Diary Entries in English

Recent diary entries

Posted by Yuanls on 26 March 2017 in English.

This month for Luciano’s challenge, I decided to use this opportunity to do some serious mapping work in Agarderia, an area that I seemed to have neglected for some while now. I decided to start afresh, making a new town named Lodken.

History of Lodken

Since history is so important in this month’s challenge, it would be wise to give an overview of Lodken and its surroundings for historical context.

The area was historically the border between Karamsk and the Kingdom of Both Glasters, then the newly independent Agarderia after the former country was defeated by the Ingerish in 1803. I have not quite decided why the border was not immediately at the River Taka, but instead slightly to the west of it. However, to the south of Lodken, the border was defined as ‘being in the middle of the River Taka’.

I have not exactly decided why Lodken exists, or why it exists that the place it does. But I assume that it was a border village that relied much on trade coming in and out of Agarderia into Karamsk. During the 20th Century, specifically the 1930s, relations between Agarderia and Karasmk soured, leading to both Karamsk and Agarderia building border fortifications on the border. The Agarderian fortifications have not been mapped yet, as they are somewhat weaker and so less preserved. It is also to the east of the river, which forms a natural defense itself. The defenses on Karamsk’s side were heavily mined and booby trapped. At this point, Lodken was still a small village, which sat in the middle of no-man’s land.

… See full entry

Posted by PortCal on 25 March 2017 in English.

The last few months, I’ve been struggling a lot with how Trevers should look and how it has developed. Starting working on the city, I was soon encountered with the fact that river Vale (that seperates Trevers from the rest of the land in the east) doesn’t make any sense. Since I did now know any solutions at the time, I tend to just ignore it for a while and hope there would be ideas about how to fix this in the future. More than half a year later, that has not happened. Au contraire, there are even more problems like overall geography, place in history and structure all over the city. I’m getting in a downward spiral and more depressed by the look of the city week by week, which leads to slow progress, which leads to overthinking everything about the city and country in the first place.

I’m honest when saying I’m happy with some parts of the city, but for some reason it doesn’t add up at all when zooming out on the map. The island looks weird and a lot of things don’t make sense in physical geography. Starting a discussional collaboration with Refriedsushi — about which I’m very grateful and should be continued very soon — made me realise even more that some things don’t make sense. Luckily he provided me with some solutions, like making Trevers into a bunch of islands in a bay, that could later be landfilled. This looked like a good solution to me. Now, I just don’t know. It’s hard to envision the landmass as landfilled islands, especially since it is not designed that way.

But I tried to do it anyway. At first, it looks okay. Then again, I just feel like I don’t know enough about physical geography. The islands I created look weird to me. I’ve tried drawing them in a lot of ways. Of course they have to align with the history and the historic sites of the city, but when trying to make a development map of the city, I just don’t know where to start.

… See full entry

Posted by thilo on 25 March 2017 in English.

I just took a look at this changeset:

http://opengeofiction.net/changeset/316249

Which made me briefly wonder, what kind of large scale editing did he do to cause such a large changeset bounding box?

It turns out, the reason was probably a locally restricted change in Tarott that affected the endpoint of a very long ferry route:

http://opengeofiction.net/way/3643123

It’s not a very severe problem, but still somewhat unfortunate because it can make detection of illegitimate or problematic edits significantly harder. Therefore I propose to split all long distance ferry routes into at least three parts, split at the borders of the territorial waters of the involved countries. This would result in rather short parts near the ports, and a long part through international waters, where it probably won’t matter as much.

I’d like to hear some thoughts about this, especially from people who, as creators of long distance shipping routes, have a stake in this. Any obvious downsides that I haven’t thought of?

Thilo

Hello everybody,

only a bit more than one year left until the Tarott EXPOMONDIALE 2018 world exposition will open! The nation of Kalm and the city of Tarott are glad to host this international event and to welcome all other nations of the world with their own pavillons and exhibitions.

