OpenGeofiction
Seriously considering deleting my work and startign from scratch. Not really happy with how things are progressing Maybe I’m just being too critical, but somehow everything just seems off to me. I’d keep the bay and my main east- west thoroughfare, but everything else is fair game. I like some of what I’ve done, but my lack of straight roads and square corners (and I’d also add lack of scale) is hurting my opinion of my work thus far. It doesn’t help looking at what others have done is also kinda bumming me out.
Discussion
Comment from Leowezy on 2 September 2016 at 17:25
Ahhh yes, I think we’ve all been there ;) First off, starting over again, especially at the beginning when you’ve improved your mapping techniques and general knowledge about realistic geography, networks and alike, is always something I would encourage. The few things in my country that I’m actually completely satisfied with are all things that I’ve mapped, deleted after a few months and remapped again, sometimes multiple times. You will also find that as you progress, your speed at mapping will increase steadily over time. When I started over a year ago, I think what took me 3 months to map back then nowadays would only be a matter of a couple of days. That might seem extreme or exaggerated, but is actually my honest experience. Looking at your map, I’d guess it will take you only a few hours to reproduce that amount of elements at a more advanced point in your OGF-career (sounding way to professional). This of course is not meant to discourage you or talk badly about what you’ve done so far; it’s just supposed to show what you will feel when you look back on past projects some time in the future and compare it to your more recent work.
Likewise, looking at other people’s work remember one thing; most of us started where you are at (arguably worse). Nearly all of the really outstanding work you can see on OGF today has been done by users with heaps of experience and, most notably, time. So please, don’t feel let down when comparing your work to that of others, instead feel inspired what you can achieve with just a couple of months of practice and learning ;)
Also, if you haven’t read them already, in the top bar of Luciano’s Dashboard there are links to some great introductory texts on how to make realistic maps.
Last but not least, if you haven’t started already, I would also encourage you to familiarise yourself with JOSM; it the very beginning it’s quite counter intuitive and might take some time to even get it working properly with OGF, but the community is always there for help and after a while you should be terrified by the idea of ever again having to map using one of the in-browser editors ;)
Comment from Ūdilugbulgidħū on 3 September 2016 at 00:18
Good comments Leowezy, I definitely agree.
Inkyatari, I think you’re doing making good decisions - to delete and remake things at this stage isn’t a problem and as Leo says, you get faster as you progress. Persevere.
Comment from Luciano on 3 September 2016 at 01:55
… delete and try again, or edit to the point that the original is barely recognizable. All part of the process…
Don’t worry. I remain embarrassed by my earliest mapping work in OGF, some of which can still be found (but I won’t say where). My tendency is to go back and rework things each time I develop a new skill or concept.
Tárrases, my current obsession, is now on its 4th iteration. The original, 1st iteration (2 years ago) was crap: just some motorways straight streets. Not much to be seen of it today.
Happy mapping.