Hi fellow mappers!

In the last couple of days I’ve mostly busied myself with building the Philipsson tram - see my bliki - but have also stumbled across several things on the wider web that may be of use to us all.

The first is an open-source program called Makehuman. As the name suggests, it is a 3D CAD software for creating models of people. There have been several discussions about the issues around using photos of real people on the wiki, and I think this may be an answer, as it allows the user to create quite realistic virtual people with great freedom over features, pose and other aspects. The program is also quite easy to use, and more experienced users can export the models into Blender for advanced editing. I will put up some examples on my bliki in due course.

The second is a (propitiatory) video game called Cities: Skylines. This is a detailed and seemingly highly realistic city simulator that can create very large metropolis areas with all the infrastructure, growth and economic issues town planners have to face. I am not suggesting that you all rush out and download the game, but watching some gameplay videos on YouTube might be a good introduction to the way physical map features massively affect how a city works. There was one where a user redid all his bus lines to make them serve the rail stations and his economy grew by a whopping amount because ti cut commuting times. Anyway, I’ve bought the game and intend to try and recreate some Karolian cities to see if they really ‘work’.

There are also some very informative YouTube videos on transport topics, such as ‘why are trains so expensive?’ (the answer is a surprisingly good one).

Stay tuned for an update on the tram model build.

Sarepava

makehuman.org

!http://wiki.opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/File:Zuid_Utterland_Smalspoorbanen.jpg

Although Utterland is still a little bare, I’ve progressed to putting in a narrow-gauge railway system in the hilly south. The map shows black lines as the ZUS network, red the (at times rudimentary) mainline network, and green the international connections.

I have yet to map the capital city, Uisteren, as well as most of the towns on the network. Just wanted to see how it works.

Apologies, I can’t seem to get the image to display. Help.

Some activity going on in Suria?

So about a week ago I posted on here after I joined, saying I was making my first town. I decided to give a little update.

First of all, I came up with a name idea. I was thinking of calling the town Furstrade. It’s a play on words, since it’s my first town, and it was built there as sort of a trade center (see my first post). You could also think of it being a town where furs were traded a lot.

My thinking for the layout of the town is to have a commercial area over in between the river and highway. (see map) I’ve already got that mapped out, aside from the actual buildings. Historically, this used to be an area where people would do a lot of trading between the other towns that were along the same river, and over time, it was slowly replaced with modern commercial buildings.

To the right of the motorway, is the residential area. I’m currently in the process of mapping this. Historically (I really like the idea of this having a somewhat detailed history, if you can’t tell :P) people who were dealing with a lot of the trade here decided to build houses over here, so they wouldn’t have to travel so far every day. These houses were kind of built somewhat randomly, though. When this was being modernized, the local government was on a bit of a tight budget, and so they decided to keep it relatively random. So the streets will be a bit nonuniform.

Finally, below the residential area on the other side of the river, will be the government area. This will be relatively small, and have things like the town hall and such, and maybe a small park.

Let me know what you think of this so far. If you have any tips or suggestions on things I should maybe do a bit differently (since I’m new here) feel free to tell me.

Wow, I spent way longer writing this than I should have…

I got my own nation!!!!!! It’s name is Natlyn, of course. I am making St. Alexander, a work of the previous owner, part of the metropalin area of Natlyn City. I will start working on it now.

I know the topic of religion comes up periodically, and I think we all seem to be pretty civil and sensitive to the nature of the topic. (Thank you for that, by the way.) Well, today, I’m throwing that all out the window…

I have decided to take up the challenge of creating a pantheon of deities for a Mauro pagan religion based on OGF users and their collaborative input. If you want to be enshrined as a deity, demigod, hero, angel/demon, leviathan, etc., head on over to the bliki page and jump in. I explain more there and give the rationale for this project. Maybe it will be fun. I’m hoping it is an interesting collaborative experiment!

(N.B.: No user will be a part of the pantheon without their expressed consent. If you don’t want to be a part of this, you don’t have to fear.)

I’ll see you on the bliki!

I wonder if there’s anybody out there who wants to be friends (OGF).

Like, collaborate on stuff or something.

This will probably bring the OGF community together!!

Like the previous question I asked about sports, which Religions are practiced, and who founded it, etc.

An example from Commonia = [http://opengeofiction.net/#map=18/17.24328/140.42537]

As far as I know in New York City the blocks are 60 to 240 m. If you calculate as minimum 1) street a, right side driving lane 3 m, 2) parking lane 2 m, 3) footway 3 m, 4) house at street a 12 m, 5) inner block 10 m, 6) house at street b 12 m, 7) footway 3 m, 8) parking lane 2 m and 9) street b, left side driving lane 3 m = then you get 50 m. This is the absolute minimum for reasonable buildings inside of the blocks.

If you will do a good work for the inhabitants of your town - give them more room.

Just another preview of the QUARTA QLine Metro Map after recent progress

Hello, just wanted to ask, are there any unique sports in the OGF world that aren’t in the real world? If so, what are they, what are their rules and where are they being played?

Hello! This is my first diary entry. I am working on Natlyn and South Natlyn City until I get my own territory on Monday.

(This is closed for discussion and possibly reinstated in the future when the world is almost fully mapped)

I have read this and thought up of a suggestion for the ‘holy land’, how possibly Christianity is spread out throughout the world and possibly where the locations stated in the Bible came from. I thought the Israel could become a collaborative territory in the future, or a set aside a place in UL137 for the Israel state if it become collaborative.

