my current territory, New Lucien. Most of its residents are former residents of Lucien City, who decided to leave the city for some reason.

Its capital, New Lucien City (formerly called Lucianopolis, Latin for “Lucien City”), is located on the northeastern part of the territory, close to the border of Mackenziana. Other settlements are located on the mainland, close to the Lucien River.

Any feedbacks? By the way, I love building roads, but I’m not that good at making buildings.

Hey everyone,

I hope you are all doing well. This doesn’t really pertain to any mapping, but I had ordered a real-life copy of Semerra’s flag, and it just came today. It turned out amazing! I had been super bummed out about this whole quarantine thing, so bringing some extra OGF into my life really brightened my day. I’ll put some pictures on my user page once the lighting is good enough!

Cheers, Geoboi

I’ve been kinda off since the beggining of 2019 on the OGF, so I obviously lost some major changes. Most of them being cited on the forums.

My only question comes from the old news site we had back in the day; Does anyone know what happened to it? I’m asking here because I don’t wanna bother anyone on the forums.

Thanks?

Hello there. Due to feedback received that the previous challenge on contours isn’t beneficial at this time, I decided to launch another challenge that many others can work on. The contour challenge, for the time being, will be suspended, but anyone else can work on it if they want to in preparation for future challenges.

Mapper’s Challenge #30a — July/August 2020 — Retail and Entertainment

So for this challenge, I decided to go microscale and decided to launch this challenge. I am currently in the process of developing some retail and hotel areas in my capital to attract tourists.

Basically, just create amenities for a retail/hotel stripe in your city. If you like, you can do an amusement park, which may also be more purposeful for your retail stripe.

You can actually do this anywhere, not just in a major city, but any town or area (maybe around a major airport far from the city) that probably needs some tourism and economic boost. Does the retail development need to be successful? Maybe yes, maybe not, depending on your country.

Have a blessed month! Happy mapping.

Blue Country Editors, and anyone interested in helping.

In a recent Diary Entry post, I mentioned the over-the-top project that I have given myself (as a bit of a test) and I am nothing short of an amateur at this site. I am proud to admit that I am an amateur mapper, but I have one request rather. If anyone has experience in creating realistic zones and would like to help me finish out my current project (Munsterhann, Northside, Lviv, Louletta, and McKenner) before I move on to my next project (Populating Gilagonas Region, Mecyna via 88 and T-2) It would be greatly appreciated

Basically what I am in need of is: I. Residential Zones in neighborhoods that I have already planned out II. Commercial and Industrial Zones along numbered routes III. City Services and Public Transport (Sidenote: I don’t understand OGF Bus Routes) IV. Additional Links to other areas to work with (Bellafountaine and surrounding areas) V. Help with Lake layers… (I did read the tutorial on the wiki and tried copying other’s lakes per what they were and still had trouble) VI. Additional help with Airport Zone

I do understand that my sizing is not entirely realistic, but I am trying my best to base building sizes off of what they seem in real life without using any additional softwares. I am not the most tech savy person in the world so OSM and other softwares just confuse me.

If you happen to be interested in helping, Private Messaging me is encouraged, or if you have any tips: Please leave them in the comments. Thank You in Advance, and Happy Mapping.

Hey, I’m curious. How does one make a keyboard to type their own letters from their own language on a Mac? I was trying to figure out how and failed.

Thanks for your time, ~KAB

I made a topo layer for “San Juan de Castellán” in JOSM following all the steps in the Wiki of “how to make a topo layer” and as the page says I sent it to info@opengeofiction.net e-mail. All this was in day 13 of this month. Also the page says to give a week to see the layer in OGF or get an answer in e-mail. But I didn’t received nothing. Perhaps the admins check their emails less frequently than before, perhaps I need to inform the email here in Diary entry.

Thank you in advance…

Huachachi

It has already been a bit slow for a while… But now it’s just ridiculous. It takes minutes to load a page.

Has it been overwhelmed with overwikification? Or is there a more plausible explanation?

While doing some planning for my project within Mecyna, I ran into the idea of creating a detailed list of all Numeric and Alphabetical routes that runs their course through-out Mecyna including projected lengths, Northern/Southern (Eastern/Western) Terminus and even special attractions or areas that they served throughout the nation. While Mecyna is a free-to-edit country, I feel that a complete list of highways would be a necessary step in both showcasing the amount of infrastructure in Mecyna, but also to be able to keep a running list in case there happens to be two disjointed sections of similarly numbered (lettered) highways to avoid a conflict in the Lore of the Highway system.

It’s just an idea…

Hello,

I’ve been looking for a way to import my maps into another piece of software and edit it.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Hiya!

I want to prosper my city by adding bus routes, particularly around the city centre to start with. Does anyone have any tips for keeping track of all of these routes so that I don’t get them mixed up with each other and can quickly view all the routes?

Thanks

Hello there. Hope the OGF community is doing well.

I appreciate the responses so far for the last challenge. I hope more people will jump in, especially for this challenge, which is particularly interesting.

I have successfully added a few bus routes in Bakdep, but beyond developing the core area, I have not been able to develop other bus routes beyond the core. However, once more areas have been developed, I will create more.

Mapper’s Challenge #30 - July 2020 - Contours and topography

Initially, for this month, I wanted to do Urban Periphery: The transition zone between inner-city areas and the surrounding countryside, as the one who suggested the challenge (Thilo) commented that it is something that “I’ve seen rarely done well in OGF.” However, I feel that will be putting the cart before the horse, so I decided to switch to this challenge on contours.

Contour mapping is not that complicated; you just need at least some basic JOSM skills. A good guide explaining contour mapping can be found here. You can also look at the cycle map in OSM for inspiration.

I encourage you all to do some basic contour mapping around the city or town you are developing at the moment. If you are advanced enough, you can try a mountain range through your country.

For this challenge, I am going to map a few hills around Bakdep and Phong Thinh. Currently, these hills are mere patches of forests, but these will be developed soon enough.

It may take some time to see the results (NOTE: DO NOT upload your contours directly to the database!), so I encourage you all to be patient. If you are more organised, you can do contours in degree squares, like what some experts on this did.

Hello!

As you may have seen, a few weeks ago, I requested submissions from you lot for some changes to Bromley City while I go on a mission to fix some active person’s horrific mapping. I can tell you, fixing all of this has definitely improved my mapping from mapping in squares to mapping in interesting shapes and angles. My country is based off of the UK with very loose ties to Australia and the USA terrainwise.

Take into account that Bromley City is still major WIP and therefore there will still be some horrific mapping which is due to change soon. Some of those that are still present include the following:

-Tight corners and weird shapes of railways -Extremely close proximity of residential roads -Blocks of roads and overly straight roads -Wide distance between major roads such as the A1, A2 and other motorways -Drastic change between urban and rural -Change to roads in Battersea

I think that should cover all the things that are still on the to-do list, it’s a very hard job so please bear with!

The things that I have managed to tick off of the list include:

-Changing place names from various different languages to a specific Bromlavian Ingerlish & Ingerish -Major changes to motorways which were too present and now have mostly become A-roads and trunk roads -Dual carriageways in city centre have been removed due to this not being realistic -Naming boroughs/districts -Change to angles and shapes of roads to represent a British style place instead of American -Road names to suit a British style instead of American -Drastic change of road layout in Princer View -Resize of stadium -Resize of West City Park Estate

… See full entry