With Dorchester National Park, I initially started tracing from a photo, and using the land use and geography attributes to add contrasting colors (park=green, forest=dark green, scrub=yellow green etc.) In the original photo, the mountains were barren, except for some glaciers (which I converted to lakes).

After a few weeks of tracing with the photo, I discovered a more original way to render mountain ranges other than just tracing from a photo, and also better than relying on imagination alone.

First, you will need the JOSM editor with the PicLayer plug-in installed.

Next, cut a long sheet of tin foil (about 2-3 times longer than the width) and crumple it up. Carefully, unwrap it and flatten it out. Now you can shape it according to your needs: you can flatten some valleys or raise some high peaks, as you like.

Once you’re finished, take a photo of your new mountain range and upload it to your computer. Then, open JOSM. Next, open OGF in the location where you want to put your mountains. Click the ‘download’ button in JOSM. Copy and paste the OGF coordinates in the URL field (for those new to JOSM, make sure opengeofiction is your default site, not openstreetmap)

Next, click ‘Imagery’, then ‘New picture layer from file’. From here, you can select your mountain image. This opens the mountain image as a background layer to OGF. Click on ‘Windows’, then ‘Layers’. Here, you can edit the mountain image layer (you may need to resize, rotate, or adjust the transparency) or go straight to tracing by clicking ‘Data Layer 1’.

Scaling the mountains accurately might be tricky. Maybe there are some more experienced mappers here who can advise on the average size of mountains.

Hopefully, this will be helpful for those who would like to render mountains. One caveat is that this is VERY labor intensive, so you might want to stick to rendering a small area you think will be of particular interest, as opposed to a 100-mile-long range.

Just thought I’d give a bit of an update on what I’m working on in Dunwic. I’ve been working on improving the city that I’d mapped too quickly and without enough detail. I’m getting close to having completed the entire city centre. I have also been changing names from Ingerish to Myrcian (based on Old English).

Here are some areas I’ve recently completed and am quite proud of:

Kirkcoleg Myrcia

Map

The city’s university, built in the 1930s in a collegiate style by a garden city architect. It’s still not 100% finished but it’s something I keep going back to and adding detail and more buildings.

Forshæig / Vesterburh

Map

I began these neighbourhoods last week when I got back from being in the Netherlands. I got rid of the neighbourhoods that were here and started from scratch building canals and creating an antiques shopping area.

Nórdburh

Map

Another area I’ve recently re-built from scratch. It’s an 18th century street plan inspired by Sir Christopher Wren. It includes the neo-classical cathedral (St Anselm Milkirk) and the cliff railway which leads down to the river.

Hýþ Terminal

Map

This area used to be a fairly clumsy harbour that was one of the first things I mapped. I got rid of all that and re-designed it to be more realistic. I think the retail park, even though it’s quite a simple thing, makes it look particularly realistic.

Feedback always welcome!

I just started working on OGF a couple of months ago and have been working mostly in the initial planning stage of laying out my country Unesia, so I don’t really have much mapped out in yet, though I have started bits and pieces, like a city park in Dexter-Overton, a tourist spot in Dorchester National Park, and a small city in Commonia (Somerset).

Over the past 25 years, I’ve been designing fantasy cityscapes and maps, and as a result, I’ve amassed a lot of original artwork.

Today, I was working feverishly compiling my artwork and images in preparation for my wiki pages and, in the process of doing so, pushed my computer to it’s limits.

In the past seven years my Toshiba Qosmio has seen numerous upgrades, replaced motherboards, and even survived a lightning strike, but resizing a few hundred .jpegs finally caused it to go haywire.

It’s still working (as you can see), but somehow it thinks I want to delete every file I open (NOT a good mind reader :)). So far, deleting the ‘delete’ app from the task manager is working, but I don’t know how long I can make that a routine.

Hopefully, I can afford to buy a new computer in a few months, but until then every day this one still works is a blessing.

Hi everyone!

I’m new here and have been editing for about a week and a half, mainly working on the town Goitanwee in Gobrassanya. For my entire life, I’ve been into creating maps of fictional cities on paper and I have one that I’ve been working on for almost ten years. I’ve even created a whole region around that city that is approximately the size of a US state or two. The region looks like this:

I really am excited to have found OGF and have long wished to have had something like this! It’s going to be great to tie all my towns and cities together. But, I didn’t really find any available green territory that I thought really would fit my city and region. What I found that would work best is one of the territories in the western hemisphere, KA031, but all those territories are currently unavailable.

