OpenGeofiction
See: http://opengeofiction.net//#map=13/-10.9447/168.2028
First, it was and is reassuring to see others mapping in Rhododactylia. This area, if kept, needs a lot of work to be made into a realistic area (though I will concede at points in the past, so did parts of Frogtown and other cities I’ve added details to).
First off, the sheer quantity of mountain peaks that close together strike me as unrealistic. Also, there’s a building (the “food factory” I think?) that’s 4 km² in area–that’s not a typo!–surrounding one that’s just shy of 92 hectares–again, not a typo!
Just west of that, the train station building is over 2 hectares, which I think is way too big barring a real-life example that’s anywhere close. Same with the “National Star and Space Center” buildings, three buildings with a combined area of over 11 hectares–again, not a typo!
The residential streets need to be named as well; I see a huge sea of red when I turn on “Colored Streets” to check addressing, but this is a relatively easy fix by comparison. There’s also overlapping landuse=meadow that overlaps areas that cannot be meadow by definition. I’ve gotten rid of some already.
Thoughts or ideas?
Discussion
Comment from Leowezy on 24 February 2017 at 10:51
To be honest, if I was to “fix” Holidayville, I’d just start again from scratch. It’s not just some unrealistic buildings, but rather the whole makeup of the town is rather illogical (not in a “it grew organically-way”) and I don’t really see how a town like this would develop. I’ve created plenty of places like these in the past myself, and I always found it easier and more productive to just start all over with some general concept in the back of my head, not trying to preserve any of the flawed mapping.
Comment from isleño on 24 February 2017 at 18:53
In blue countries, I think we should try to improve mapping (where it has some value, and where we reasonably can) rather than deleting it. I’ve played around with Holidayville for a bit and I’d invite other experienced mappers to do so too.
(For reference, this is what it looked like before.)
Comment from skquinn on 24 February 2017 at 21:01
Good work isleño. I refined the highway alignment for the highway going west out of the city into Fantômes Prefecture (FA 11; it becomes GL 61 as it comes into Grey Lake Prefecture as I plan to locate GL 11 elsewhere).
If it can be improved and reworked into something approaching realistic, I’m all for keeping Holidayville in some form, perhaps under a different name.
I’m still wondering what the h-e-double-hockey-sticks we’re going to do with the huge buildings.
Comment from Myrcia on 24 February 2017 at 21:23
I’ve added street names to all the streets and worked to rationalise the railway line out of the city. I’ve stopped working for a bit because Skquinn is trying to edit at the same time so I keep getting upload errors.
I’ll have another go at improving things again later this evening when Skquinn is done.
Comment from isleño on 24 February 2017 at 21:25
Thanks skquinn, I just removed the excessive peaks and generally reshaped stuff to make it blend better with the surroundings. With those quick fixes, I honestly don’t think it’s that bad. It’s clearly a weird sort of planned community, not organic; but I think that makes it interesting. As for objects that are oversized, it’s very easy to rescale in JOSM — I did that for a few of the buildings, but not all. I actually think ‘salvage’ is one of the fun things about editing in a blue territory, if you have a decent foundation to work with.
Comment from Myrcia on 25 February 2017 at 00:46
Okay, I’m done editing Holidayville for the night. I feel I’ve made good progress.
Comment from wangi on 27 February 2017 at 09:47
I reworked some of the railways too…
Comment from Myrcia on 27 February 2017 at 11:00
@wangi that’s great, I thought the whole railway layout around the town was unrealistic and it looks much, much better now.
Comment from wangi on 27 February 2017 at 14:41
Don’t suppose anyone has a screen capture of what the town looked like at the start of the thread?
Comment from Myrcia on 28 February 2017 at 00:14
http://imgur.com/Ih4AkSQ
Comment from skquinn on 28 February 2017 at 00:28
I also have the backup from the day before I posted the entry if anyone wants to compare raw data.
Great work everyone, and sorry for the inadvertent edit conflicts.
Is there any objection to changing the name of the city to something a bit more… original?
Comment from wangi on 28 February 2017 at 01:28
Fantomes Beach?
Comment from Myrcia on 28 February 2017 at 03:01
The way I see it is that the city was planned and built as a holiday resort (perhaps in the 1920s?). Therefore it probably would have a contrived name like Holidayville or Beach City. Fantomes Beach would be okay but from what I can make out it’s actually in Grey Lake Prefecture not Fantomes. I quite like Pine Beach or Spruce Beach as I imagine that the woods in the hills are likely evergreen forests.
Comment from skquinn on 28 February 2017 at 03:53
Yes, it is actually in Grey Lake Prefecture. I like Spruce Beach, but will go along with Pine Beach if more prefer that name.
Comment from isleño on 28 February 2017 at 07:59
Hm. For me, the town’s most distinctive feature was the central ring with the flower-shaped shopping area. So… slightly sad to see it gone, but oh well. Not a big deal.
I think the biggest challenge is one that still remains: what to do on the eastern edge, how to expand the city there in a realistic way and merge it with whatever else might be located in that direction. It’ll be interesting to see what happens there in the future.
As for naming — at 11°S, it would be nice to see names that reflect a more tropical locale. Not that names like “Larch,” “Pine,” “Spruce,” etc, are inappropriate or unrealistic or exclusively temperate, but for most people they don’t really evoke much of a tropical atmosphere.
Comment from wangi on 28 February 2017 at 09:40
“Fantomes Beach would be okay but from what I can make out it’s actually in Grey Lake Prefecture not Fantomes” - yeah, that was one of my reasons for it. One of those little idiosyncracies… Kansas City and all that. If there’s a dominant natural feature then it’s not unlikely it could lead to both the name of the area and a nearby town (and village).
But not really strong feeling either way.
Comment from The_Cute_Chick on 10 March 2018 at 17:24
Holidayville looks so different now from its former state… I wonder if this can be done on Cocota, Cuevas & Linares on a small scale.