OpenGeofiction
I’m making A parkway with very short ramps witch will be at every other or every third street, this may sound like to much but the parkway will be in a rural area with not very many roads. Allso The ramps may be short but the parkway is supposed to be old and will not be up to freeway standards.
Discussion
Comment from histor on 9 January 2016 at 09:10
Oh dear, what a railway-snake. You draw curves with only 200 m radius one after the other. Every day you will have an accident as at Hells Gate in New York last year. Please delete this rails and makes curves outside of stations 400 m or more, better 700 m or more.
Comment from Myrcia on 9 January 2016 at 12:03
I think you have a serious problem with scale. Take a look at your city and New York on the same scale. In the space of one block the high-density northern end of Manhattan you have perhaps twenty blocks in your city. Even compared to a favella or slum this is highly unrealistic.
The problem is that you’ve not taken the time to find out about OGF. There are rules that you’ve not followed about territory, realism, real-world brands and climate. You should stop building, read the FAQ and the support pages on the wiki and then try again to slowly build something worthwhile.
It’s taken me months and hundreds of hours of work to create a tiny nation and that is far, far from being complete. OGF isn’t a competition to see who can build the biggest city or who can most accurately recreate a real-world environment. It’s much better and more fun than that and I feel like you’re missing the point somewhat.
Comment from Sarepava on 9 January 2016 at 12:38
Also, check your spelling, learn how long an airport runway needs to be, and explain to us how New York got built in the tropical rainforest.
Comment from histor on 9 January 2016 at 12:44
Indeed Myrcia is right. You have 20 m from one street to the other. Think over it please, that a house is 12 m broad (room to street 5 m, floor 2 m, room to backyard 5 m), so in your block only the houses needs 24 m. Then you need some space inside the block, place for the footways, the street itself, may be place for some trees in the streets (5m) - so 50 m is minimum for some grade of civilisation. In New York the blocks are 240 * 60 m - that is relative few.
Yes, look at the reality - and then please draw your dream-city.
Comment from Luciano on 9 January 2016 at 12:55
We can all provide constructive criticism, but I will recommend patience, too.
When I first came to OGF, I built a first draft of my city Villa Constitución that was just as bad as mikelatham’s Stamford. It was full of real-world names, it was badly scaled, and poorly thought out, too. The grid was so huge it crossed half the country - that’s why I have still have that Nebraska-style agricultural grid.
I was lucky because when I came, OGF was less “crowded” than it is now, so I mostly made my mistakes alone and no one noticed or said anything.
Even now, I am so unhappy with some persistent scaling issues with Villa that I often seriously consider deleting the city and starting over. Instead, for now, I am focusing on detailed development of the rest of my country, and letting that mess around my capital wait for a later solution.
Anyway, I want to say - yes, mikelatham has made some mistakes, and as admin, I have already let him know about his mistakes and about the resources here, but let’s all just give him some room and let him find his way.
Maybe I could suggest a motto for OGF: “where not just good imaginative maps are made, but GOOD MAPPERS, too.”
Comment from Myrcia on 9 January 2016 at 13:09
@ Luciano
I do agree, when I first started working on my city it was out-of-scale and in the wrong place but I listened to the feedback I got and changed things. It would be nice if Mikelatham could show that he was seeking to improve his mapping and not just impose an unrealistic mega-city on the OGF world.
I’m sorry if I come across as rude, I am just frustrated when people don’t listen to feedback from other community members.
Comment from Mikelatham on 9 January 2016 at 15:06
Sorry that the scale is bad its just my first draft
Comment from Mikelatham on 9 January 2016 at 15:08
I have been taking the feedback into consideration and i will change things. I all ready took out all of the real life brands.
Comment from Yuanls on 9 January 2016 at 15:16
Practice makes perfect. My personal motto is ‘Failure is the biggest part of success’, and if you go by that, I’m sure Stamford will improve. I spent 5 months or so mapping in Commonia before I got a territory. Of course you don’t need to do that but I will just suggest a few things that I’d fix to make the city look better.
I imagine your mapping will be much better if you take some advice. I also like the ‘easter eggs’ you put in. (Robot Street and Chicken Street) I do that occasionally!