The motto of the world exposition will be “Smart digital and analogue future of our world”. Participating nation’s are invited to present concepts showing newest oder planned digital solutions in any interesting domain for their nation, but also to answer the question how people can participate in daily life in the future without being dependent of their own digital devices.

So, choose a spot for your nation’s pavillon:

1) See the map of EXPOMONDIALE 2018 Tarott exposition grounds here

2) Zoom in to see the names of the depicted parcels of land (“TEM18 - A1” etc.)

3) Then send me a private message, mention:

  • your country’s name (resp. names if you have more than one in OGF)

  • EITHER: the shortcut of your three favourite TEM18 plots (character and number in the end of the name)

  • OR: if any plot of land is okay for you, just write something like “any plot is ok”

  • OR (EDIT 27/03/2017): If you think your country is to small or doesn’t have the money for an own pavillon, consider having a smaller exhibition in a shared pavillon and just write “shared pavillon”

  • OPTIONAL: the planned title for your nation’s exhibition.

I will collect all wishes and publish a list of selected plots of land around easter. Afterwards I invite you to build your pavillon in the respective plot (or I will build it myself, in case you prefer it).

If there is more demand than parcels of land prepared at the moment, the area will be extended.

Looking forward to bringing the EXPOMONDIALE to “international” life.

Happy mapping

Johannes


1st EDIT 27/03/2017

2nd EDIT 08/04/2017

Here’s a list of applications as of today:

… See full entry

Location: Nedernlande, Tarott, Kalm
Posted by tule00 on 23 March 2017 in English.

Has any of you ever tried introducing trolley buses to one of your fictional cities? They are present in Eastern Europe, as well as Italy.

  • If so, I’m interested in how you did that. How to visibly tag trolley wires? How do trams work in combination with them (I’ve seen the combination of both systems in Rome, Szeged and Belgrade, but I’m not sure if that’s the common practice)?

  • If not, is anyone interested?

Regards

Posted by bhj867 on 23 March 2017 in English.

My new project are the ruins of Geradic.

Geradic is a ruined city located at the mouth of the Sunada River. It was considered the most southern and one of the largest of the galician cultured cities in the nortian pretanic zone of the contested Northeast Wall border region between Pretany and Galicia in the mid 18th century. The city was heavily populated with nearly 16000 people by 1750. The city was completely destroyed by a pretanic insurgency after it was occupied by the galician army in 1818. The massacre lead to 3000 deaths and promptly ended the war between the two countries. An agreement was made to draw a permanent border at the current Northeast Wall where it has remained. The city of Northeast Wall although always a one of the nortian Gurmes of Pretany, then known as Urbe Septentrionali, and it’s population explosion in the 19th century is considered a direct consequence of the destruction of Geradic when most of the population flooded 10 miles east into the city as refugees.

GERADIC MAP

Posted by Portopolis on 23 March 2017 in English.

I would like to have a go at making several Hopponese Cruise Companies (They would mostly operate in Ingerish), Their would be at least 4 multi-billion dollar companies here are my ideas. At least three of them would operate primarily out of Marie City but while I want these cruise lines to be world wide and would like to have partnerships were secondary or equal sized cruise liners would be located in other scenic parts of the world. I don’t want to completely dominate the Cruise industry but I would like to have a largish portion of it.

My ideas for Routes would be- Axian Peninsula- (Visit cities in Wiwaxia/ Kojo/ Ataraxia/ Hoppon/ Pasundan Padjadaran North Asperic- (visit cities in Antharia/Khaiwoon/Gobrassanya/Lallemand/Brugas/Hoppon and/or surrounding countries (north of Lallemand) Islandic Uletha- (Onnutu/Lallemand /Cariocas/Suvuma/Samiloor/Lonowai

Then smaller routes would be worldwide and most liekly partnerships sort of how Norwegian is actually half Asian cruise line half European/North american cruise line… Broceliande-Mallorjhe routes (If tparigo and/or refried sushi would let me. Paxtar- of course with permission from owner. Latina- Ardishpere Pretany Kalm etc.

