A height map is a gray scale image that resembles a terrain elevation contour map. They’re used for creating 3D image renderings of part or all of the world (real, OGF or otherwise) as well as to run planet-level simulations for stuff like climate and weather. For the real world, it’s easy to get a height map - you can even create one from OpenStreetMap with this utility.

For the OGF world, of course, things are trickier because we don’t have a world-spanning topo map. It looks like a little 3D rendering had been done on the OGF world before I joined, but I couldn’t find any height maps. Anyone know if one is accessible somewhere?

(Aside: such a map could never be canon, since anyone is free within reason to e.g. tear down or put up a giant mountain range inside their country. But by noting where mountains have been placed on the OGF map plus some creative guess work it should be possible to make a plausible one using a utility such as HME.)

Thanks in advance and if I can create or lay my hands on something, cool maps and images may follow…

i created a large lake southwest of centen called big lake. it is a nature reserve and recreational area with beaches, camping, a historical town, and many more. i request nobody but me edit that area even if commonia is a blue country.i dont have any further plans for the lake at the moment but mabey i might have some plans later.

Me and my friends have created a city named Centen.

Our city is not bad, located near some lakes, and has some stuff, including a train system, and others.

We need help!

We need some help with Centen! In the comments, Give us a judgement of Centen, plus some suggestions! You can help build the city too!

SCALING ISSUES

THERE IS A MASSIVE ISSUE WITH SCALING. a house in Centen is bigger than a FOOTBALL FIELD. We need help with this!

Hey everyone,

It’s been over a year since I posted a diary entry so I figured I’d let people know what I’ve been up to. I just finished Patriotland International Airport. Is the airport missing anything? This is my first attempt at mapping an airport!

In addition, I’ve been working on some harbor towns such as Port Perrine and Gundock. Both of these towns are inspired by older suburbs of Philadelphia, PA in South Jersey along the Delaware river. The block style is typical of this area, and implies thin, deep row homes with alleys behind them. The shore of Patriot Harbor is quite working class, situated near a lot of industrial sites.

Here are the long-term plans for my territory.

I would be interested to hear what you all think of my work so far, good or bad. I have so much more planned in my head, it just takes years to get it all mapped correctly. I map differently than most people, focusing on one small area at a time.

… See full entry

Hi everyone!

I’m creating a union whose name is Lyc Union between Antarephia and Tarephia . This union is supposed to be like an European Union. There will be free borders, a parliament… All territories near to this place of the world are welcome to join it. Also autonomous and overseas regions.

Are you interested in joining to it? Send me a message

Bye!

Wikipage: https://wiki.opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/Lyc_Union

Hey Guys and Gals and everything in between,

I’ve been doing some work around my capital city, Mision. It’s a city based on a mix of Buenos Aires and Barcelona. I’m new to all this worldbuilding stuff, so I was wanted to ask for some honest feedback on the work I’ve been doing.

When I say honest, I mean HONEST.

Anything big or small that I’m doing wrong or right would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

[EDIT: I mean more the southern end of town, and more on the layout and design of my roads.]

So it’s been approximately 1 year since I joined the adventure, and I can say I reached an impressive amount of work. So how did I make it ? Was I in a cave, mapping my mountains all this time ? Let’s find out.

I’ve done worldbuilding for quite some time in my life, building worlds out of my dreams or my imagination, for RPGs maybe, or city building games, or just because they self-generated in my head, occupying a large space and I needed them to come out, as would a musician with his music or a painter with his paintings. I was an OSM contributor too at that time. When I discovered Opengeofiction I thought this was the place to put all the things online - I just had to adapt it to the few etiquette rules and the modern world verisimilitude constraint there - so within the piece of land I was granted I began to create a country that fits both OGF environment and the places I had in mind.

So how did I manage to do this so quickly ? The answer is only one letter: “F”. Yes, “F” is the key to quick mapping achievement. In JOSM it does miracles.

Älvedic Union is inspired by Switzerland (it was Älvedic Confederacy at first), but also Austria, Hungary, Western Ukraine and let’s say Eastern Siberia, the political and linguistic situation is very complex and unstable, and the country is rather poor and underdeveloped, but improving since fret traffic between the south and Neberly crosses Älved. For more info about the country, like what is the inspiration, where do the names come from etc., check Älved on the wiki.

+++++++

… See full entry

Well it appears that since new territories have been created and inhabited it appears that new motorways have also been laid out. It appears that recently granted territories have motorways mapped on them before any natural feature or even a mere surface route.

I don’t understand what the infatuation with a motorway is anyway. They are expensive to build, take up valuable real estate and they also contribute to blight and sprawl. Having said that I know that they are a necessity in a country that needs to move goods and services.

Hi, I would like to grant a large territory in North Archanta to two, or three, users for them to collaborate on a South Africa inspired country.

The territory would be within the boundaries of AR066 and AR018, although not necessarily the complete combined area.

I want the users to find each other, build up a proposal and submit that to admin (subject: “AR066/AR018 proposal”). Each proposal will then be explored.

Proposals will need to comprehend the complex geography and linguistic challenges of such a territory.

Deadline for submissions: Friday 19 April.

Thanks/L

Aslington is easily one of the more well-known parts of Vodeo. Embassies jostle for space among all manner of stores, apartments, and Adelaidean-era houses. Latinian ex-pats wave at their Myrcian neighbours, while the local Mauroi population sit in front of the YemYem! and scream at passers-by. And to top it all off, there sits Parliament upon the riverbank, anchoring the Dominion and providing somewhere for politicians to blow off some steam at each other.

