Users' Diaries

Recent diary entries

Posted by Myrcia on 1 March 2017 in English.

I’m planning a trip by rail around Europe to celebrate the end of my degree in May. I’ve got an idea of which major cities I’m going to travel to but I’d love to know if anyone had any tips on what to see or any good advice for travelling by rail across Europe.

London > Brussels > Hamburg > Copenhagen > Berlin > Bratislava > Wien > Prague > Warsaw > Gdansk > Newcastle (by plane) > London

Posted by ADB52 on 28 February 2017 in English.

I’ve made a start on the city of Solsburg, the biggest conurbation I have mapped in the week since I acquired Utterland. Solsburg stands at the southern end of Lake Hetzer, and straddles the mouth of the river flowing into it. The west bank has Fort Solsburg standing proud, surrounded by the old city, still within its ancient city walls. Also contained is Solsburg Cathedral, midway between the Fort and West Burgh Museum. West Burgh used to be the palace for the rulers of Solsburgh. The modern railway passes to the south of the city walls, after crossing from the east. The old railway, now a preserved line, runs from the northern end of the city walls to Woudendijk. This line is not exactly scenic, as it now passes through an industrial estate and under the towering edifices of the West Solsburg power station.

As I start to build the eastern part of Solsburg, I hope to be able to flesh out on the area’s history - which I expect to be very interesting. Solsburg lies only 15 km south of Ligota in Szlunsk and 35 km south of Kirchenburg in Welstand-Westrijk, a border town and a garrison town. Watch this space.

Posted by Aces California on 28 February 2017 in English.

Hello, don’t want to seem like coming across as pushing, but just as a reminder, I have a Bliki, and I have closed off February with an End of Month Review of my progress, instead of doing a usual Diary Entry. You can find it here! Leave a comment if you like, or not, you’re your own person!

http://wiki.opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/User:Aces_California/Bliki/February2017

  • Aces

You’ve just witnessed my peak lyrical performance.

Anyways, after finishing the district of Ráj nad Mlžnicí I spent the rest of February mapping in Drabantia’s capital city, Drahns.

I occasionally get angry at myself for placing the city on tip of a peninsula. Especially every time I’m designing public transport connections, road network, etc. and they end up not working. Well, what can I do. Should’ve read the OGF: guides better.

If I had to describe my work in one word, I’d choose ‘chaotic.’ I deleted so much stuff. I started mapping the old town again from scratch. I also discovered drawing your streets as a regular grid might seem easy at first, but causes so much trouble later. I also found out you should probably sketch out the outside connections and other ‘big stuff’ first before going to detail. Again, should’ve read the OGF: guides better, but like hey, whatever. I’m gonna fake it till I make it.

And now for some of the interesting places:

  • The old Old Town - it’s the historic city center. Originally founded around year 1300, but most of the present-day buildings are from the 18th century. There’s passages, cozy backyards, ‘authentic’ pubs serving poor quality beer for five times the normal price and kitsch souvenir shops. It’s also a great place for embassies and offices (because no one wants to live there anymore.) If you’re interested in either of these two, just write it in the comments or something.

  • The new Old Town - that’s the relevant city center built around 1870. It’s mainly a residential area, but if you’re interested in classicism, neo-renaissance and other architecture styles from late 19th century, you’ll be satisfied too. The controversial neo-gothic cathedral is worth a see, too.

  • National Museum and surroundings - this area marks the end of the city center and the start of suburbs. It features a textile factory converted into offices, villas from early 20th century and a dance school.


… See full entry

Location: Drabantia
Posted by ante44 on 28 February 2017 in English.

In February, I started three new mapping projects, but finished only one: making small neighbourhood in Gobras City where Mallyorian community lives. I map a country called Mallyore and Gobrassanya is its biggest economical, cultural and historical partner. A lot of Mallyorian people emigrated in Gobrassanya, especially in Gobras City, so I decided to make a neighbourhood where they live, see here.

I imagined it as an older neighbourhood where Mallyorian people live for years with other Gobrassian people, too. I still don’t know the name of neighbourhood, but Little Mallyore fits the best for me currently (based on Little Italy and similar neighbourhoods in the US).

