Users' Diaries

Recent diary entries

Posted by zhenkang on 20 June 2018 in English. Last updated on 21 June 2018.

This is just my own personal report about OGF progress since last October. Feel free to agree or disagree.

I wonder if anyone remembers this diary entry from October 2017.

While I estimate that 70% of the comments are just pure talk, there is still some action taken about the issues mentioned in that diary entry.

  • Firstly, we have the FSA, the USA of OGF, being opened just one or two months ago, with many US-style mappers moving there, or new users going there instead of claiming territories and creating their own mini-USAs out there.

  • Secondly, thanks to the admins and isleno, we have a collective mixture of large and small nations, though sadly no large nations have been claimed since then as they are ‘for advanced users only’. There is currently a new system for obtaining 2nd territories which are larger though.

  • Thirdly, we have a new forum, on the wiki, but only for those who (ahem) still have their wiki privileges. (At least I have a few tryouts with that, before err…)

BUT, we still do not have large nations and other superpowers besides the USA. The cultural map of OGF is still a bit messy (even attempts to create language maps as guides also failed). Furthermore, not many users, even experienced ones, may even have time to claim a large territory even if they meet the criteria. But the balance of powers, is still can be worked on in the future and not our main priorities.

I am not sure what needs to be done if they are still any remaining problems. I just want to write this to see how much we have progressed as an OGF community, and see what we can move on from here. If you can think we have done much better than the aforementioned, just say so. (if there are still any unaddressed problems please go to the admins directly)

(P.S I realised that this September is OGF’s 5th anniversary (we started in 2013 or so, I think?). I hope that can be a true checkpoint for OGF and there will be something to commemorate on that month.)

Posted by FancyFoxy on 19 June 2018 in English.

I’ve been working on Albert for a while, but I keep restarting because I can’t seem to get it right. My main problem is dealing with frequently changing altitudes. The place where I live is almost completely flat, so I’m not very familiar with how mountainy roads work. I’ve looked at Openstreetmap for inspiration, but I can’t really figure out the way the roads are designed. I’d appreciate any help, thanks. :)

Posted by joschi81 on 19 June 2018 in English.

Darsons in Commonia was a small college city with a population of around 150,000 when I created it a few years ago.

(By the way: It way created for two guys from the US who wanted to have a “playground” for their own zombie novels. And I thought that as look as this “zombie stuff” does not appear on the map, it still fits into OGF. I never heard of them again and the city that is called “Lincoln” in their novels was renamed to “Darsons”, a name that I had selected before they told me that the wanted it to be called “Lincoln”.)

What happened since then? It has been relocated to the northern part of Commonia and turned by about 130 degrees (this is why there still are some “East” and “West” errors…). And it has been heavily modified by other people (which is allowed, of course, as we’re in a community territory).

But: The goal is always to create realistic places. And Darsons is no longer realistic! Some “motorway maniacs” put too many freeways around this small town. And “puplic transit maniacs” set up a light rail network that is much too large for a city of that size. There is a large metropolis only 20km from Darsons: Thompson. There, a heavy freeway network would be justified, as well as a light rail/metro network. There is an international airport for Thompson. So why did someone creat another one for the small city of Darsons? I know, it is Commonia - but it simply annoys me that a nice city has been destroyed in such a “childish” way.

What do you think? Should I just let it stay as it is, modified by “Commonia effects” and as “unrealistic” as many other places in Commonia? Or do I have the “right” to delete some stuff that certainly does not fit to this city? Thanks for your feedback!

joschi81

Hi there!

After reducing the number of nodes of the islands I’m trying to upload, I have a better feeling that it goes well this time. However, when uploading, JOSM takes literally hours to upload my data, or, to be more precise, the “Postprocessing uploaded data …” step takes hours. For 1.000 objects, it takes about 20 minutes easily. For 5000+ objects, it takes two or more hours. I’m sure this wasn’t the case when I did some other uploads before my island project. Did anybody of you experience the same during the last days? Or is there something I can do to optimize my upload data?

Greetings, Markus

Hello, everyone!

I apologize that various things kept me away from mapping the last three weeks. As a result, I’m late. My apologies. I want to also mention that last month’s entries were amazing! I still have yet to reply to all of them, but I’ve seen them. Quite great work, everyone. Now, for this month I have a simple challenge that can have far-reaching ramifications. For the rest of June, the challenge involves both mapping and the wiki, for those that use it. It can also be a continuation of the previous month’s challenge.

It has long bothered me: where do the OGF denizens get their food from? Your task will be find a small area and begin cultivating an agricultural industry of some type. The level of complexity and size will be up to you, but try to be detailed where possible. This is more than a “place-a-farm” challenge this month. Certain crops also require certain planting patterns. Can this be reflected in your mapping? What about livestock? Are there fences, pens, stables, or barns? If you are a seasoned user, this gives you the chance to show off; it’s also designed to be a practice run for all level of mappers to solicit feedback and improve skills. We all can better, right?

Where does the wiki come in? I’m glad you asked. As you begin placing the agriculture, put a note on your country page. You may also wish to add your locations to the world map of agricultural production. Things that may influence your industry are culture, climate, and even soil types. Don’t be afraid to address why your country specializes in a particular thing.

As you complete your new work, share it for the community. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask a friend! As always, I’ll do my best to provide feedback where I can.

