Dear all,

This diary entry is to invite all OGF mappers to submit ideas for the city layout of Xiongjing, the glorious great capital of the mighty Bai Empire.

Previously, I was pretty unsatisfied with the old layout I have drawn out, which limited possible developments of the city. So, lacking ideas at the moment, I decided to raze the capital to the ground, save for a few government buildings within a 4km square and a railway station.

Xiongjing is a master-planned city, specifically designed to house the modern government institutions of the newly-established Middle Bai Dynasty in the 17th century.

Users can submit their ideas in this diary entry with their explanations. Other users can also provide input on the proposed layouts suggested. Attached below is a screenshot of the city interested users can work on.

The citizens of Xiongjing and the Bai Empire will be grateful for any input.

Long live the Empire!

Zhen Kang (Z.K.)

• ATTENTION NEW USERS – AS THE WIKI REMAINS INACCESSIBLE, ALL RULES AND INFORMATION ARE LISTED HERE IN THE OGF BLUE BOOK

Blessed greetings and a Happy Lunar New Year to all!

It is with great pleasure to officially launch the Bai Project today. The Bai Project consists of a group of East Asian nations set in Northern Archanta. In addition to the Bai Empire, there will be two other homelands for the Koreans and Japanese launched in a later stage. A strong regional power with a growing economy and huge population, the Empire will greatly influence the regional history and culture. The Bai Empire is a modern semi constitutional Chinese monarchy, different from modern China we know of.

The project will be launched in three phases. Currently, the first phase, which consists of 13 provinces and 3 municipalities (see attached province map), is available for mapping and collaboration. Anyone with a background and understanding of Chinese culture and history is welcome to join in the project. Interested mappers can claim a territory of their own (see the project page for details of the provinces), or sign up to be part of the following three collaborative projects:

… See full entry

Hello there. Today is the 15th (or the 16th), which is time for another mapping challenge for this month!

I quite like the responses so far for the previous challenge. If you want, you can take a look at some of the interesting entries there.

Mapper’s Challenge #31 — August 2020 — Green Cities and Neighbourhoods

This challenge is partly inspired by Cities: Skylines Green Cities DLC, plus also some videos I have watched regarding ‘ideal cities’ and efforts made to make their cities more eco-friendly. (see this video, for example.)

Hence, I decided to launch this exciting challenge for all who are considering creating a ‘model neighbourhood’ or ‘model town’. Make it stand out from the rest, like having dedicated cycling routes, solar-powered plant, parks, etc. Gobras City of Gobrassanya has some ‘ecotowns’ as well, such as here or here.

There are a few levels for this challenge:

• Beginner: A small neighbourhood
• Intermediate: A small section of your town/city
• Advanced: A whole town, or a significant section of your city

I am looking forward to seeing what innovations your neighbourhood/city can come up with to make the place enjoyable and pleasant to live in and remain carbon-neutral at the same time.

Have a blessed month, and happy mapping!

Hello there. Due to feedback received that the previous challenge on contours isn’t beneficial at this time, I decided to launch another challenge that many others can work on. The contour challenge, for the time being, will be suspended, but anyone else can work on it if they want to in preparation for future challenges.

Mapper’s Challenge #30a — July/August 2020 — Retail and Entertainment

So for this challenge, I decided to go microscale and decided to launch this challenge. I am currently in the process of developing some retail and hotel areas in my capital to attract tourists.

Basically, just create amenities for a retail/hotel stripe in your city. If you like, you can do an amusement park, which may also be more purposeful for your retail stripe.

You can actually do this anywhere, not just in a major city, but any town or area (maybe around a major airport far from the city) that probably needs some tourism and economic boost. Does the retail development need to be successful? Maybe yes, maybe not, depending on your country.

Have a blessed month! Happy mapping.

Hello there. Hope the OGF community is doing well.

I appreciate the responses so far for the last challenge. I hope more people will jump in, especially for this challenge, which is particularly interesting.

I have successfully added a few bus routes in Bakdep, but beyond developing the core area, I have not been able to develop other bus routes beyond the core. However, once more areas have been developed, I will create more.

Mapper’s Challenge #30 - July 2020 - Contours and topography

Initially, for this month, I wanted to do Urban Periphery: The transition zone between inner-city areas and the surrounding countryside, as the one who suggested the challenge (Thilo) commented that it is something that “I’ve seen rarely done well in OGF.” However, I feel that will be putting the cart before the horse, so I decided to switch to this challenge on contours.

Contour mapping is not that complicated; you just need at least some basic JOSM skills. A good guide explaining contour mapping can be found here. You can also look at the cycle map in OSM for inspiration.

