I know Adobe is basically killing off Flash and Flash browser support later this year. I wanted to ask, I’d presume it’s not run/coded by anyone on OGF, but do we know if there’s any sort of transition plan for Potlatch 2 or a similar replacement since it basically runs on Flash? I know that some formerly Flash-reliant programs are were switching to HTML or something that is still supported, but I haven’t seen anything like that for Potlatch 2 when I looked it up.

Keep in mind I DO USE JOSM FOR MOST EDITS. So this isn’t the time to respond “you should be using JOSM and you wouldn’t have this problem”. There are just certain functions I find easier to use Potlatch 2 for, especially with quick edits where I can easily compare scale between tabs, and sometimes JOSM snaps to things in a way that can make it harder to get the “loose precision” I need at times. It’s just a nice option to have.

My quick apologies to people I haven’t responded to and the relative lack of mapping in the last month or so. It’s been a rough semester and I’ve had less time and energy to devote to OGF than I personally would like. I’ll try to get back to people soon.

Best, Ernestpcosby

I’ve felt a bit stuck in my normal mapping lately, but my home city irl just did a major revamp of their bus system so I’d been thinking a lot about buses and routes lately. I decided to make a QUARTA bus map for central Quentinsburgh based on the routes I’d listed out on the QUARTA wiki page!!

The PDF is here:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1XcvmZwxNy4rLSnduWoYwB6vKeiyW6-V8

Technically this is “West-Central and Downtown Quentinsburgh”, since “Central” refers to the area in the very middle of the city, east of what’s shown on this map.

These routes are subject to change of course, but since the roads in the area other than the islands (hence the unnumbered bus routes) are pretty much complete, I thought now would be a good time to show you guys. Blue C routes are “Crosstown”/frequent service routes, the red are just regular local routes. Express buses aren’t listed yet. Gray in the background is QLine Metro & Metro BRT, and the green and light blue are streetcars that run through downtown.

Feedback on routing would be helpful.

I still need to do a lot to it, like add transit centers and subway stops, but I think the general idea here is pretty far along.

(Alas my old laptop recently got stolen so I lost the subway map I’d been working on for the last year… but hopefully I’ll be able to get started on that again at some point too)

I recently discovered some of the remnants of my first attempt at a country still exists on the map. I also discovered how miserably bad it was. And when I say miserably bad, I mean “oh God that’s terrible block him before he messes anything else up” bad.

Part of me wanted to hope the original mapping stayed hidden/ignored forever. But I thought about it, and I felt that perhaps this will act as a bit of encouragement to newer mappers trying to get better, to show that if you’re willing to try, listen, look at examples, and take advice/constructive criticism/feedback, that you can improve.

Here’s the remains of the city of Noah in what I had at the time claimed as the first version of Freedemia in a different spot, ~2014ish:

this abomination here

And this is Quentinsburgh, Freedemia today, 2017, continuing to improve:

[not terrible if I may say so myself, still working on improving it daily] (http://opengeofiction.net/#map=13/-3.3853/-2.4529)

All this is to say, if you really care, and are willing to listen to advice from fellow mappers, learn different mapping techniques, look at well mapped countries and real life countries as examples, and take the time to slowly map and improve, it can make a difference and you can get better. Don’t lose hope. I know it’s been a bit rough on newbies around here lately, but understand that the majority of us just want you to learn from mistakes, keep improving, keep trying. If I’ve somehow managed to come this far, so can you.

Sincerely, Ernestpcosby

I was just wondering, is there an equivalent of Greek Life (or of the country Greece) in OGF as far as fraternities and sororities are concerned?

I was considering mapping a “Greek Village” of sorts on some of my college campuses for fraternities and sororities. It was then I was reminded there is no Greece. “Well then”, I thought to myself, “that could be an issue.” XD

Maybe something like “Latin Life”?

Part of me thinks it’s a bad idea to have them anyways so if there isn’t a good equivalent I’ll probably just leave them out of my society altogether to avoid grappling with things like widespread hazing, but it would be helpful to know. Thanks.

Hey guys, I was thinking that I’d like to make an auto table of all the All-n-One locations, like what duchycoffee has now. How do I create the relation, and how do I create the auto table?

In working with Quentinsburgh recently and doing some major overhauls, I noticed something about the city’s Sean Bond International Airport.

At this time, there isn’t too much reason for SBD Intl. to be a major intercontinental hub. Sean Bond International is the primary gateway to all of Freedemia, and there does seem to be a good amount of tourism and connections. However, at this moment there isn’t much need other than travel to Freedemia (and I guess arguably Nature and Narghana).

