OpenGeofiction
I’ve been working on the capital city of Mercia for about three weeks now and I’m making slow progress as I’m trying to incorporate quite a bit of detail into the mapping. I’d love some feedback on the city and the wiki articles I’ve been working on.
http://opengeofiction.net/#map=16/-36.6129/169.2046 < Elmham http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/Elmham < Elmham wiki article http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/Mercia < Mercia wiki article http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/Roads_of_Mercia < roads of Mercia (ring road exits)
Discussion
Comment from Luciano on 13 September 2015 at 13:37
Frankly… awesome. Great work. I am far too unfocused to create such great, “finished-looking” detail in such a small area… I tend to scatter my efforts across a perpetually unfinished landscape, always leaving gaps that need to be filled in later.
Comment from Sarepava on 13 September 2015 at 19:30
This is fantastic, you have accurately captured the layout of English cities. Just needs the residential and industrial areas around the city building now, and a functioning airport nearby. Isn’t Phipps Bridge an actual tram stop in London?
Comment from BMSOUZA on 14 September 2015 at 02:20
Very nice and detailed!!
Comment from Portopolis on 14 September 2015 at 13:45
Agree, that look straight out of England, especially with the lack of grids.
Comment from Yuanls on 16 September 2015 at 18:04
I love it! I ‘try’ to do cities English-style but eventually end up gridding them! E.g The outer part of Katsnelson and the entirety Monksbury, in Commonia. (http://opengeofiction.net/#map=11/26.6818/157.2102) . Is there any way around this?
Comment from Myrcia on 16 September 2015 at 21:36
@Yuanls I think that city looks amazing but I know what you mean about the gridding. I think it’s much more tedious to try and replicate the endless post-war estates and incomplete grids of a British city.
Comment from isleño on 17 September 2015 at 04:38
@Yuanls & norfolkadam — Even with a very regular US-style grid, it’s not easy to make it realistic. For example, a grid like Chicago’s is actually full of subtle irregularities that occupy as much as half the total area. In some ways, it’s even harder to get right than a more random pattern.
For highly irregular older cities, a good way to avoid grids is to build things in the order they were built in real life. Many older cities would have developed across a rural area already filled with irregular villages, roads, farms and fields. If you sketch out these irregular patterns first, and then draw the city expanding outwards around them, you’ll end up with patterns that feel much older. Like this for example.
Comment from Ūdilugbulgidħū on 21 September 2015 at 08:55
City Elmham and layout in general of country look excellent realistic. Mercia location lat long = North Island Aotearoa/New Zealand. Climate is good then for NW European comparison.
Thoughts on history of Mercia - is this a colonial nation, establishment from core ‘Mercian’ settlers (ingerland?), when did settlement occur, age of historic buidings, age of cities (relates to gridding)? In real world ‘Mercia’ was disintegrated by c1050 AD, so should cities pre-date this in some way? Were native peoples present prior to colonisation? Difficult decisions.
Language Mercian has subtle differences with English/Ingerish. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercian_dialect. The alphabet used in Mercian differs also. For real authenticity consider using these letters/spellings for names of towns in the land, it is some work. But for instance island ‘Humber’ could be ‘Humbre’ in Mercian dialect, if there is strong feeling of Mercian distinctiveness.
Comment from Myrcia on 21 September 2015 at 16:53
@Ūdilugbulgidħū
Thanks for the in-depth commentary. I really appreciate the feedback.
I have been putting off thinking about a detailed history for a while because I want to do this well and make sure that it fits in with the rest of the Geofiction world. I didn’t want to come in and impose my own timeline so I’m slowly working out a story.
Mercia is named after and inspired by the Kingdom of Mercia and Anglo-Saxon English history generally but I’m not going to go as far as using the actual dialect of Mercian. I want to keep using English as it’s my own first language and I’m not very interested in linguistics or creating a new language. I need to figure out how that fits into the history too.
Comment from Demuth on 28 September 2015 at 12:20
I agree, this looks great!