Possible location of an Israel-like nation (or state) in the OGF World.

• Since our real Israel is near some Arab-majority nations and possibly in conflict with those, I thought maybe our version of Israel is possibly sandwiched between Suria and UL137. Maybe the Israel-like nation can be a state claimed either by Suria or UL137, its sovereignty disputed by these two nations, while Israel claimed itself that it was a nation, alongside with most Christians in the world. The AN possibly will not recognise it as a country though.

OR

• One of those nations in the unmapped continents? It looks easier.

Possibility of the spread of the Christic Movement.

• I think that if the 1st option is accepted, then it most likely spread to Suria first. The Arabs in UL137 would have rejected the Christic Movement and decide Jesus is a prophet, thus likely how Islam is formed. Those Christians in UL137 would then move to Suria and then spread from there, while the ‘holy land’ was destroyed by UL137 Islam activists. As it continues to spread by mouth, different groups of Christians may have different opinions and interpretations of what was spread before the Bible was published, thus I think there are Baptist, Seventh-day Churches etc.

OR

• If the latter is accepted then possibly by boat explorers spread it to Uletha and then to other continents.

Names of the ‘holy land’ could be discussed in the future (I temporarily used Israel as the name). I bought up this issue because Easter and Good Friday is round the corner.

… See full entry

Hello. I just downloaded JOSM, and I have some problems getting the connection settings right. The server URL is validated, but the username and password is not working in UAuth. I have the correct credentials, but the the program keeps saying that the authorization has failed. I have tried basic authorization to no avail. What should I do?

I do not know much about industrial zones and factories:

• how to know in what city/village to make one, and how to know where exactly it should be?

• what are characteristics of them i.e. what else to map except landuse=industrial?

Regards

I welcome you to submit teams, riders and races to the International VeloMobile Championship or IVMC

The vehicles involved are racing velomobiles that look like this

Hello. I am new to this community(obviously), and I am very interested in this… fictional… universe… mapping… project. I guess that’s the most accurate name for it. I was wondering if anyone had any tips on what my first project should be, I managed to link JOSM to the OGF thing and everything, and there’s some of land just above Georgetown(Commonia), where I’m thinking I should put my first thing.

Also if there’s any live-chat for this community like discord or something, that would be great for quick asks. (I thought I saw a link in this user diaries thing earlier but it’s expired)

EDIT: Also, what side of the road do people drive on in Commonia?

Hello there, everyone! I’ve just joined OpenGeoFiction last night, and am going to start mapping today.

This seems like an awesome and friendly community to be in, and also just a really neat project, so I’m excited to take part in it.

For now, I’m using the web editor, although I will soon be switching over to JOSM. I just don’t feel like figuring out how to connect it to OGF at the moment.

I’m planning on starting out by making a new town in Lonowai District. It will be on the Lonowai Island, above Obaku and in between the 2 forests. (about where I put the location of this entry)

My idea for the town is that it was built after Obaku, Uhola, and Widana Beach. A lot of people were traveling along the river and the roads there, and it seemed like a good place to put a trade center. Thus, the “theme” of the town will be centered around trade. It won’t be a huge town, it’ll be somewhere between the size of Widana Beach and Obaku. Not sure what I’ll call it, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

So yeah, you might see some stuff popping up there over the next few days. I hope to really enjoy participating in this community! Also, if you think I should change something about how I make this town, feel free to let me know. (or just change it yourself if it’s something I’ve already mapped)

Moving forward, I will be posting my Monthly Mapper’s Challenges in my Bliki, rather than in the diaries. I’d like to see the diaries move in the direction of just being a place for community-wide announcements and technical issues, rather than a place for “brags” and “requests for feedback” etc.

http://wiki.opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/User:Luciano/Bliki/2017/04/01_-_Daily

Remodelling bits of maps has been a theme in the last week and I decided to go back to one of my earliest areas, Fontjana. This wasn’t awful, but it was a typical Potlach creation with untidy lines and crude over-simple buildings. Now I have started redoing the town starting from its centre and working out. Much of the previous incarnation will remain but with more realistic proportions.

The Old Town, unsurprisingly the oldest part of the city, was first priority:

http://opengeofiction.net/#map=16/50.9028/109.9637

In particular I tried for the first a technique used to great effect in cities in Antharia: using pedestrian area shapes to show the true width of the streets. It gives much better character to this area where there is no separate pavement and roadway (seeing as private motors are not allowed). Finally learned how to use the tag historic=citywalls properly too. Fontjana’s walls are mostly gone on the south and east sides, which allows the single-track tramway to use the gap left between buildings or half of pedestrian streets (somewhat the character of the Helsinki and Dublin LUAS systems). The stop Varashus uses a clever layout to fit two platforms and two tracks into a narrow space (I might make Harjupoorta a single bi-directional platform to better fit the area). As ordinary cars are not allowed (council and some disabled are) and buses do not run in the narrow streets, the tramway is a great asset to tourists and residents, even though it is possibly damaging the old towers and city gates by rumbling so close to them. The tram going through the Harjupoorta actually used to happen in my city: http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=bargate%20trams&first=1&cw=1262&ch=631

One thing I’d like to ask you all is how best to show areas in front of restaurants which are used for outside seating. They are not part of public squares (or they may be public property in legal terms but there is a barrier) yet they are not really the same as the ‘beer garden’ tag.