Diary Entries in English

Recent diary entries

Posted by admin on 20 October 2015 in English.

The admin team wants to hear your suggestions for naming our continents and oceans!

http://i.imgur.com/8IXkMCX.png

Submit your ideas by sending a message to admin by Tuesday, October 27. The admin team will then select our favorite suggestions for a community vote!

Tips:

  • You can submit as many suggestions as you like, for each continent and each ocean.
  • If you like, you can target your suggestions to a specific continent or ocean (using the letters A through G on the map above) or just submit general suggestions.
  • If you like, you can include explanations for your suggestions. “It just sounds nice” is a perfectly fine explanation.
  • Ideally we don’t want continent names that begin with A, T or U, since those letters already belong to the existing continents.
  • Submit your suggestions via private message instead of posting them here.

Let us know if you have any questions. Thanks!

Posted by wangi on 19 October 2015 in English.

Just a reminder that the building of Gobras City is ongoing. It is the capital Gobrassanya, and everyone is welcome to join in. The wiki page at OGF:Gobras City hasn’t seen as much action as the map edits - but it’s still a good place for some background and questions.

Recent development has focussed on trying to fill in the gaps between the suburbs and city centre.

Location: The Capitol, Downtown (Ward 16), Gobras City, Capital, Gobrassanya

For those of you who remember when Quentinsburgh was just starting out, you may remember that other than downtown Quentinsburgh itself, one of my earliest edits was the creation of Quentins State International University, then simply Quentins University, and work on the surrounding areas, such as having Unionway 304 going through the center of the campus.

However, like I said, those were some of my first edits. They certainly showed that as well. Buildings were huge and randomly placed, and when I had attempted to fix it before, it had just made the campus even bigger and made it look even worse.

However, I decided to make it a project of mine to redesign the entire campus to make it more realistic. Looking at OpenStreetMap to see examples of urban American-style universities, I think I finally was able to redesign it to look somewhat realistic. The buildings look about the right size, the freeway exits no longer have sharp jagged curves and the paths and parking actually make sense now.

http://opengeofiction.net/#map=15/-3.3648/-2.5175

The north part of campus still needs some work, as do the surrounding areas like the harbor, but I’m pretty proud of how far i’ve gotten at making this campus look better. Any thoughts?

Location: Lentie Nobo, Lethia, Parable District, TA221
Posted by Adz on 18 October 2015 in English.

Hello,

I am fairly new to Open Geofiction and have been making edits using OSM. But now I want to try JOSM. I have followed the steps in the FAQ but am not sure I am doing things correctly:

  1. I have put the Open Geofiction server address in the imagery preferences, but when I go to the download menu, Open Geofiction is not an option in the blue dropdown box.

  2. If I turn on the remote control feature with JOSM then Open Geofiction is an available option using the imagery option in the top toolbar. But it doesn’t seem to actually show anything.

  3. I can log into the Open Geofiction website, go to edit and select JOSM (with remote control feature turned on - but again nothing seems to happen.

I am pretty sure I am doing something basically wrong, but when I used OSM I could simply go on the Open Geofiction website, zoom into an area and start editing. So wondered if you can do this with JOSM or do you need edit via the actual JOSM programme.

Many thanks for your help and sorry if these seem like schoolboy questions :)

Adz

Posted by Yuanls on 16 October 2015 in English.

It seems that my country (Glaster/UL70c http://opengeofiction.net/#map=9/52.1958/129.0921 ) is essentially isolated from the world, as all of the neighbouring countries are unclaimed. Is there any way of writing about the history of those countries, or are there ‘OGF rules’ to abide by in this case? I am thinking that all the UL70 countries were unified in recent history, and then broke up following some kind of great schism. Something like situation of Yugoslavia in the 1990s possibly. Also maybe some opinions on Ellmouth (The current capital city) http://opengeofiction.net/#map=14/51.8540/129.1994 I didn’t make Reyston, it was already there, so I decided to it an autonomous city, much more aligned to UL70D.

Posted by joschi81 on 16 October 2015 in English.

Mahnern Hauptbahnhof (Mahnern central station) has been finished (almost, staircases, some switches and a yard south-east of the station still missing).