The neighbourhood is bounded by Gobras Boulevard, Ormeo Avenue, River Bridge Road and Bosco River. The first housing was built on coast of Bosco River and that’s now the center of neighbourhood with small port and river walkway. On the north, next to the Gobras Boulevard, some bigger block of flats are built. There’s a lot facilities connected with Mallyorian people and culture: Gobras-Mallyorian Library, Mally Theater, Cinema of Mallyorian Movies, Museum of Diaspora, Mallyorian Community Center, new Embassy of Mallyore, two churches… Some institutions of 33 Ward can also be found: court, fire and police department etc. On the south there’s a medical facility: St. Jonah’s Clinic. There are two schools: King Joseph Primary School and Mallyere School Center: a educational center which provides primary, secondary and tertiary education in Mallyorian language.

I tried to insert some interesting content in the grid of Gobras City. I didn’t want to build all streets and buildings the same, but to make something different and detailed. I hope I will finish my other projects soon so I can present it to you.

Please be free to comment, share your ideas, thoughts and content. And sorry for bad English.

Regards!

Posted by martinum4 on 27 February 2017 in English. Last updated on 28 February 2017.

I set up nominatim with OGF-Data… Got to change most of the HTML in the background (including tiles), but it at least works!

http://v22016103888538212.megasrv.de:8080/

Just try if it finds the stuff you are looking for and leave some Feedback in the comments…

My Country as an example. Still working on the routing leaflet, if anyone that has some JS-Knowledge wants to help out send me a PM.

EDIT: Nominatim is awesome because it uses EVERY name tag available, for example i can find http://opengeofiction.net/node/57347749 with a search for Kaaltii (Transcript from local language) and even with the local language, where it is called “ᑳᓪᑏ”, so Nominatim is fully UTF-8 compatible.

EDIT: UPDATE: I let an update run overnight, if “Data last updated” is later than “2016/05/31 01:38 GMT” it worked (I don’t know where that wierd date came from in the first place…)

Location: TA241
Posted by Aces California on 26 February 2017 in English.

Hey all, so I’ve been going back through all the User Diaries trying to find one post but it’s eluding me. I’m asking to see if anybody could help find it?

The post in question is about how large major cities are usually around 10km away from each other, and you’ll find smaller towns and villages between them, bringing up motorway connections too I think.

Thanks in advance.

  • Aces
Posted by ADB52 on 25 February 2017 in English.

The north of Utterland is beginning to take shape, with the first major town now on the map. Welle has an ornate former palace in the city centre, with a lovely park area with ponds behind it. The city fronts Schuttelermeer (lake), and is overlooked by the dark hills of Wellerwoud forest to the east. The border area to Koban (excuse absence of diacritical marks) is marked by wooded hills, whilst further east the forest boundary to Isztiarnoszag is an area for logging. The villages of Loosteren, Schering en Inschlag and Peringen are all centres for this.

Posted by PColumbus73 on 25 February 2017 in English.

Hello Everyone!

Just letting everyone know, I may be sporadically present on OGF (I am buying a house!) for a little while.

I am still in control of Drevet (and Wustesonne), and any request to map in Drevet will likely be slow. Please be patient and don’t assume my silence is consent.

I will still be omnipresent in OGF.

Happy Mapping!

Posted by Friedrich Kirchen on 24 February 2017 in English.

Months ago there was an adminero diary entry (http://opengeofiction.net/user/adminero_us/diary) with the idea of make a gulf on southeastern vinn sea. I really like the idea, and everybody seem to be agree with it, but thats all…How can this become reality? We have to be agree in a proposal? Or just start working on it? This is my proposal my proposal

The Vinnmark coast as he said, in the style of Sweden, and Welstand-Westrijk kinda Denmark style…Shilesia has acces to both sides too. What u think? I’ve made Laika lake smaller as I was reading everybody thought it was too big,.

Posted by skquinn on 24 February 2017 in English.

