Hello, guys, this is actually my first entry here, so I’d like to start by saying that I’m really having a great time in this community! Being part of this world that you’re collectively building is an amazing experience, so thank you to everyone who’s spending a part of their days drawing and editing awesome maps!

Now, more specifically, one of the most difficult parts of understanding OGF to me getting to know people who are members of the community and their respective countries. I love looking around and discovering new places, but since the world is so big and some areas are not clearly and fully edited, I think it would help a lot if we had a nice political map of the world. I myself tried to do one recently, but I’m not as good with editing software as other people here, so the result was terrible. I end up looking at the OGF:Territories, which, don’t get me wrong, it’s a great source, and of course, the wiki as a whole helps a lot. But still, sometimes I’m reading about a country and I have no idea where it is.

Maybe we already have a map like that, I just don’t know about it. And I imagine it is no easy task, since doing that map would require time and constant updating, but it would be great to see the world like in this amazing map of Uletha I posted below, I really like it, congrats to the person who did it! So let me know your thoughts! :)

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Some notes so I wont forget my location 16.16445/153.71305

Are any of the nations surrounding Freedemia, Narghana and Nature in both Tarephia and Antarephia interested in joining a free trade/border agreement? The details so far are in the wiki page below.

We are especially hoping to hear from the manager of Omniville due to the nation’s vicinity to the charter nations, although it was unclear who he or she was or how to contact said individual.

http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/Tarephia-Antarephia_Free_Trade_Agreement

This is my first diary entry and I’ve been here editing for a while. UL052 is my region.

I have one question on coastlines. I have a new section of coastline I want to add in but it exceeds the way limit. I use JOSM because the coastlines take really long to load for me in the traditional editor. How do you get around this? I need some detailed instructions.

I’m currently working on a large Disney world- sized amusement park in Freedemia called Thrill Planet, or officially, since it’s partially linked with my movie company, Betterview Pictures’ Thrill Planet. It’s going to have affiliations with my movie companies, video game companies, and Plega blocks (pretty much Legos for the fictional world :P ).

However, that’s still a lot of space I have to fill upwith original stuff. I wanted to have a section of the park called Intercontinental Crossroads, where the different sections are based off of different nations around the world.

Could some people who would like their nations to be featured in that section of the park let me know by either replying here or by contacting me through messaging? I just need to know a little about what you’d like featured there for your nation, the characteristics of your nations you want included, etc. I’m already designing a Woolonia section.

Thanks!

http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/Thrill_Planet (wiki page)

http://opengeofiction.net/#map=13/-2.9593/-2.3931 (map of the park so far, intercontinental crossroads may be in the bottom right

Like Norfolkadam and his city of Elmham > http://opengeofiction.net/#map=16/-36.6129/169.2046 which looks great I think, I’m trying to create better non-gridlike cities in my new country of Østermark. I’ll only have two sizeable cities, both of which I’ve started: the capitol, Mynninghamn > http://opengeofiction.net/#map=14/48.3941/158.2613 and the smaller Gråklosters > http://opengeofiction.net/#map=14/47.9323/157.6434.

I’m trying to take it slow, develop realistic natural features and other towns and villages in places that make sense, avoiding the temptation to build highways and railways to connect everything until I’ve built more habitations and put in more terrain.

My next challenge though is suburbs. I want my suburbs to mostly be depressing with unpleasant commercial centers and aging blocks of shoddy apartments, some of them monolithic. Østermark is not a rich country and it should be apparent in the many brownfields and sad suburbs.

Any tips on building suburbs? What differentiates them from city? What differentiates them from each other? What is characteristically suburban? (And I realize this is really, really broad and the answer really lies in looking at maps of cities that are like what I’m trying to create).

Just came across this conference announcement, maybe some of you might find it interesting:

http://fictionalmaps.org/

Cleared entry.

Quick tip for anyone who doesn’t know: whenever you’re browsing the OGF map, you can see latitude and longitude in the URL.

The coordinates correspond to the center of the displayed area.

Did the admins ever come to a decision about the future of the city Las Ovejas in Woolonia? I noticed that like they had said originally, it looks every similar to real life L.A. and I remember talk of eliminating it off the map altogether.

I had the idea of having it be mostly abandoned and the idea of making a portion of the downtown area into a new eco friendly development, but I’m not sure, since it depends on the decisions about the city itself. I am open to the idea of its elimination (as for the actual city as it currently exists). However, i just want to make sure I understand what’s going on with it before I start working with it.

http://opengeofiction.net/#map=11/-33.1002/27.6663 (map of Las Ovejas)

I’ve been working on the city Katsnelson and its environs for a few months now (Yes, I’m still in Commonia for some reason). Katsnelson was not originally my idea (A person called Subway started in in December but then abandoned it and later I took hold, and made the inner ring and most of the outer parts). All of Monksbury, Sommton, Warroton and Medsham are originals though. I tried to create a sense of Englishness to my places; do you think I can improve on anything specific or in general?
Map: http://opengeofiction.net/#map=10/26.4902/157.7321 Wiki: http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/Katsnelson

Hey, guys! A reminder that Woolonia (http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/Woolonia) is a collaborative nation that is open to productive edits by all users. I’m the manager, but due to not having access to JOSM and spending most of my time on Freedemia, I haven’t made much progress. (Backstory here at new article link below).

https://ognnews.wordpress.com/2015/09/14/while-woolonia-has-stabilized-rebuilding-process-moving-very-slowly-concerning-woolonian-and-freedemian-leaders/

Anyone interested in working on Woolonia, please go ahead! Just contact me as you begin, so I can have an idea of what’s going on.