Comment from Mikelatham on 9 January 2016 at 16:13
@Yuanls Thank you for noticing the Easter eggs i put in ( there are 3 or 4 more ) But the Robot Street and Chicken Street is the only on in the city area. I will put your Advice into Consideration. The Scale problem is one that may be hard and may take a while to fix due to over 200 streets are not at the proper Scale, I have Deleted some ramps and Widened some and Combined a Motorway ( H 5 ) . I will not be adding many more Motorways and the ones you see will be Nation Wide so they will all go to Different Places. I also noticed that Stamford is close to the Equator and i will add some Jungles in in inland areas.
Comment from Mikelatham on 9 January 2016 at 16:21
Also Please note that i come from a part of the US where there are like 25 Motorways less then a hour away. Also we call them Expressways. I Live very close to Nyc and i’m used to having 50 Expressways Around me.
Comment from Portopolis on 9 January 2016 at 17:40
Same here, I live near Houston and I was used to morning traffic only talking about traffic and accidents on the freeways because their were like 10 freeways with around 30 or maybe even 40 different sections. At one point my city had large freeways everywhere but I took advice and downgrade most of them. I am still working on my first city which is honestly still a mess and I have taken it slower with my smaller and less chaotic cities.
Comment from BMSOUZA on 9 January 2016 at 19:40
About scale, lets go: looking for geting married in 2016 November, I am (in real life) building a house in the town I live. The area is 360 square meters, but the house is 104 square meters. The “outter” area (sorry, I dont know the correct word in english: maybe “surface”?) is 12x30m. So, when I create blocks or even buildings in OGF, I always imagine “my future house would be good in this space?” “How much houses like my one could be in this block?”, things like this. I imagine the most of the other users lives in apartments, and it dont make difference, but, I think imagining “small spaces” (not only in motorways), like our homes, the supermarkets and malls we goes, etc, can help us about distances.
About helping this new user,is usuaI the new ones made some mistakes, but the older ones always gives advices. Creating new topics frequently in this Diaries, I see Mikelatham is looking for and listening these advices. Is a good way, show us he really want mapping better.
Regards to all! Bruno Moreira
Comment from BMSOUZA on 9 January 2016 at 22:11
I was thinking about the “motorway mania” of Mikelatham…
Our friend Portopolis got the same mania, hehehe, and me too.
Currently, I am “re-building” Itacolomi, so, still yesterday, I was detailing a city ring with so much and bigs highway junctions, inspired in some ones I see in Saint Petersburg map recently, but… Itacolomi is located in a small island… there is not so much traffic to this… would not be realistic… so I deleted the “excess” of motorway junctions… but try use them in other city, hehehe
Comment from Ernestpkirby on 9 January 2016 at 22:29
I can definitely vouch for the “practice and taking constructive criticism makes [better if not perfect]” part. Some of you may remember my first attempts at Freedemia. One of them was literally halfway in the ocean because my device was accidentally showing Earth as a background. The second, when I actually got a territory, looked like a glitchy version of Mapquest tried to run on a Windows 3.1 with a virus and a defective monitor. (It is a BAD idea to try and use an iPad to make edits :P) Even today’s Freedemia looked pretty horrible when I first started with it in Tarephia. I’m still fixing errors with scale in older cities like Laneston and Highfield. However, as I looked at better mapped cities, I’ve slowly improved. In about a year’s time, I went from that guy messing up the map to that guy who has the country hosting the 2016 Geolympiad after improving my city and mapping better.
As for scale, I think it’s also important to ask, @Mikelatham, which editor are you using? Scale is usually much easier on JOSM where there is an actual scale, but if you (like me) don’t have access to JOSM, if you look in the URL on Potlatch 2 or iD you can see a number that is the “zoom”. If you pull up a well designed city like Gobras City in another tab at the same zoom, and sometimes even looking at a well mapped city on the real Open Street Map (for example, Raleigh is relatively well mapped for more urban/rural scale with buildings and all) in a similar zoom, it makes it much easier to figure out how big something needs to be.
If you need some fake businesses to move into your country, I have a couple you could use. Just make sure you contact me and let me see how you’re planning to use them.
Yeah, as for subway stations, some systems end names with Station like if you don’t name your stations after streets but neighborhoods, like the neighborhood of Kennedy could be Kennedy Station, but putting “Subway station” after each isn’t necessary.
As one who is still trying to learn I understand you’ve still got a while’s to go. It’s a good idea to listen to advice, but it already seems like you’re trying to do that.
WIshing you the best, Ernestpcosby
Comment from Mikelatham on 10 January 2016 at 00:17
There are not that many highways