Two minor additions to the OpenGeofiction rules have just been posted:

• “No real world companies or organizations.” So if you have real companies or organizations in your mapping, please change them to something original. This is to encourage originality and also to avoid companies/organizations getting upset about their names being used without permission. For more info see the User Diaries discussion here.
• “No sockpuppets. Only one account per user.” This has always been an unwritten rule, but we’re adding it to the written rules. More info soon in a separate post.

So, anyone with translation skills, please take a moment to add these to the translated versions of the rules. (We’ve also added a question about multiple accounts to the FAQ.)

Many thanks!

Hey you guys,

I just finished a small city, or at least I want to start working on something new. When I am done with a town or city I always find it hard to figure out how many people could actually live in it, which makes it difficult to start writing a wiki page about it. I usually don’t start with the idea “Oh today I’m going to build a city for 143,582 people”, I just start building and stop when I am either satisfied with how it looks, or untill I am bored with it. So I wondered if you could take a look at it. I figured that about 45,000 people could live in this city. Is that too many or too few? I envision a place with mostly low rise buildings, but also some appartment buildings of 5 to 7 stories high. It will probably become a regional centre, hence the slightly oversized industrial centre.

How do you guys decide how many people can live in your cities? Or do you build a city for a specific population?

Thanks in advance

I am having a hard time figuring out what I am going to do with St. Richards Airport. The runways are unrealistically short (some under 4000 feet) and it is cramped in an area that I am not too happy about. I feel like it was not a very well thought out decision when I designed it a couple of years ago, and now am hunting for ideas on how to fix it without necessarily moving it.

(http://opengeofiction.net/#map=13/54.0992/60.9606)

I have been looking at other countries in the real world, and really enjoy the feel of airports such as heathrow in London. Something farther out, and larger, with a beautiful design.

(osm.org/#map=14/51.4688/-0.4579)

I am loving some of the stuff going on in blue countries this month. I have been working on Altaville, and have been hashing out this concept of a controversial AN safe zone in Commonia, building on the idea that the town was already turning into a tourist destination. I have been working on the street grid, and various land use. I also just built the airport yesterday.

(http://opengeofiction.net/#map=15/5.8037/141.5207)

I would love more collaboration on this area. Here is the wiki entry, so people get a concept of what Altaville should look like.

(http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/Altaville)

The two big features that need worked on at the moment are the airport and the university. I personally am going to be zooming in real close to the downtown street level and start working on individual buildings soon.

THIS area will be where I personally will be mapping in Altaville over the next couple of days.

Happy mapping!

Hello everyone,

I’ve just created an international basketball tournament, called World Series Basketball (WSB). Just check the wiki page for more information. But the thing is, I need four more countries who would like to participate. There is only one requirement: your country has to be good in basketball. This tournament is meant for some of the best countries in the world :)

So, please tell me in the comments if your country is good in basketball and would like to join the World Series Basketball.

Greetings, Niels

Hi, looks like there’s not been a successful backup since Friday (210 mb)? Everything since then is around 170 mb mark, which results in lots of nodes, but few ways when loaded into JOSM.

Is the size of the db now a real strain on the resources?

I am currently in Nigeria on vacation and Internet has been poor so I haven’t been active at all on OGF as I would like to.

Also I saw the Japan Photos thread, and thought that since most people lived in wealthy countries taking pictures of poor urban areas and wealthy urban areas Ina poor country like Nigeria could help those trying to plan a third world country. Just in case anyone might need photos I will try to get a couple dozen shots of Port Harcourt and Lagos. Also I might get a few photos of Accra, Ghana.

I am creating custom renderer for OSM. I am preparing next major release and I need some test use-cases.

Therefore I offer you to render any of your fictional places with custom written stylesheets. For inspiration see older example.

Just drop me comment under this post. I need link to desired place (in OGF) and some example of style you would like.

I choosed the areas south of Gobras City for my “blue” edits because of the large amount of progress that has already been made in this area. My first longtime edits were in the areas of southern Gobras City, so I feel very familiar with the area and like to spread my ideas at this location.

Milaukáshka + Taxland took me ca. 15h of editing and there is still a load of things to do:
+ Zoning areas
+ Doing all of south and west Milaukáshka
+ Adding detail to Bellegarden Park
+ Adding detail to Down Town area (Maybe collaborative?)

My thinkings behind Milaukáshka are to combine old elements of a city (Old Town) with modern elements (Taxland).

What I am very happy with is the countryside east of Taxland, but what do you think about the progress made? Important for me is, if the size is realistic? (I feel like the distances are too small).

Maybe, you do also want to read the article about Taxland (More content follows soon)?