Mahnern is a mid-sized city (about 130,000 inhabitants) within the Kelmtal mining region in Kelmtal-Borgenland region, Kalm. It is located only 10km south-east of Vennburg, with Vennburg’s metro line U2 terminating at the central station. Also, an interurban tramway connects Mahnern with Thermette in the south-west, using the alignment of a former railway line outside of the city.

The central station is a quite important one (although FLINX high-speed trains bypass the city centre on a high bridge crossing Fenn river). It has 12 tracks, 10 of which with platforms. Starting from the south-west, there are 1 regional train plattform (approx. 300m), 2 suburban rail platforms (about 250m) and two long-distance/regional train platforms (approx. 410m). So, except FLINX, all major train types stop here.

Have a look. :)

Best regards joschi81

Location: Neu-Zengenberg, Zengenberg, Mahnern, Kelmtal-Borgenland, Kalm
Posted by Sarepava on 15 October 2015 in English.

Progress on relocating Karolia to Uletha has been progressing steadily over the last few weeks. I now have most of the main cities and geographical features in place, save for Santjana, Paliiso and some of the south coast. Other areas have had more detail added to them. In places I have kept and detailed the previous owner’s features where they fit.

The move has given me the opportunity to restructure the country somewhat, bring closer together similar areas and refining the motorway network. In particular, the Taamras mountains now have a shape that fits along the northern border and corresponds better to mountains created by other users in the area. The country is more realistically connected in the revised configuration, with Vasireii in a more logical location and the state of Kyor more clearly defined. I may move the Saarmae islands closer to the mainland.

Moving Santjana will be a big task as there is a huge amount of data to download and move and I shall have to work hard to keep the scale constant. Anybody devising airline routes should note its new location in the northern hemisphere.

Posted by deltanz on 14 October 2015 in English.

Hello, guys, I was thinking about an easy and quick way to share information about our countries. I like the wiki, but sometimes I need too many tabs to get all the information I need. And also sometimes I need additional information that is not so easy to find, like who is the owner of a country and how many countries a user has, for example. So I decided to create a google docs spreadsheet and share it you guys.

I put on some info on the users, the countries and their main characteristics, so if anyone need a more detailed summary of a territory, it’s there. We can edit with many other columns if we wish, I just entered some info on wars that I don’t know how relevant they’ll be, it’s just a test.

The information for Neo Delta is there as a model.

Anyway, it was an idea, it can be transferred to the wiki at any time. Here is the link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14Cn4bB4z5QzDwo2lRn60BcbN-Bq6-72FrlpOFVxLrMQ/edit?usp=sharing

Feel free to suggest anything! Thanks!

This came into my mind lately after I saw the political map of Uletha. I came across a Wikipedia article about the forms of real-life government systems.

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

Since we already have an overview map of territories on OGF, it can be great to have a color-coded map or list about the OGF territories’ government systems either on the overview map or on the OGF Wiki (for example: Federal republic, monarchy, dictatorship, etc.) instead of guessing what type of government the OGF territories have while viewing the overview map or on user generated maps.

It would be nice for a map like it here on OpenGeofiction too!

Posted by tule00 on 12 October 2015 in English.

Hello everyone,

I’ve started a new city near Vumrupstat, the province capital in Oberlant. It’s located here.

As opposed to other cities I’ve mapped, this time i tried not to hurry, to work on a small area until it looks good (instead of trying to finish a large area quickly).

Also, I am trying to focus on small details, such as bus/tram stops and individual buildings.

In general, I will do the city slowly and without hurries, but try to focus on every detail and make everything as realistic as possible.

What are your thoughts/suggestions, what should I add or change, what do you like and what do you not like? I’d like to know what you think.

Regards

Posted by skquinn on 12 October 2015 in English.

Okay, so it looks like now AR901 really is coming along. We do need to name it though.

I’ve given thought to completely re-doing the highway numbering, since it never was consistent to begin with. I’d like to replace the current “M” numbers with a prefix for “interprefecture” such as “I” or maybe “IP” or even “IM”. The non-freeway/motorway roads which connect between prefectures could get a different prefix (to be decided), with the roads running entirely within one prefecture (“state”) given a prefix specific to that prefecture.