… See full entry

Hello

I just watched a video on youtube that gave me an idea. We could have a wiki page for alternate countries and scenarios. I already have a few ideas. If we get enough, I’ll make a sandbox page on the wiki to record them. I guess they have to be at least plausible though, to stick with the verisimilitude policy, although I could also create a page for less realistic alternatives.

Let me know what you think!

Yuanls

Hello mappers,

A short post in favor of the people who haven’t seen it on the recents page yet. In the spirit of the Premier Formula conversation a few days ago, I’ve done some work on more templates to extend information.

There is the Navbox 2016 Premier Formula season, with important information already on the 2016 Premier Formula page. Then there is Infobox 1PF race for details about Grands Prix, and a Navbox Premier Formula seasons.

Feel free to use it on your Premier Formula related pages and if something is missing, fill it in or let me know!

-PortCal

Hey there, I’d like to use this post to present to you my very first “finished”* area in Kojo :D

(*“Finished”, as in, there are still tons of options for more details to be added, the wiki article to be completed etc. But overall the city is mapped to the maximum level of detail that I would consider feasible for my mapping style to be applied to the very last corner of the map)

The wiki article about Rō is not very elaborate yet, and right now I lack inspiration to write the history part for example. I will probably get to it in the future. However some other important aspects are written on the wiki page; I always have a hard time estimating how many users actually read the wiki articles about countries that are not their own, for my part I do so very frequently. Do you find it interesting to read through other people’s wiki pages, or do you do so rather rarely?

The tram and street network is finished, and I would appreciate some feedback on that as well. Another thing that I would appreciate some feedback on is the zoning, and just the mapping style in general. I hope you like Rō and enjoy browsing through the map a bit. Any thoughts and comments are welcome :)

Cheers, Leo

Just a small, but important question: Does the OGF earth still rotate in the same direction? I should right? I mean that would only unnecessarily complicate everything. So the sun rises in the east and goes down in the west? Thanks for answers

Please write the name for Montran in the language of your country in the List of country names in various languages. Or write it in the comment.

Montran in the native language means “plains below mountains”. You can consider it if you want.

Thank you!

A couple of weeks have passed since the last entry, so here’s what I have been working on:

A large housing estate in a poorer area, Caminharju, with tower blocks and communal apartments as well as two schools. There is a medical centre and some small shops in the estate, appropriate for the economic makeup of the area: http://opengeofiction.net/#map=16/52.1047/111.0315

Beginning of the industrial area in the south-west corner. This includes some railways spurs and disused railways, a power station and works, and some terraced houses for workers (a British touch): http://opengeofiction.net/#map=16/52.0915/111.0038

Just a little to the north is a redeveloped area which has some posh apartment blocks and a Chogué temple for immigrants from the Ardisphere (cheers Luciano): http://opengeofiction.net/#map=17/52.09698/111.00393

The state hospital: http://opengeofiction.net/#map=17/52.09750/111.02437

Large mainline traincare facility at the Idaajaam: http://opengeofiction.net/#map=17/52.12173/111.04443

The wealthy suburb of Lossepark (Castle Park) which is built on the ridge (‘harju’) by the river, every house with a big garden, and a posh school; http://opengeofiction.net/#map=17/52.11620/110.98428. Building the relief road through here was very controversial and noise barriers and trees have been planted to hide it.

Palenkaplats, which is the main nightlife area and traditionally home to the LGBTQIA+ community, with several gay and student bars. Rents are going up as the area becomes more gentrified. http://opengeofiction.net/#map=17/52.11606/111.00591

Gradually adding house numbers and shop types to Saar island.

… See full entry

Hello everyone,

In real life, I watch the Formula One a lot. A few times ago I noticed that there also is a kind of Formula One chamionship in OGF, the Premier Formula. I would like to do more things with it. I would like it if someone maybe can help me. I need Grand Prix’s, driver’s, teams and maybe even more! So, do you want to organise a Grand Prix , do you want a team from your country (we already have those on this page, but we need 3 more), do you want a driver from your country in the competition or maybe you know something other, please help me!

