OpenGeofiction
Can someone give me some ideas/feedback/tips on my coastline so far?
Posted by Szpw on 29 August 2016 in English.Hi there! New member here, I just claimed by first territory a few days ago and intend to build it into a big single-party communist state called the People’s Republic of Turonia, because we don’t seem to have very many around at the moment.
So logically I’m doing the natural features first, mainly the coastline. I absolutely butchered the scaling the first time (I had a building over 5km long…) but I redid my coast and I was wondering if anyone knowledgeable or experienced could give me some feedback on it. The country is labelled as Turonia and it’s on the eastern coast of Tarephila.
My inspiration is Eastern Canada, with my own sort of spin on it. I have several large “Great Lakes” some distance from the coast as well as a large river inspired by the St. Lawrence. The capital city is going to be situated in the bay near the centre and spread across the islands situated within it. That idea was inspired by Montreal, but on a much larger scale and in a bay.
ANYWAYS that’s about it. Is there any advice you can offer me in improving my coastline? I want to have details like rivers and lakes ideally, since it makes for interesting city locations and designs.
Discussion
Comment from Yuanls on 29 August 2016 at 22:09
I am not a source of professionalism for coastlines or natural features, but they look good as far as I see. You might want to make the lakes slightly less ‘blobby’ though.
On a side note, which of the 2 Agarderian states would Turonia recognise? An outline of the Agarderian situation can be found here.
Comment from No Way on 30 August 2016 at 16:31
I would assume that you woundn’t have very many resorts, beaches or other features along the coast if you are going to potray a commie country.
Comment from Ūdilugbulgidħū on 30 August 2016 at 18:11
Turonia is here (Szpw - you can add it at the end of your diary entry so people can find it easily).
I think you’ve probably answered this question yourself - if you want details, you have to add them. To make it realistic you have to add a lot. Detailing is 99% of the work in OGF. As has been said before, if you don’t enjoy it, then pick a smaller area to work on.
So, I would say that the coastline of Udenarrat, say here is detailed enough to look ok - it isn’t as detailed as the real OSM coastline looks, say here in NE Canada. But that isn’t a problem for me. The best and most detailed work in OGF takes a lot of effort - see here for some of Demuth’s coastlines in Østermark, for example. How detailed do you want to make it? Making bays is much more time consuming and takes more work than creating straight coastlines - which can still be realistic - that is a ‘real coastline’.
In terms of river design and layout, the OGF:Making realistic rivers tutorial is great. There are rules which define how rivers behave.
Turonia is quite equatorial (5 - 11 degrees N), so your country is going to be tropical, (unless you can come up with a convincing explanation as to why part of it isn’t - e.g. cooler highland areas?). Same goes for your forests, which would probably be jungles. That being the case, it might be likely that larger population centres are located away from the hottest areas. Or perhaps a country like Tanzania would be a good model, Zanzibar is located at the approximate latitude of your ‘island capital’.
Comment from Yuanls on 30 August 2016 at 23:30
@no way
I can’t imagine why a communist country wouldn’t have beaches and resorts, especially given that the climate is a tropical one. Resorts in Crimea and Yugoslavia were popular with Eastern Europeans before the fall of communism. Everyone needs holidays, even commies! But if Turonia is not part of a communist bloc or alliance of some sort it might have trouble attracting foreign visitors.
Comment from Luciano on 31 August 2016 at 00:16
Hey, even North Korea has resorts.
https://www.google.co.kr/maps/@42.3030487,130.3880154,5908m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en
Not well mapped in OSM, but still…
osm.org/#map=15/42.3029/130.3923
I can’t coment on the quality of the experience at a North Korean resort, although I have met people who have spent time in North Korea, both professionally and as “tourists,” and the experiences can be good and bad.
However, I visited a Cuban Resort in the 1980’s.
osm.org/#map=15/23.1508/-81.2668
… and I had a very nice experience (although the food was bad - but you could escape and find excellent street food), despite the distinct ideology of the operators - and that was back in a time when there were still many Russians in Cuba - some of whom I met - imagine sitting in a smoky Cuban jazz bar talking with a soldier on holiday, using a bad mix of my rusty college Russian and his tourist-level Spanish.
With respect to coastlines, I think you have to start with geology and topography. A mountainous terrain hits the coast in a certain way, while flat terrain hits the coast differently. So decide first where and how your mountains run, where your main rivers are, etc… this can help drive what the coastline looks like.
You have placed a lot of large lakes not that far from the coastline. In my mind, that generally implies either some kind of “rift” situation (e.g. East Africa), with mountains between the lakes and the coast, or else a rather flat topography where the lakes have been formed by sediment brought by rivers (e.g. Mississippi Delta region).
Comment from Szpw on 31 August 2016 at 22:00
Thank you all for the replies and advice, I’m definitely going to look into that. And hey communist nations do have resorts, Cuba is and always has been a popular vacation destination in my country. I’d imagine they’d be managed or regulated quite differently though.
@Yuanls That’s an interesting situation, but I can’t quite figure out what the two states are (Glastia/Glastian Agarderia/Socialist Agarderia/Agarderia??). The post is a bit cofusing :P
Comment from Yuanls on 1 September 2016 at 13:52
Glaster Glaster, the nation east of Agarderia.
Agarderia the country west of Glaster. It is currently in civil war, between the widely recognised Agardirian government, and the communist remnant of Glastian Agarderia.
Glastian Agarderia is a breakaway state, containing the government in exile if Socialist Agarderia, which ruled the entire nation from 1946 to 1986. It also contains the government in exile of Communist North Glaster, the faction that lost the Glastian Civil War.