PS: If somebody is interested in helping me - especially at the countryside north-west of Ominoso - , I would be very thankful: Empty countryside Area! Also feel free to add details (e.g. gasoline stations, shopping malls, etc.) into the area.

Stay blue! :)

-Bstn

Hey there,

this is just a quick announcement that I’ll have the chance to travel around central Japan for the upcoming three weeks. This will include Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto and probably Nara. I’ve seen in the past that other mappers made many photos they took available to the community, and would love to do the same with some generic landscapes, city scenes or whatever is “needed”. So my question is, does perhaps one of you need a certain “type” of picture, like dense residential neighbourhoods, railway stations, or anything else that you thinks is more likely to be found in Japan than in your home country? If yes, just leave a comment here and I’ll see what I can do :) I find that most photos online are always quite recognizable, and perhaps by using some unusual angles or less well-known spots I could get some photos more fitting for OGF… although the steamy weather might cut loose all these ideas anyway xD (On a different note, I obviously won’t be able to participate on here very much during that time)

Cheers, Leo

As you may have already noticed, I deleted the troublesom ‘Charlington Canal’ a while ago. Now I’m moving onto Charlington itself, removing motorways and similar infrastructure. You are welcome to join in if you like. Since no one is active in the region, you can do whatever you feel is necessary.

Antarctica is a real world place and, to fit in with the general policy of not using real world place names in OGF, really we should be using another name for it. So, looking for ideas. We do have the Mahhalian name ‘Hhokkoameddemet’ (fidelly ኦቆዓሜጬሜት ) but it would be rather strange if we all used that. Some thoughts on the Antarctica talk page. Anyone have any suggestions?

I have posted a rant on my Bliki.

I’m not going to work on blue countries for a while.

Tomorrow I will start editing it again. I’m going to edit the coastline in Vinnmark so I will create two big gulfs in the east and west part of the country. It is going to affect Wesmandy and Isztianország, because they will have a bit more kilometres of coastline and they should enlarge their frontiers so they will own a part of the sea.

I suppose this is another attempt to move the debate on from Demuth’s previous entry (sorry Demuth). Basically, I think that some of us are struggling with fitting our countries into OGF, especially with new countries. Has the time has come to accept that OGF is not just a collaborative platform: it’s a collaborative project? If that’s the case, it means we need to work together.

How do we do that?

There are different ways. We could let it go on as it has been. That means people build individual countries and work out the framework those countries fit into afterwards.

The problem is, the more countries there are, the harder it is to do this. If two nearby countries have different ideas, its even harder. What if the country next door has a climate warmer than it ‘should be’ for the latitude; that will mean your country will have to be warmer too, or there is a ‘verisimilitude problem’. So there has to be collaboration. Or you want to use English to map your country: there must be some connection with ‘Ingerland’ at some point in your country’s history. Again there has to be collaboration.

In fact, there has to be a framework. Whether this framework is built after a country or before it still has to be there. This is an idea for how we develop a framework.

There is an order:

• Tectonics: work out where the continental plates are, where the mountain ranges are, how the plates have moves
• Climate: fix the climatic regions of the world, based on the distribution of mountains, ocean currents, weather systems
• Work out the distribution of biomes and evolutionary history, including the evolution of humans
• Work out the basics of human history, population expansion, major civilizations
• Develop the major historical religions
• Look at colonisation and imperialism
• Look at modern social and political issues

Much more…

… See full entry

Fasten your seatbelts, we’re in for what could be a very bumpy conversation (if you have the patience to read my looooong post)!

… See full entry

Hello everyone,

I guess some of you might have ever heard of The World archipelago in Dubai. If not, just check it out on Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap. It’s pretty awesome, isn’t it?

I would like to do something like this in OGF too. But it’s going to be different as in the real world. It’s not in the sea, but in a very large park near Balonis City. Every country (yes, literally every country, the unclaimed too) has a part of land in this park where its owner may build something. You can build whatever you want, but remember that that part of land reprensents your country.

So quys, what do you think of this project? Please tell me in the comments! Also, I need a name for this whole thing. If you know one tell me too!

Greetings, Niels

All,

Does anyone use the command line plugin for JOSM? I discovered it this weekend and got all nerd excited at the prospect of adding some AutoCAD functionality to JOSM. Unfortunately, I cannot get it to work- any command I execute simply processes infinitely, even very simple ones like circle. Has anyone encountered and overcome this issue?

Conversely, any other good plugins for circle/arc/fillet/spline creation?

Thanks in advance

Translate to the language of Vinnmark. http://lingojam.com/English-Vinnishofficialtranslator

How can you do this?

I would really like to calculate the area of my country and my states, but I don’t know how…