I’m wondering if there’s any constructive criticism or feedback anyone can give me on the construction of my new country, territory TA330. Let me know what you think! Click on the location to visit it.
OpenGeofiction
I’m wondering if there’s any constructive criticism or feedback anyone can give me on the construction of my new country, territory TA330. Let me know what you think! Click on the location to visit it.
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Discussion
Comment from joschi81 on 20 March 2016 at 00:43
It looks very promising, I think. You have a nice mapping style and already a good level of detail. The street grid looks good.
But:
1) You have too many motorways. Especially with regards to the small size of the island, where it’s difficult to even produce an amount of road traffic that justifies such a dense motorway network. Your country must be very, very, very (unrealistically) rich if it would connect the main San Luis island with three motorways (and two of which in expensive tunnels). To keep it realistic and also for having a city with a high quality of life, I would highly suggest that you remove some of the motorways, so that in the end, there’s only one motorway (M1) and a maybe one branch (maybe M12) left on the island. I’d suggest that you remove the motorway ring completely (except the section that connects M1 and M12). South San Luis should be connected by one or two “normal” road bridges instead. The western part of the city is already sufficiently connected by normal road bridges. Also, let motorway M1 stop directly at the south of main San Luis island. Keep in mind that this is your “old town”, so it is not plausible that it has been “cut into pieces” by motorways. Many users in OGF exaggerate with motorways, which is a pity. Of course, having motorways is interesting and they are geometrically nice map features. But realism is a very “valuable good” in OGF, so don’t make the error that some other mappers already did.
2) Coastline details: Your coastline has too many long straight sections and is not detailed enough. Add more nodes to the coastline, make it less straight, to have a nicer and more realistic coastline.
3) Public transit: Rail transit is not a necessary feature for realism (as unfortunately also in the real world there are many cities that don’t have it yet), but still: Think about maybe a small tramway network or a light rail line for San Luis or an old (maybe narrow gauge) railway crossing the island.
These are my suggestions.
Hapy mapping! joschi81
Comment from Myrcia on 20 March 2016 at 08:45
I noticed that you used Starbucks, In-n-Out and Walgreens. We don’t use real-life brands in OGF and I think it’s quite fun to come up with your own national ones. I also think it might be worth thinking about the context for San Luis, I can’t think of many cities that size on the equator in the real-world. It’s in quite an isolated position for it to be so large and important.
Comment from Sarepava on 20 March 2016 at 12:28
What is the economic reason for a city of this scale? Unless the country is like Hong Kong or Singapore (which is unlikely given how far it is from a large economic landmass) no way would a city like this get built. It is not possible for a small island’s agricultural and industrial production to support the population of such a town, so lots of food and supplies would need to be imported, which adds to the cost of everything. This situation might be just about possible if, say, the country was sitting on top of huge oil reserves, but that’s geologically unlikely given that mid-oceanic islands are on gaps in the tectonic plates where any hydrocarbons wouldn’t originally form and would be destroyed in the eruptions and earthquakes over millennia.
A tax haven is one other possibility, somewhere like Qatar/Bahrain etc - but they were originally oil states. Other island tax havens like the Isle of Man, Jersey, the Caymans don’t have grid cities because the super-rich there like to live on big country estates where it’s quiet. Most likely this island would be a poorer country where agriculture is still important and tourism is the other big industry. There are lots of interesting structures you can create with this scenario.
Comment from wolfiefrick on 20 March 2016 at 20:51
joschi, I was able to cut down on motorways. I replaced M201 with M12 up to downtown, and gave the A501 designation to the freeway that goes from M1 on the large island to the international airport at the tip of the peninsula to the west of the main San Luis island. I’m confused as to how you add nodes to the coastline, but I plan to add a light rail system to the city, as I have already done with the terminals with a tram line at the International Airport.
Myrcia, I was able to get rid of the real-world branding. I was tired when creating the shops in the first place - wasn’t in the mood to be name-creative at the time.
Sarepava, I’m focusing on tourism for the country, but with a New York-like feeling where everything’s always on the move. It’s an odd way to build the country, but I think it’s an interesting way to build a “different” country, if you will.
Comment from wangi on 21 March 2016 at 01:24
Thing is, there’s no place (=space) for freeways on that island, never mind it reaching for the north tip under a tunnel. Question of scale really.
Trick is to carefully measure out your inspiration (in Josm or Google Maps) and the then meticulously recreate the same scale.
Comment from isleño on 21 March 2016 at 08:16
I think you’ve got a good start here, and you’ve shown great judgement by selecting a small country (good idea!) and asking for feedback (another good idea!). As someone else who is building a fairly remote island with a large population, I’d say it’s certainly possible to invent a story to justify it. You may want to look at real-world islands such as Oahu or Mauritius for inspiration.
Motorway excess is probably the most widespread mapping issue in OGF. :-) I think it’s just more obvious when it’s on an island. For me, the key to realistic transportation is to imagine a restricted budget. Imagine that there’s only a limited amount of money, and you can’t draw all the transportation you want to draw. This forces you to make tough decisions about which projects to build and which to reject. It requires lots of careful thinking, but the result is a map that looks much more realistic.
The only other suggestion I’d add is that you may want to rethink your rivers. Rivers generally don’t flow from ocean to ocean. Instead they flow from high ground to low ground, like this: http://i.imgur.com/B8vOGCP.gif Note how several rivers merge as they flow downhill, but there are no other connections between rivers.
As to your question about adding nodes to the coastline, in JOSM you can add nodes to the coastline (or any line) by dragging the yellow plus signs. In any case, have fun. :-)
Comment from Mapking on 17 October 2016 at 12:25
Nice place. I agree. you need better coastlines