However, looking at the OGF:Where to Fly page, I discovered something very important about Quentinsburgh’s SBD Intl. Airport’s location-

Sean Bond International Airport appears to be the most logical gateway to the new continents across the Hesperic Ocean.

Quentinsburgh seems to be the furthest west major city in the developed continents. It seems to be the furthest west major airport, the closest point to Kartumia, and home to a major airport already acting as an international major hub.

I know that this would be a very distant future, but I want to make sure I understand what I can do to take advantage of this potential.

What do I need to do to prepare for that point? I’ve done a bit to try to improve the runways and taxiways, and I’ve “planned” a new terminal D but I’m deliberately leaving it undone so that I can work on it when I know more.

I don’t mean to jump the gun, and I know these continents won’t be open for a long time. But I know that Sean Bond International Airport (potentially Sean Bond Intercontinental Airport? ;) ) has massive potential to be an intercontinental hub and I don’t want to take that lightly.

Is there an actual way to map poorer communities in a way that gets that idea across? I don’t mean third world country poor, just like slightly more impoverished neighborhoods, maybe kind of American style poorer neighborhoods. Is there a distinct look these types of neighborhoods have on the map? So far the main thing I’ve done is put some mostly abandoned strip malls and a couple discount supermarkets and businesses like hair salons, laundromats, and non-chain fast food type places. Most of Quentinsburgh is meant to be pretty well off (upper lower class to upper middle class), but there are one or two poorer areas that I don’t quite know how to map.

Up until today I had labeled my channels based on the American-style calling letters of KXXX and WXXX. However, I remember we had discussed this briefly in the User Diaries a long time ago, and someone pointed out the fact that they should vary from country to country. At the time I had wanted to retain my system so I wouldn’t have to change all my logos and wiki pages, but upon remembering this, I went ahead and changed all the Freedemian stations to the system of FXXX (F for Freedemia). For example, WQTN 13 is now FQTN 13.

I’ve been trying to be more original with my parodies lately, to try and make them have a humorous reference quality to them but still feel somewhat fitting for the OGF world.

One thing I’ve tried is making references to things that don’t exactly relate to the object doing the referencing.

One such example is Crazy Crunch, a popular cereal in Freedemia.

You might get the reference from the box.

If you don’t you’ll definitely get it from the jingle.

For those who may have wondered about the end result of the case:

https://ognnews.wordpress.com/2017/04/26/freedemian-court-rules-in-favor-of-feldman-in-leo-jono-vs-brian-feldman-but-with-several-reservations/

Thought a couple people might enjoy this article. Tried to make it serious yet humorous at the same time. Have a laugh about this Freedemian court case

The article

Remember everyone,

lol

What countries other than Ingerland were big colonizers? Especially those who might be likely to have had some major colonies in Antarephia and Tarephia?

I ask mainly because of the Woolonia project, which as I mentioned a while back is getting redone. The inside part will become the “Land of the Woolen” nation that will be mostly untouched and undeveloped, but the coast will become a colonized “Woolonia” nation that is more modern (though not super duper modern) with a couple cities and such. I was hoping to find another country other than Ingerland to have been the colonizer.

See:

• OGF:Woolonia Talk page

• Original Revisiting Woolonia diary entry- the comments are more accurate than the entry itself

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

Thank you all for all of the tips about the QUARTA QLine Metro map I was working on before! They helped me significantly! In fact, I started over to try and do a better job.

I thought I’d give a progress report on how the newer version is coming.

After looking at the Cam Booth map tutorial that Myrcia showed me, redoing the “knotpoints” or major junctions following Histor’s tips, and trying the “sketch the whole system and simplify” method Isleno mentioned, I managed to come up with a rough scheme where the entire map only uses 45 and 90 degree angles. I started off planning to go for a full Viginelli-style approach, but found the lack of curves surprisingly nice for the system and design elements, with a few exceptions (there are a couple jarring corners at times).

Speaking of corners, I ran into the same struggle that I’ve seen Cam Booth talk about many times on his site, having some routes or parts of the map come out much more simplified than others. You’ll notice that the 5 (the orange line) is pretty smooth all the way through, with only about two 45 degree angles (well, 1 visible. There will be a couple more when the map is finished but you get the point), while line 8 (the light blue line to the top right)… well…you can’t see all of it here, but because of the strange routing and large amount of tight curves, it’s basically a weird zigzag XD

But as a whole, I’m liking the way this version is coming out much better than the first one. I plan to add in the land masses (and maybe large parks) last, though I am vaguely planning in my head how they will work with the map.

… See full entry

Well, after my school made me pay a ridiculous amount of money to get the Adobe suite, I set about at my first attempt at a realistic, scalable digital PDF metro map for the QUARTA QLine Metro. Here’s a sneak preview of the completed part:

It’s no Khaiwoon Metro map, but for a first try, I’d have to say to myself

… See full entry

Buttons or Touchscreen?