I’m starting to run out of good prefecture and city names. I’m going for non-English/Ingerish where I can think of something good (Ville des Lapins being the first example so far, maybe second if you’re willing to count Poltergeist Point as being at least German-influenced). Quite a few other mappers are still English-/Ingerish-heavy on the naming, though.

I am good at mapping, not so good at coming up with history. I’ve done a lot for someone who had originally planned to just stick to Frogtown and the immediate area…

Location: Calypsoville, Querry County, Zoltan, Rhododactylia
Posted by Pawl on 10 October 2015 in English.

I was wondering whether there should be an agreed name and background for the OGF equivalent of Christianity. It seems to me that the words “Christian” and “Christianity” relate to a specific religion originating in a specific Earth time and place, so we ought to have another name. It can still have a Christ (which is from the Greek for “anointed”), or Messiah or Saviour, and could be called something like Christicity, Christicism, Messianity …

Similarly, “Catholic” simply means “universal” or “all-embracing”, which is fine, but “Roman Catholic” refers to a specific city which doesn’t exist in OGF.

Could we agree on the basic origins of the religion? Where? When? Preferably similar to the Christian story, but not the same (and without getting into too much doctrinal detail!). I know there’s been some discussion on the Wiki, especially about the papacy, of which there are at least two in OGF - one in St.Richard’s (Pretany) and one in Peritan City. Whatever is agreed still leaves plenty of scope for variations, just as real-world Christianity has many different denominations and traditions.

I’m asking because, if we have an OGF equivalent to Christianity and Uletha is the OGF’s Europe-equivalent, then it would make sense for my Tircambry to follow this religion rather than its own home-grown Puritism. I’m thinking of altering my history accordingly, changing Puritism to be part of the wider Christic(?) church.

Posted by Sarepava on 8 October 2015 in English.

Dear admins,

I have made a major cock-up when trying to move a section of Karolia to the new location and have not only flooded Archanta but also left great smudges of ways stretched halfway across the world. I’ve no idea how this happened but perhaps I tried to merge layers rather than copy the section and paste into new area. Please can you find some way to revert the map to the state it was in about two hours ago as I cannot fix it using either JOSM or any other means due to the size of the problem area. The changeset with all the problems is 128779. Thank you very much…

Posted by joschi81 on 8 October 2015 in English.

As I saw in this diary entry by deltanz, Tarott is still marked as the Kalmish capital on some maps. It’s true, first when I started drawing Kalm in 2010 (quite a while before the start of OGF), Tarott was still supposed to be the capital. But many different reasons led to the decision to make Nerschach the national capital.

So, Kalm is one of the countries where the largest city (Tarott) is not the capital. Nerschach is Kalm’s second or third largest city (I’m not 100% sure yet).

By the way: I can’t wait to start drawing Nerschach. But for some reason I started Vennburg in spring and I want to finish it before starting Nerschach. In fact, before going over to Nerschach, I want to at least finish the country’s railway, motorway/trunk road and national highway networks and some general geographical features like forests and mountains, so that the structure of the country is visible. I’m not sure if I will be able to do this, because I’m one of the “permanent scale jumpers” when drawing in OGF.

Best regards joschi81

Posted by joschi81 on 8 October 2015 in English.

We need better and interesting ocean names in OGF. It least, that’s what I think.

Especially when it comes to new continents. Would be quite strange to have a new country at the east coast of the new continents, at the coast of the “Western Ocean”. That’s one thing. The other thing is that the current names are boring.

I don’t want to make proposals here right now. But let’s have a look at where the ocean names on earth come from:

ATLANTIC OCEAN see here

PACIFIC OCEAN see here, last paragraph of introduction

INDIAN OCEAN (named after the respective subcontinent)

So we have greek mythology, geopolitical/”geoeconomical” events in combination with local circumstances and a region the borders the ocean as “namegivers”. Other possible sources for names could be (in my point of view): names of Ulethan explorers or names of historical trading routes, geological circumstances, references to form/size/world location of the ocean (maybe in a very old language) and surely many more.

What do you think? What’s your opinion? What are your proposals for finding better ocean names for the OGF world?

Best regards joschi81