See: http://opengeofiction.net//#map=13/-10.9447/168.2028

First, it was and is reassuring to see others mapping in Rhododactylia. This area, if kept, needs a lot of work to be made into a realistic area (though I will concede at points in the past, so did parts of Frogtown and other cities I’ve added details to).

First off, the sheer quantity of mountain peaks that close together strike me as unrealistic. Also, there’s a building (the “food factory” I think?) that’s 4 km² in area–that’s not a typo!–surrounding one that’s just shy of 92 hectares–again, not a typo!

Just west of that, the train station building is over 2 hectares, which I think is way too big barring a real-life example that’s anywhere close. Same with the “National Star and Space Center” buildings, three buildings with a combined area of over 11 hectares–again, not a typo!

The residential streets need to be named as well; I see a huge sea of red when I turn on “Colored Streets” to check addressing, but this is a relatively easy fix by comparison. There’s also overlapping landuse=meadow that overlaps areas that cannot be meadow by definition. I’ve gotten rid of some already.

Thoughts or ideas?

Location: Fantômes, Rhododactylia
Posted by histor on 23 February 2017 in German (Deutsch).

Meanwhile the southern part of Barrio # 2 (named “Barrio Nuovo”) has got some urban athmosphere. It is a mixes area with houses with 5 floors, but some surviving smaller and older buildings. In the middle of the blocks often are some small industry or baker, plumber and so on. Most important building are the stock-exchange and to the right at the Avenida Sardenga the juristic part of the university. For all, which love pets, look at Passage Cantabria please.

[http://opengeofiction.net/#map=16/-13.5086/39.6636] is the link.

Posted by Sarepava on 22 February 2017 in English.

School holidays are on this week and I finally have some time for OGF mapping. I’ve been working on the mountainous Taamras region of north west Karolia, and in particular the area around the small town of Vansiin. It is far from complete but the main features are in place. I have mostly started with the geographical features and added human features afterwards, which I hope creates a realistic landscape.

Vansiin is built in a relatively flat hollow around the confluence of several rivers descending from the surrounding mountains. It is chiefly important for its tourism and skiing, and is home to a large winter sports complex (http://opengeofiction.net/#map=16/53.6251/108.1001) with ski jumping slopes and a cable car to reach the top - this is still TBC. In the town itself (http://opengeofiction.net/#map=17/53.61533/108.11936) are the town hall and council offices - which typically for Karolia is built slightly larger than one might expect for the size of settlement, as the surrounding rural parish is so vast - the post office and fire station, the church and the usual shops, including a Viika tea house and Jõki skiiwear store. Vansiin has two stations - the one on a branch of the national railway network, with a train generally every 1 hour but more frequently during sports events, and the other on the narrow-gauge rack railway that ascends around 1600m to the summit of Torsa, the sixth highest mountain in Karolia (http://opengeofiction.net/#map=15/53.5725/108.0090).

Any comments on accuracy or suggestions for other features welcome!

Posted by trabantemnaksiezyc on 21 February 2017 in English.

Hello!

I’ve given myself a little break from mapping, however in the meantime I have started working on a Polandball-styled map of OGF. If you don’t know, Polandball is an amatour, community-made style of comics starring the world’s countries. They often talk about current political happenings in a wacky fashion. Countries are represented mostly by (guess what?) balls (there are exceptions). Do you want to see the whole OGF world like that? Currently I’ve got the most of western Uletha:

OGFball, hehe

Posted by admin on 21 February 2017 in English.

Recently we have had several instances where text posted to the wiki has been clearly just cut-and-paste from Wikipedia. This is already clearly against the rules (see About page). Notably, there is also the ongoing problem of people who ignore notices from admin or other users about copyright issues related to images.

Let’s reiterate the rule in question:

“All wiki images — photos and artwork — must be free to use, and must contain a link to source and/or copyright info. All wiki text must be your own writing.”

We have decided to pursue a new, stonger policy, in this respect. Users who are found to have copied text from other sources into the OGF wiki, or who repeatedly disregard concerns expressed about possibly copyrighted uploaded images, may have their wiki privileges suspended, without notice.

Thank you for understanding, and happy mapping.

The OGF Admin Team