Back in November I posted a news article called QUARTA beta-testing Stop Request buttons at bus stops serving multiple routes. You can take a quick glance to know more about what I’m talking about, but basically at the time I proposed stop request buttons at bus stops serving more than one bus route so that only the routes people are waiting on have to stop (other than when people are getting off).

Now I’m thinking about expanding this beyond just stops with multiple routes and also including these request buttons at stops along major crosstown routes even when there is only that one route, since routes that major often suffer from delays from having to make frequent stops. Now at the moment this would not extend to smaller neighborhood routes which would have much less of a need for something like this, since the routes generally run slower.

However, it brings up the question- how will these kiosks work?

My original idea, at least for the beta version, was to just have a panel on the side of a post with what are essentially elevator buttons to request each bus. I still think it’s a good idea, but at the same time, bus routes change, meaning the routes served by each stop will likely change at some point too. I’m thinking the panels with the buttons would be easy and semi-cheap to replace, that the numbers will be easy to change and that there might automatically be like a couple extra buttons that can be activated if new routes are added, but still, that could be a hassle.

… See full entry

I finally decided to try to make a unique Freedemian food beyond just the popularity of chicken, eggs, brown rice, beef, peppers, squash, lamb, etc.

I present to you, the pizacyro.

Right now it still exists exclusively as a snippet on the Quentinsburgh Wiki page, but you can get a snapshot of what it is:

“One meal that is distinctly Quentinsburghian is Chicken Lamb Pizacyro, almost a cross between a gyro, a pizza, and a taco- a piece of pita lined with mozzarella and cheddar cheese and sauce is covered in shreds of lamb and chicken, lettuce, dressing or sour cream, chickpeas, onions, tomatoes, a bit of brown rice for texture, squash, and peppers, rolled into a taco-like pastry of sorts.”

(I suppose it’s more like a burrito if you roll it, but I imagine it being full enough that it sort of just folds gyro-style.)

There would also be breakfast varieties, perhaps with lamb sausage instead of shredded lamb and egg or egg whites in place of the rice, or maybe just added on top of everything else (breakfast is the most important meal of the day anyhow XD)

I plan to have an international fast food chain called PizacyroHero, comparable to [let’s just say Taco Ball] for Mexican Food in real life, or like Khaiwoon Taco Factory for Khaiwoonese food.

I suppose on a side note, do you think the idea could work as a real food? XD I thought it sounded pretty tasty, but that might just be me.

Hey, everyone. As you all may remember, I’m the manager of a collaborative country called Woolonia in Archanta. Woolonia is a purple country (managed but collaborative), and is a modern country with a sheep-centered society. It’s largely split between urban modern cities and smaller more traditional herding towns and sheep pastures in rural areas. The wool and sheep product (including food) industries are the staples of the country. Woolonia developed in an interestingly unique way- It remained very sheep centered, but the cities urbanized and developed around it.

Having dedicated more time and concentration to working on my own nation of Freedemia, I haven’t really had a chance to do much work on Woolonia. On top of that, I haven’t been able to figure out where to start. I’m looking for more people interested in helping out. For more information, see the three links below:

EDIT- PROJECT IN PROCESS OF CHANGING. SEE COMMENTS AND OGF:Woolonia Collaboration Talk Page.

Woolonia Wiki

Woolonia Talk Page

OGF:Woolonia Collaboration Talk Page

Ideas, volunteers, and people interested in taking on a side project of helping with it are welcome. Please respond in the comments if you’d like to know more. I’m not looking for a bunch of new motorways-I think the current motorway system is already pushing it. But small towns, a few select new cities where city markers are on the map (Centerport, Shearville, Pastureville), and rural areas are welcome. Improvements of Woolport and New Wooley are also greatly welcomed.

*To be clear, Maydien is property of user Belphenia Project. Please don’t mess with that area, it is not free to edit. Also, Belphenia Project has already gotten a good start on Slauson City, but the area listed as “Shearville” could still use a lot of work (it was originally just a copy of LA and frankly most just needs deletion and replacement). If you do take on this project, please try not to mess with what has already been done in the Slauson City area. :)

In the process of slowly fixing up Quentinsburgh, I spent some time trying to make Sean Bond International Airport more realistic.

This is what it used to look like:

And this is what it looks like now:

While I’m quite proud of the terminal improvements, as well as improvements to the transit center, rental car center, hotels and surrounding parking, I do also know that a lot still needs to be done. The runways are still pretty unrealistic, and I’m struggling a bit to figure out a realistic way to fix them in such a small space. Airports aren’t exactly my strongsuit.

… See full entry