Greetings Niels20020

Hello! I’ve just gotten started with OGF about a week ago, and it looks great so far. Making small roads and buildings with the iD Editor was a lot of fun. I do have one question, though…

This guide recommends to start by making large-scale mountains and rivers. However, in iD, I can only make edits while zoomed in very close. This seems to make large features somewhat difficult; how can I work around this? I’ve tried JOSM, and it has a similar problem, as you can only download a very small slice of land.

Also, I’ve claimed a country (AN152f) but can’t seem to figure out how to rename it. None of the administrative borders are selectable in iD - they just won’t load at all. I’m sure it’s something simple that I’m missing…

Thank you!

I recently encountered a small problem while mapping.

When I was mapping the “regions” (an administrative division, comparable perhaps to a German Bundesstaat) in Abrilleron, I originally used admin_level = 4 in their relations. However, because Abrilleron is quite small, this turned out to be a bad idea. Because they show up starting at zoom level 4, where Abrilleron is less than 10x10 px, the region boundaries dominated the look of the nation. Now I have tried to use admin_level = 5 instead. Here I have the opposite problem. Now the borders don’t show up until zoom level 11. But at that point all regions are already so big that the name isn’t displayed anymore.

This is how Abrilleron looks at zoom 10 now.

For comparison, the most developed part at zoom level 11.

Do you have any ideas how I can work around this? Split regions into smaller sections? Remove them from the map? Something else entirely?

Hello mappers!

Recently I’ve been working hard on fixing the airport of Trevers. I’ve also been working on an airline for Paroy. You’ll read all about it in this post.

Paroyan Airways

Paroyan Airways is the national-flag airline for Paroy with bases in Trevers and Coleraine (future). Currently it is looking for international and intercontinential destinations. Paroyan Airways provides both passenger and cargo flights.

Let me know what cities and airlines you would like connected to Trevers (or Coleraine, although it’s not drawn yet).

Trevers Fletcher International

… See full entry

Hi OGFers,

Would anybody be interested in another online chat? I think the consensus from the last one was that it was best confined to one or two time zones, so will probably be mostly UK mappers, perhaps anybody from Germany, France and Netherlands can join in too.

I now have a much faster computer so actual video chat is a possibility. Comment if interested and try to indicate when is a good time.

Sarepava

I have managed to put up a wiki of my country of Euresia, with updates the country’s flag, land elevations (my attempts), and highways. Here are some images of what I want to accomplish.

![my elevation image] (http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/images/d/d2/Euresia_ElevDraw_v2ja.jpg)

![my elevation/proposed highway system] (http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/images/8/89/Euresia_ElevDraw_v2jc.jpg)

I hope to write more on my country and expand.

Thanks for looking.

JBStad1

I’ve been doing Luciano’s mapper challenge for this month, focusing on the city of Kanton.

The university campus: http://opengeofiction.net/#map=18/52.10895/110.98005

The old factory area near the station, now mostly apartments and the museum and cultural centre, although the piano factory still operates: http://opengeofiction.net/#map=17/52.10193/111.00635

Here we can see an out-of-town shopping centre, and a large complex of test tracks for certifying cars and transport research: http://opengeofiction.net/#map=14/52.1567/110.9462

And the medieval island and cathedral: http://opengeofiction.net/#map=17/52.10625/110.99134. Many touristic buildings exist here, like the old bishop’s palace, the Old School, the st Clair pensioner’s home, the cathedral library and choristers’ school and the old town hall. There are plenty of watering-holes for the tourists. Are the medium-sized buildings (eg those on Domkatu) about the right size for wealthy merchants’ houses?

I want to put a ‘no straight on’ or ‘must turn right’ turn restriction on the junction of Saarkatu and Säntjanas Õt, but the only way I can see to do this is to create a multipolygon relation, which seems bizarre. I see this symbols quite often in OSM so I know they can be created.

Just noticed this. Currently it’s only on some zoom levels probably because the server is still updating. e.g zoom level 11 on the location I linked.

EDIT: Just checked. Antarephia is flooded as well. :/

Hey there,

I have a quick question; is there a way that I can get my cities’ names to showon the map rather than the names of the regions (-iki)? It really bothers me that a large portion of my cities aren’t visible from high zoom levels because the names of the regions are rendered above them.

Cheers, leo

I can’t find an up to date backup on http://opengeofiction.net/backup/.

The freshest backup seems to be from April 23.

Is there a new place for backups?