I am just throwing ideas out there, and I don’t expect Hoppon to have complete dominance of the cruise industry but I personally think it would be cool if Marie City could be known as the cruise Capital of the world. Sort of like if you want your Cruise Line to go global or something similar you might have to partner with a Hopponese businessman. I was also thinking of possible ways I could include money laundering and other crimes committed that might involve cruise ships into Hopponese/World Criminal underground.

Thoughts?

Posted by trabantemnaksiezyc on 22 March 2017 in English.

Hello!

If you follow /r/citiesskylines on reddit you may know about a small application coming out lately, called NetworX. It’s an app allowing you to make public transport diagrams! It’s still an early versions but as far as i know it will be updated (it already was at least once today, and the programme came out out yesterday). When you install it it comes with an example map of Munich (München). I find it very helpful, it’s definetely better than drawing stuff in MS Paint ;) . It is free so check it out! Link to the software’s webpage and it’s subreddit is down below.

Greetings and have fun!

http://www.pxsnake.de/topics/networx/introduction

https://www.reddit.com/r/networx/

Thank you all for all of the tips about the QUARTA QLine Metro map I was working on before! They helped me significantly! In fact, I started over to try and do a better job.

I thought I’d give a progress report on how the newer version is coming.

After looking at the Cam Booth map tutorial that Myrcia showed me, redoing the “knotpoints” or major junctions following Histor’s tips, and trying the “sketch the whole system and simplify” method Isleno mentioned, I managed to come up with a rough scheme where the entire map only uses 45 and 90 degree angles. I started off planning to go for a full Viginelli-style approach, but found the lack of curves surprisingly nice for the system and design elements, with a few exceptions (there are a couple jarring corners at times).

Speaking of corners, I ran into the same struggle that I’ve seen Cam Booth talk about many times on his site, having some routes or parts of the map come out much more simplified than others. You’ll notice that the 5 (the orange line) is pretty smooth all the way through, with only about two 45 degree angles (well, 1 visible. There will be a couple more when the map is finished but you get the point), while line 8 (the light blue line to the top right)… well…you can’t see all of it here, but because of the strange routing and large amount of tight curves, it’s basically a weird zigzag XD

But as a whole, I’m liking the way this version is coming out much better than the first one. I plan to add in the land masses (and maybe large parks) last, though I am vaguely planning in my head how they will work with the map.

… See full entry

Posted by Myrcia on 21 March 2017 in English.

The last two days I’ve struggled to load any page on the wiki without the connection being reset or timing out. The map is allowing me to upload and download edits fairly easily but isn’t loading the tiles as smoothly as usual.

Is this just me or is everyone experiencing this? If there is a problem with server capacity or anything similar then would it be helpful to crowd fund some additional money to help with the servers? I would certainly be happy to help with a few € to keep OGF running if required.

Posted by deltanz on 21 March 2017 in English.

So I finally did a Bliki page on the OGF wiki! I based the style of the page on other interesting blikis already created, mainly BMSOUZA’s. You’re all welcome to take a look and comment on what you find interesting. Most of my updates will be posted there and I also included a Pick of the Week (or Month) section, just like Luciano’s bliki, but I’m lazy, so I’ll probably do it once a month!

I really have a nice time reading other people’s blikis, so I hope more and more users create their own pages!

Here is the link to my bliki: http://wiki.opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/User:Deltanz/Bliki

Here you can find all the blikis available: http://wiki.opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/OGF:User_Blikis

Cheers and happy mapping!

Posted by bhj867 on 21 March 2017 in English.

I made a couple of contour maps and emailed them to the Admins. One for St. Richards, and one for the Westward Gate Plateau. I have been having problems with the contouring. I feel like I have not added steep enough hills. with only 100 meter hills outside the city. I started out at 310 meters by the river to 400 meters at Beglideres Castle. This is my first time doing this and I am a little confused.