A couple particular projects…

• Government Buildings in downtown New Wooley

• Fixing certain parts of the road network in New Wooley

• Figuring out the subway system in Woolport (it looks great, but I can’t tell which lines are which)

• Fixing up/ actual creation of Centerport (the users that take on this job have almost full creative licence since it is currently just a spot on the map!)

• Creating a new eco-friendly dense community in the center of the Abandoned Las Ovejas, deletion of most of Las Ovejas. (Contact me for details on what I mean.)

• Fixing up the road network

• The creation of small herding towns across the nation

Thanks to anyone who is interested in making Woolonia a fully developed nation.

Dear users,

In the last few days myself and an admin have been making preliminary discussions about the possibility of moving Karolia (and Meridonia) from its current location in Archanta to UL077. All the interested parties have been contacted and already seen the rationale for this, but now is the time to present the main reasons to the wider community:

Karolia has a temperate climate that is much better suited to the latitude of mid-Uletha than the equatorial location it currently occupies. Karolia and Meridonia have ‘European’ cultures, cities, genealogical characteristics and languages that cannot easily be explained in the present location. Karolia is a modern industrial power that is better suited to being around other similar countries and a temperate landscape than the unoccupied desert of Archanta.

The proposal I am advancing can be viewed here http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/File:Karolia_move_option_1.png and essentially involves rotating the country and rearranging some of the northern and eastern areas to fit the border, as well as creating two gulfs to preserve the coastline. These also provide some realism for the isolate main language and other quirks (broad-gauge railways and secularism). A second option was considered http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/File:Karolia_move_option_2.png but as well as advantages this carries some major problems, particularly having to lose half the coastline and cede territory from another country. Option 1 makes the most topological, historical and political logic. I hope to retain the connection with the Ardisphere through colonial history.

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I’ve been working on the capital city of Mercia for about three weeks now and I’m making slow progress as I’m trying to incorporate quite a bit of detail into the mapping. I’d love some feedback on the city and the wiki articles I’ve been working on.

http://opengeofiction.net/#map=16/-36.6129/169.2046 < Elmham http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/Elmham < Elmham wiki article http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/Mercia < Mercia wiki article http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/Roads_of_Mercia < roads of Mercia (ring road exits)

I placed a roughly 300 meter wide shipping canal through the center of Pretany, connecting the Barsas and Turpis Rivers. ANY country that wants to connect from the western ocean to the northern ocean can use this canal. Of course Thilo needs to get involved to allow shipping passage through the Barsas River in his country. So until then, you can connect to St. Richards or Raggleneth through the Turpis River in Pretany.

http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/Mid-Pretanic_Canal The wiki link to the Canal.

http://opengeofiction.net/#map=8/52.310/54.943 The location of the canal in the middle of the screen.

Hi all, I wondered if we could have a common timeline about our world history on the wiki site. We would easier see when things happened then, and we could cope our timelines together too.

Hi all,

There are some great resources hidden away in the OGF wiki, but a lot of them can be kind of hard to find. So I’m thinking I’d like to occasionally share links to some of the resources here, so that anyone who doesn’t know about them can go check them out. And anyone who can contribute additional insight, or discussion, or ask questions, can do so here… or in the wiki.

The first one I’d like to share is Making realistic airports, which has great advice about where to put airports, how to arrange runways, how many runways to build and how long they should be, and what other facilities are needed at an airport. As usual, one of the best pieces of advice is to look at real world maps for examples.

I actually had to rework my first international airport on OGF because I didn’t realize that planes land into the wind and take off into the wind, which means it’s not a good idea to have a runway that backs up against a mountain. It was also a huge challenge to position the airport near the city, but in such a way that the flight paths weren’t too disturbing for the residents below. I’m also probably guilty of some “overdone airports,” which seem to be common in OGF, with many more runways than you’d typically find in the real world.

In fact, after re-reading this article, I think I need to go redo some of my airports…

Link to the article: Making realistic airports

As some of you know or have likely noticed, while some of my images I use on the wiki are public domain or hand-drawn, most of my images are produced using autoshape functions on either PowerPoint or preferably Keynote (both are slide show applications, one for Windows, the other for Apple). That’s largely because I often find it hard to find images that reflect what I am imagining, and, well, because sometimes I don’t feel like handdrawing something really intricate :P

But it wasn’t till today that I stopped to reflect on some of the things I’ve managed to make with autoshapes and realized…Wow. You really can do a lot with a powerpoint app and some time.

A couple of the examples that came to mind…

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Just a straw poll - which country on the OGF planet would you most like to live in? And which to visit on holiday? You can’t pick one you own.

I would probably go for either Kalm or Nordurland to reside in, and Manhal, Sathria and Khaiwoon to visit. Although I’d visit everywhere eventually.

I am noticing that recently I am getting this error ….

Failed to upload data to or download data from ‘http://opengeofiction.net/api/0.6/’ due to a problem with transferring data. Details (untranslated): Read timed out

….when trying to download data from the OGF servers and that even editing and viewing the OGF map is taking much longer than before.