But all is not perfect in Aslington. The suburb wasn’t designed with angles in mind, and as a result, the grid is lopsided and doesn’t form nice angles. It might sound like a minor thing, but it means that buildings (a lot of which are just too small) don’t easily align to the streets, and that just annoys me. I’ve tried to tinker with it in the past, but there’s only so much I can do given the number of buildings that have locked the streets in place. So, I’m planning to tear it down and start again. Here’s what I’m thinking:

… See full entry

Hello OGF friends! I am the owner of Déserts, in Archanta; and I’ve been getting involved in the international arena. I have seen that there is an Archanta Nations Organizations (which sounds more like the OAS), but at the moment it has no headquarters; so I ask, can it be established in any country? and another is there any other organization in Archanta, apart from CARECU (which plans to join the ARNO)?

A few days ago, I had sent an application for a state in AR120. I’m not complaining about the timeliness of the response, or lack of, but rather the fact that it has failed to show up in the status of applications for South Archanta. This worries me, and makes me think something I did in the app was wrong. Can somebody tell me what I did wrong, if anything?

Hello mappers,

I’m here to ask something: how do we tag capitals for best rendering?

Typically the state capital is tagged with capital=yes, but histor-style and TopoMap styles take into account the admin_levels of capitals. OSM wiki proposes that for state capitals, capital=yes should be used, but for province capitals, we should use capital=3 or capital=4, etc.

But on the OSM wiki it is also mentioned that we can combine capital=yes and admin_level=3/admin_level=4/etc. tags.

Also, sometimes I’ve seen tags like capital=2.

So which one of them is the most correct (for OGF)?

Hey mappers!

Recently I got my first territory. The capital city called Valka is located on the small Peninsula on the south coast. Please have a look (Click here for the MAP) and read the text. :D ## First edits:

I have started with a fort on the eastern tip. Colonist have build this Fort after they first arrived. Now it serves as a tourist attraction. Other tourist attractions in near distance are the two beaches, and the fish market a bit north.

Further north is the main railway station, with an editing style where you can “see” the interior, like Gobras world port. The city will develop over time further north.

The city will have a tram network like I started, probably a subway system and in addition a commuter train network like the S-Bahn in Germany.

(The small island south of the coast are only temporary.) ## Airport and north railway station:

The airport and the north railway station were prebuild in Commonia and moved to my territory. I will not touch them soon, but they will be continued to be developed later. ## Next steps:

I will continue to develop the southern part and place some buildings here and there. Because I put much effort into detail work, progress overall is very slow. I will start with an european styled historic city center soon. ## Tips?

What can I do better? What can I add? What should I delete?… Any improvements I can make are very appreciated!! Please give me tips so I can even improve my mapping more!

Thank you guys!

Lyriax

I am the owner of Oketia (Formerly Dejaland) and would like some feedback on my city Marvin. It is the capital of my country and is modelled off of Canberra, Australia’s capital. However, unlike Canberra this will be my country’s most populous city. I have been to Canberra in real life so I have an image in my head of what I want to build. I want to plan my city out with the government area to be structured like the area around Parliament House (Canberra) but more inland have a structure similar to Melbourne like a Metropolis style city. Population in mind for this project is 5 Million People. I understand this is an ambitious project!

I need your feedback

• What did I do well (I personally think I have really detailed the government area but you have a thought about this)
• What I can improve on

Hopefully I can make a super-realistic city and I understand that good mapping comes with practise. Happy Mapping!

Hello! The Spaceport Of Commonia is near completion. It should be finished in one day. Once it is finished, imports from the moon and railway links will be made. Happy flying!

• THIS IS OUTDATED. Due to a huge amount of disgust, the spaceport is going to be expanded. Hate against this expansion will be ignored entirely because Commonia is a FREE COUNTRY.
• GET OOFED.

so i finally found a name for my territory: Sovania.

anyway, i haven’t done much. i have started by making terrain. my plan is to make the South have more Rainforests and make the North have more Towns. all i did was rename it, and add the Lakeside rainforest. That’s All For Now, Folks!

-DMP5

Maybe like a video tutorial, showing how to make a town, city, hill, mountain, or other things. It would make sense because most of the new mappers don’t usually read the wiki or apply any of the tips to their mapping, like I also did when I started out mapping, and probably still do. If we got a bunch of video tutorials on it it would actually make the users see the mapping style the person in the video uses to make realistic things.

I don’t really know if this would be a possibility, but it will be cool if it was

Vivion, one of my companies, is willing to sell rocket engines for intercontinental missiles and possibly a Quantum Splitter to zhenkang for his launch/nuclear site in Antigo. We would like to know where his site is stationed.

Hello everyone,

This is a question about the CONCEPT, not the MAPPING QUALITY (yet).

I asked kaanhanel, the user in charge of mapping Elmali, if Leresso and Elmali could have a sort of “cultural collision zone” where the Everian and Turquese languages and cultures collide. In Everian, it is known as Xéstohyàlarés. In Ingerish, it is known as West River Territory. I definitely think, for the sake of verisimilitude, that more areas like Xéstohyàlarés should exist in the OGF world.

What do you guys think of this small-scale collaboration concept? Any advice for kaanhanel and I moving forward in terms of developing the history of the region and mapping?

I appreciate the feedback!