EDIT. I just figured out what I need to do. I have to place (10) contour lines between each 100 meter line on the map. That is going to take A LOT of time. will see what I can do :) Trying to not flood the admins inbox with “updated contour maps”. Being American and thinking in imperial units doesn’t help matters.

Posted by ADB52 on 20 March 2017 in English.

Am contemplating establishing a shipping company to run a ferry or cruise service up and down what is now the Firth of Hetzer. It would start (or finish) at Solsburg, going via Ligota, Kirchenburg, and Koban down towards the shores of Vinnmark, Welsrijk, Tircambry, Wesmandy, Ionadalba and beyond. The first link, between the small harbour at Hetterstrecht and Koban, is already there. Anyone else interested? It would be something along the lines of the Norwegian Hurtigruten. All input and advice welcome of course.

Posted by Black Baron on 20 March 2017 in English.

Castilea Archantea is growing!

In recent days I have been working on the development of the orography of the Autonomous Community of Edetanea. In the same way I have added numerous villages in the region. Gradually I am progressing with smaller details and finally I will focus on the development of buildings of towns and cities. At the moment the capital is waiting …. I have defined the cliff that borders the old town of Adra, as well as the beaches of the isthmus. You can already see details of the Malpaso Gorge, the abrupt landscapes of Alto del Cedro and Morrón Tosco in the Sierra Espadanea, as well as the narrow union of the Autonomous Community of Edetanea with Delta del Río Blanco, through Orgeta del Paso . I hope you like it…

Happy mapping!

http://opengeofiction.net/#map=10/-16.4703/130.5739

Posted by Leowezy on 19 March 2017 in English.

Hey there,

I recently realized that the number of International Organisations in Pyingshum is rather low; or rather, more or less zero. Now, the last thing I want to promote is a “race” on who can win the most organisations for their respective countries, and I’m sure there are more than enough to come up with to make everyone happy. So I took some time and browsed the wiki (both on OGF and the real world Wikipedia) to look for some organisations that I would like to locate in my oh-so-glorious capital. However, I want to check with you guys if there are any objections or comments. It is very well possible that some organisations might already exist in OGF in one way or the other, or would make more sense to be located in the same city as a “mother-organisation” in some cases. So feel free to criticize my claims in all ways possible please! Or if you are particularly fond of one of them, I’m sure arrangements can be made ;)

In no particular order:

  • International Organisation for Students Exchange (maybe affiliated with the ANESCO?)

-World Archive Organisation / World Library … Could be just an international body for cooperation between libraries world wide, but if Pyingshum was seen as a worthy city I would also be happy to map an actual “world archive”; maybe alike to the modern library of Alexandria. I also already have a spot in mind, next to the National library close to the Besoegawan Norikichezi Station.

-International Museum Cooperative; This office could promote the exchange of loan collections between museums world wide.

-International Council for Science; this organisation exists in the real world as well. As far as I’m aware it functions as an umbrella group for all national science organisations. Obviously, all major branches of science have parallel organisations on national and international level; I feel fond to also claim the

-International Mathematics Union (but again, don’t want to seem to grabby)

… See full entry

Posted by JaapN on 19 March 2017 in English.

Recently I have been playing around with JOSM to get the hang of editing OpenGeofiction. Most of it seems to be going well, but I have a small issue with two flooded islands.

I built two small islands here: http://opengeofiction.net/#map=17/2.61609/157.35096

A few days ago they showed on the map, but now they are gone. Most likely I did something to flood them, but I can’t figure out what exactly. I’ve searched for some troobleshooting online, but can’t find a reason.

I’m still learning, so maybe (hopefully) there’s a simple solution. Anyone any idea?

Best wishes, Jaap

Location: Cumbray Town, 跡原 Jiyuan, 海州 Haizhou, 公国 Commonia