In the UK, and I expect other countries, many suburbs are villages that were swallowed up by a larger city or town. You can see on maps what would have been the old roads from the 19th century or earlier that have been either widened or downgraded and replaced by new ones that bypass the housing.

Congratulations. I see there are some roads in the north named after Karolian cities (although not the main ones).

Karolia has some due to the switch from Romanš to Karolian as the majority language. The city of Känton, for example, is a ‘Karolianised’ approximation of its Romanš name, Ciuțêina - but many first-language-Karolian speakers still pronounce it as ‘Queue-tayn-a’. Santjäna is a similar case, except that the Karolian name of Sant-jänna is so similar as to be pretty much obsolete.

Dropping the final consonant (necessary for grammar) in place names is common, thus Osmila is just ‘Osmil’ and the ‘Linnastadiu’ becomes “Lin’stad’” with glottal stop. There are lots of regional variations in colloquial spelling too, so a Käntonian would spell it ‘Liinastadiu’

Karolians will sometimes shorten common place terms - eg Kaastjaam (central station) may just be said as ‘kas’.

I did try to establish Elhadia as a thrid world country based on sub-saharan Africa, but since being made an open territory it’s already got far too many motorways.

A typical ‘third-world’ country might have:

• Typically in equatorial or sub-tropical climates, with large areas of desert, scrub, jungle, or subsistance farming. Cities may be mainly on the coast if there is one, especially around river deltas.
• Few major highways and probably no motorways. Many roads are unpaved or barely paved. Likely no public EV infrastructure. Many people will use animals, bicycles or mopeds as private transport.
• Few railways, although they will probably exist as a legacy of a colonial period. Almost certainly unelectrified and single track.
• Smaller national airport and
• Only one or two large cities, and a lot of smaller rural settlements.
• Typically unplanned towns and cities as buildings are built informally and there is less central planning.
• Few tall buildings or luxury features such as shopping malls, arts venues, tourist attractions etc. Fewer medical facilities. Often open street markets as well as small shops.
• Slums on the edges of larger settlements
• Possibly large areas of wildlife reserves. These might be important for tourism.
• Possibly mineral extraction or other mining as important source of income. There maybe modern infratructure attached to this from foreign investment.
• A few more affluent residents may live in gated communities or other secure areas

Remember that even in RW ‘third-world’ countries not everybody is desperately poor and there may even be relatively affluent areas, but with lower GDP the government is less able to build modern infrastructure. This is however changing in some countries such as Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya.

Yes, I wondered if that might be the case. Karolia would be a suitable winter games host but I’d prefer to do the summer games. Maybe for a future year.

Already started on some graphics etc - enjoyable exercise coming up with a retro style.

I plan to have Karolia host the games some time in 1980-90s - perhaps either 1984 or 1992, but 1978 also fine. It’s an ideal country as we have a temperate climate, plenty of coastline for sailing, a scenic marathon route and mountains for the winter sports. The main complex will be on former industrial land in Santjana, with the main athletics stadium now used by a football club, and the nearby lagoon used for swimming and rowing, national tennis club for raquet sports, and venues elsewhere for mountain biking, road cycling, and paddle boat events.

I’ve been less active due to wanting to limit my screen time. I am now going out to work again but still have to do some work at home via internet.

However be assured I’m still very into OGF and immersing myself in Karolia in my head. Also been making a scale model of a Karolian railway carriage with lots of detail. Nearly finished so will post pictures soon.

I like what Halvarda’s done with languages in my neighbours. Keira is now mostly Uralic which works nicely, with some German and Italian. That fits very nicely into the surrounding nations.

Looks good, and importantly seems realistic for the geography, with a good sense of how the topography looks from the road network. The only comments I’d make are that the river through the park would probably not meander like that, especially in a man-made area with cliffs on either side. It’s got a lot of energy from coming off the mountains and would just bore straight into the sea. Also, there would be some smaller waterways coming off the hills to the east and west as well.

The port of Tui Mau I wasn’t entirely convinced by - I think it would need to be further offshore for the water to be deep enough here. You’ve got sandy beaches either side and no river mouth which suggests a shallow slope. Vehicle ownership in this territory and nearby islands may not be high enough to justify two traffic ports either - most traffic in and out is going to be containers of whatever you export and passengers will mostly fly. What’s your economy based around?

You could consider adding a cruise terminal here - I think this island would be partly reliant on tourism and get a lot of traffic.

It depends on the kind of infrastructure you intend your country to have. Some RW countries put their power lines underground (France) so you only see some towers and shorter cables to reach buildings. Others (UK) use a lot of large overhead cables mixed with underground in urban areas. Based solely on where I live, I see long lines of high transmission towers marching across the country, and substations in every neighbourhood.

This might be a bit of a ‘project’ but I’d start by estimating how much power generation your country/cities need and what type. For a typical European or North American country, that means a mixture of coal fired, oil fired, nuclear and renewable generation, although this can vary wildly (UK has recently phased out coal and has quite a bit of wind as does Denmark, Poland and Germany still burn a lot of it, France has a lot of nuclear, Switzerland a lot of hydroelectric, etc). There may be national or international political considerations that make for an interesting backstory here - how strong is the environmental movement, what natural resources does your country have, what are foreign relations like, does the government regard its power plants as a national prestige?