I encourage you all to do some basic contour mapping around the city or town you are developing at the moment. If you are advanced enough, you can try a mountain range through your country.

For this challenge, I am going to map a few hills around Bakdep and Phong Thinh. Currently, these hills are mere patches of forests, but these will be developed soon enough.

It may take some time to see the results (NOTE: DO NOT upload your contours directly to the database!), so I encourage you all to be patient. If you are more organised, you can do contours in degree squares, like what some experts on this did.

Hello there.

It has been a year and a half since the last challenge. I’m glad to announce the reinstatement of the Mappers’ Monthly Challenge. First off, I will like to thank Alessa and Luciano for letting me continue this series of challenges.

As of now, new challenges will be launched on every 15th of the month, but this may be subjected to change depending on my schedule. I will continue running the series for the time being.

As with past challenges, the challenges are not strictly obligatory. It is strongly recommended to use JOSM as your default mapping tool when attempting the challenges. Post what you have in the comments below; do not be afraid to provide feedback on submissions also.

This is a great place to learn and have fun. It is my hope that we get a chance to see all the good things that users are doing around OGF and new creative features on the map.

Alright, let’s jump into the challenge:

Mappers’ Challenge #29: All aboard the bus!

In OGF, I feel that we have, as a whole, neglected buses in favour of other modes of transportation like subways, rails and trams. Buses are often seen as outdated and less stylish than other rail transport. Besides just putting bus stops as decorations and having a few bus stations scattered around the city, it is a bit difficult to visualise bus routes on the map.

Actually, on the contrary, there is a public transport viewer to visibly see bus routes, such as this one in Gobras City. You can check the various bus routes and see how they are tagged on the map. To create bus route relations, you need to use transport route relations in JOSM.

So for this challenge, develop a basic bus network with the necessary infrastructure for your town/city. You can start a town from scratch and develop it, or use an existing town or city requiring a bus network.

… See full entry

Hello all. Here’s a formal request calling for production companies who wants to set up their overseas operations in Vang Ngat, Kuehong, which is the economic powerhouse for the country. If you want, do a somewhat mini-advert in the comments!

Operations can be for assembly, manufacturing and/or maintenance. Transportation links (rail and road) will be provided the sites proposed, if they have not yet been mapped.

This is a call specifically for some manufacturing industries, like electronics, locomotives, aircraft, ship building, automobile, which can provide for both military and civilian use. The Kuehongese military will be glad to welcome companies able to help develop its military for further peacekeeping purposes.

Places and sites may be limited, so other companies, which may not be able to get a place in Vang Ngat, will get another site somewhere else in Kuehong. Successful companies will be notified via DMs. You can propose a site or request me to arrange for you one, and also state whether you are able to build one in Kuehong or require me to build one myself.

If you have any further questions, also place in the comments and I will answer them.

Hi all. I am happy to announce that I managed to claim AR903, or what is called now Kuehong (Quê Hương 家园), a Vietnamese state, after further discussions with the regional admin. It is quite interesting to take a bit out of what was part of Commonia, but equally frustrating to delete and revise the road connections and ill-mapped settlements in the area. Not sure if this is part of admin’s plan to clean up Commonia, but oh well.

I am officially introducing this now just to alert some users who have accidentally changed the name of my country to Raintree River, and just a friendly reminder not to edit and rename the nearby territories as well! See wangi’s newest diary entry for details. I am also making some personal notes which I will like to share with everyone here. Feel free to suggest anything wrong with it, I am not using a nuke button (which is still in Antigo) to nuke you off the map.

Currently, the territory is now almost clean; just need to remove all name tags. I will also get started on the geography and making the states. Hopefully after that I will get work on a small port, where I can make ferry connections between Uletha and Archanta and eventually start collaboration projects with CARECU and EUOIA. Kuehong, given its location, has quite some potential to be a trading entrepot, and it isnt easy to be ignored.

About the culture, Kuehong will be largely similar to the Vietnamese culture, with the same food, (possibly) clothes (depends on the weather) and allusions to some well-known landmarks in Vietnam (summer palaces, Ha Long Bay etc).

… See full entry

Evening to all mappers.

In recent days, I have been the de facto coordinator over Antigo in bhj867’s absence. For those who did not know what is Antigo, it is a totalitarian socialist dictatorship once part of Pretany, with human rights abuses and whatever that is, well, unspeakable at this moment. (You can read this for further info.)