Now, I have to get caught up on all the great entries from last month! Good luck, everyone!

Hi there!

Since a week, I try to upload a large group of islands which I created by tracing decomposing, fractalizing and recomposing a bitmap image in Inscape. First, JOSM was collapsing under the sheer number of nodes. I figured out which fractalizing factor to choose and after a lot of nights with useless data imports and hangups, I managed to get the data into JOSM. Now, I’m finally ready to upload. However, I have many polygons with more than 2000 points. It takes a lot of time to split all of them into uploadable chunks, especially when JOSM is quite slow. Does anybody of you know a way which allows to auto-split polygons or lines into chunks with X nodes? Merkaartor would also work, I have both.

Greetings, Markus

Posted by varnel_maiser on 11 June 2018 in English.

Hi

So, I’ve counted the days (actually just looked at the day I got my OGFiD license and my profile says it), and it turns out that I have reached 1 Year at OGF. I don’t know what this means, but I can reflect on my mapping and how it’s progressed up to date.

I realize that I have progressed slowly but surely (just really slowly), and the quality of my mapping has only gotten better (I hope). I’ve deleted my country once because I realized how bad it is, I’ve tried European and North American style cities, and I’m still not pleased with what I have now.

What will the next year bring? Have a great day.

Thanks, Zekiel

PS: I’m removing the dyke soon.

Location: Livarie, Brocéliande

Hi everybody,

somehow and never manage to finish my “sub-projects” in OGF. During my parental break I found some smaller time slots to start the Tarott region public transt network map. I managed to draw a large part of it, but soon I realized that it’s too much work to finish before I have to go back to work.

Thus, as I don’t know if i can finish it soon, I decided to publish a preview of the current progress here:

Tarott public transit network map [work in progress] (PNG) Tarott public transit network map [work in progress] (PNG)

Tarott public transit network map [work in progress] (SVG)

Also, the EXPOMONDIALE 2018 is officially open since May 19, 2018 (and here as well, due to the lack of time I could not bring the mapping as far as I wanted before the start of the world expo):

Tarott EXPOMONDIALE 2018

I will try to map a little bit further during the coming months, but I don’t know if there will be much time for it.

Happy mapping!

joschi81

Hi OGF mappers,

I noticed that some of you use capital=yes even for capital cities on sub-national level (examples: Pretany and Suriya). I think we could achieve a better OGF map display in smaller zoom levels if everyone sticks to the correct capital tagging principle: capital=yes only for the capital on national level, other capitals on sub-national level tagged capital=4 or capital=[other admin level]. Thank you!

Kind regards and happy mapping

joschi81

Posted by Hilsonbergman on 9 June 2018 in English.

Hello happy mappers: May I introduce myself here, My name is Hilson, from Hong Kong, and I joined this community just more than a year!

from a mapper 101 to my first try on josm, I have learnt a lot of mapping skills and try my best to show my home town in an alternative way.

Well my country, Cinasia, is much larger than a city-state, so I checked other East Asian countries and map their features into my map.

So maybe a renown image over Hong Kong is a crowed megacity, but we do have tiny Islands with villages on them. May I present here, Hey Chau, a tiny island located at north east corner of my country, which is an alternate version of Cheung Chau. It will be finished soon, I hope, and welcome to leave some comments.

Real world Cheung Chau: [Text] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheung_Chau

Hey Chau, Cinasia: see map location

Location: -26.243, 40.608
Posted by UmgangsCool on 9 June 2018 in English.

Hello there dear community!

It has been two months scince i got my own country and now i could need some feedback. The initial idea was to go with an Israel inspired territorie but i quickly changed my mind and was heading towards something with a more Colombuia style history. It should be noted that every single larger forest will be completly redone cause im not ok with how they look.

Edit: Not sure why it identifies as Drenth Line Faze lol.

Location: East Wobunde-bwe, Obwondu
Posted by superleaf1995 on 9 June 2018 in English.

Hi there, I came back from my rest.

Now is the time I do like to ask you if I can build an Holocaust-OGF-Styled stuff? Let me explain:

I build memorials and all things like IRL holocaust. But instead of the IRL holocaust, I make an “OGF Holocaust” that wherein Garzibania (i will not write it in the wiki), Is that ok? Or is that too pretty bad that can get me banned forever?

Posted by yoyo21 on 5 June 2018 in English.

Hi, I own the state of Tulpanen, and I have found what appears to be some sort of a glitch on the map here:

East Lee, Tulpanen

Look at Broadway to the west of the motorway. Why is there only half of the route number square? This has been here for at least two weeks now, so it’s not like the map is just updating.

Also, this only appears at that zoom level, and isn’t visible if you zoom in or out.

Posted by zhenkang on 5 June 2018 in English.

Motoroads restricted

Just a gentle reminder for those mapping in the Pretanic Faction State that you are not allowed to create new motorways/trunk roads without prior permission of bhj867 or me. The PFS is a dictatorial nation similar to North Korea, and the government for the PFS may not have the money to construct too many motorways, so we do not encourage new motorways unless we think it is necessary. This is also the same for other nations.

If you are interested in mapping in the PFS, read this user diary first and contact either me or bhj867.

(The above is the message on behalf of bhj867).

Location: Pelastro, Provinzia de Agnola, Mistria, Pretannia