I wouldn’t worry too much about voltages as these may not show up on the OGF map.

Hope this helps a bit.

The thing is, these CG images are generic enough that we could just use open-source images from Wiki Commons to illustrate. The unique ‘sights’ of OGF are famous buildings and unique landforms which would have to be drawn digitally and rendered. I did do a bit of this some years ago, creating Riispere and part of Känton as well as some trains, but it’s quite a bit of work. Building scale models and using photographic tricks to make them look real is also an idea. I am working on a hovercraft from Säntjana currently and plan to make a miniature diorama of the city’s castle.

Headä uutaasta and Bien’ cap’ano from Karolia and Meridonia! Right now the Säntjana Fiilharmoonikorkest are performing their traditional new year concert in the Kaintolaahaala.

Personally I think it will be less realistic unless you intend the landscape to be more mountainous and the rivers short and narrow. Rivers like to get big as they join and approach the coast on flat plains, rather than hitting the sea with a small bump. The change also makes the railways less convincing as they could take more direct routes between important settlements now there is no water to avoid.

A Dutch-Slavic language border is fascinating. Place names related to water might have to change in the revision though, makes no sense to have a ‘mond’ miles from the end of a river.

Will add my voice to those saying that asking for help in good faith is to be encouraged. OGF should not become part of the ‘nasty internet’.

Personally, I would advocate just looking at the real world and observing/estimating the size of things you see around you. You won’t be able to go everywhere and see every style of architecture or natural feature first hand but it will give a good basis for universal dimensions. I tend to use the length of a full-size car I can visualise - around 5m - as an estimating tool. For examples, how many car lengths is an average house? A river? How many car lengths is an exit ramp on a motorway?

Well thank you. I mostly copy what interchanges I see in real life, although with a more ‘European’ style (ie enough space for turning lanes and plazas) than in the UK. Something I try to think about is firstly placing the interchanges where they make the most sense in the heirarchy of roads (so a motorway leads to a primary road, then the primary to a secondary, secondary to tertiary or residential) and also to the most logical routes connecting in and out of settlements. Also I aim to avoid the dangerous situation of ‘weaving’ I encounter far too often in the RW - where traffic joining the road is crossing over other traffic leaving it at the next exit.

You might have noticed the elaborate cycleway interchanges too - these are intended to have exactly the same function as free-flowing motorway interchanges, particularly allowing cyclists to get a run at bridges without stopping at the bottom of the slope.

Admins are clear that we will not be endorsing or making ‘official’ any external social media sites. If you really wish to know the reasons why we can spell them out, but this policy isn’t going to change.

I’m certainly not lost interest, just had a busy week. Next week is school holiday so I will get a lot more done.

What I have done so far is:

Place the hills and open areas to the north of the city centre. This was important to create a clear picture of the suburbs and placement of transport corridors.

Tidy up the metro network. A ‘circle line’ has been added to serve some districts which were otherwise ‘rail deserts’ and other lines have been reorganised to be more rational. Other improvements have been made to the approach tracks to the central station, and on the metro platforms and detailed stations added. https://opengeofiction.net/#map=16/50.9140/111.5799

Flesh out some outer suburbs and revise the motorway and railway alignment to better fit the landscape https://opengeofiction.net/#map=14/50.9649/111.5072

Create a large park with ornamental gardens and palaces on Punasaar, as well as buildings, roads and tramways. https://opengeofiction.net/#map=16/50.8824/111.5440

Make some good progress filling in residential streets and buildings in some ‘holes’ such as Uuskis and the area around the university.

I’ve also drawn a metro map for the region in Inkscape.

• Some of the tram/light rail lines run parallel a bit too close to each other eg Alabaster Ave and Exposition Blvd.

• Agree about the airport. It’s in a logical place between the hills but I would remove the suburbs under the flight path.

• Consider smoothing out some of the street corners

• I imagine that the city would extend further up the hills. Also likely that the marshy areas would have been drained to get more land for building on.

The single-tracked, unelectrified line exists as a (mainly) freight link to the north-east: it originally served the 19th century aquaculture, reeds and aquatic plant farming industries close to the river area. The river itself is circuitous to carry freight along and canal shortcuts were never built. Nowerdays tourism justifies the passenger service pattern, trains from Kanton to Paliiso during daylight hours making request stops on this section. Additionally, the wyes on the main line don’t allow traffic from the port at Paliiso to turn this way without reversing. The double-tracked line direct to Majoslinna is busy as it’s the main corridor for Paliiso-Kanton passenger traffic. And also, Karolian railway engineers during the railway boom often liked to show off how they could lay tracks over difficult terrain.

It’s inspired by the equally remote and picturesque branch serving Berney Arms in Norfolk: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/52.5905/1.6298

I have no intention of stopping with OGF myself, but I agree about limiting screen time. Whilst it’s creative and better than all the trash on the internet programmed to be addictive and disempowering, it’s also solitary and takes one out of the real world. I also feel that 6 is the best option. Any user who can be trusted to map according to your vision is likely to have enough work to do in their own country.

Most impressive. I wonder if you might label some of the historical buildings. Also it’s likely this place would be a major tourist attraction so some kind of entrance structures would be found around here to sell tickets and overpriced souvenirs.