I have been reflecting on the slow collaborative process in Antigo. It has previously on-off mappers which eventually left the nation, leaving me all alone to manage the territory. Not saying this is bad, but I will like to keep Antigo active as a collab territory and not just my personal territory or anything along those lines. The purpose of me writing this is for all users to give suggestions on how the collaborative process can be improved.

How do you think Antigo can be more open-ended for other users? I do not want Antigo to be literally a dictatorial nation with me as a leader trying to push users in one direction only. How do I also make the project more appealing to others? I believe the idea of mapping a dictatorship wouldn’t appeal to others, so how can this barrier be overcome?

For those who are coordinating a project (whether a FSA state or Khaiwoon), what strategies or framework have you adopted for managing the project? For those perviously or currently in a collaborative project, what keeps you in the project or why have you left it (besides having little time or anything else along those lines)? Should I focus on creating smaller-scale projects for users instead?))

By the way, I have also created this page on what other nations view Antigo within the OGF context.

To all fellow comrades, whether a friend or a foe, whether you know this totaliterian state of Antigo exist or otherwise.

I have recently undertaken the task to revamp the great glorious capital of the magnificent grand nation of Antigo. I have taken steps to modify the road network to make it as Soviet looking as possible, reducing curves and making the roads straight.

However, there seems to be something wrong with the road network; it doesn’t seem natural enough. I have been trying to compare with other cities like Kiev and Budapest, both of which has the same population of Antigo City, but I can’t figure out the problem. I can’t seeem to fit in any pattern of sorts or anything.

Can anyone here help point the development of Antigo City? At the very least, give guidance and tips on how to improve the road network. I hope I don’t have to delete the whole city and start all over.

By the way, this is a collaborative territory. Anyone here who is experienced enough in designing Soviet urban cities are welcome.

Zhen Kang (Z.K.)

Hello comrades! Here’s a brief delightful message from Antigo.

Will like to ask, how users came to come up with a name for their own territory? I can see sometimes the changes in territory names is partly due to others’ questioning which prompted them to change to more realistic ones (for example Antigo used to be called Rusky, which is just like another name for Russia). How then, after adopting a name, will you then try to give an in-world explanation of the name?

Before ending off this message, the Department of Public Safety will like to encourage all mappers to use JOSM. The Committee of Friendly Relations between People have also urged mappers to welcome the new ones and help them if necessary, just as the Great Supreme Leader T. K. Briarmack has given advice to new citizens of Antigo! All the best to your mapping projects, whether in Antigo or outside.

Message brought on behalf of AntigoRadio.

tl;dr

I have been a bit concerned with Mecyna lately, and I thought of proposing new ideas for this blue nation, which is now full of random, jumbled up motorways and too many cities cramped up that does not really make sense.

Many of the motorways/trunk roads and the cities need to be downgraded. Some can be removed as well, such as this motorway that stretches across Glotqua to the other side near Gilagonas via Bellefontaine. Mislabelled settlements as cities can be downgraded to town or village or even a hamlet. This so-called city, for example, can just be a village, likewise for this. Other towns like here can also be further downgraded as well.

As for geography, it looks fine but I feel that the desert plains in neighbouring Elhadia can be extended to the north (which looks like a plain at the moment). The forests could be better drawn like Gobrassanya, but it is not like there are any pro-mappers free to do that. But the detailing can be done much later, or otherwise, forget it if some newbie is going to come and wreck the forests with more motorways. The central area (around the canal) can be wetlands and swamps, while the south can be mountainous as well.

I have some ideas for the culture for the nation as well (read: a bit of history may be involved). So far, the nation is meant to be Florescentian (Portuguese), Castellan (Spanish) and Ingerish influenced. I have my doubts on Iondalban having arrived because it is very far away from Mecyna unless it has already made other deals in other neighbouring nations. Iondalban does not look mapped at all, so why can it be a coloniser?

There has been a slight taboo of having an Ingerish colony, so I thought of possibly Aloran colonisation since it has also made such efforts in nearby Central Archanta. Any other proposed Ingerish-like coloniser is possible. Nothing much to say on Castellan arrival; as stated in the article, it has made efforts to build the canal and there are already former Castellan colonies.

… See full entry

Given the extremely terrible human rights and economic situation in Antigo (I will spare the details for now), a handful of Antigoans will try to sneak out of the country. Only quite a few managed to survive the crossing (given the fact that our borders are well protected), and even if you cross to Pretany or any of the other two (unmapped) neighbours, they are not so friendly in letting you stay for too long (Pretany often treats Antigoans as second class, which is why Antigo prefers to keep out of Pretanic rule. Suria may not be, while Mazan is not a good place to live in, with arid deserts). The best bet for successful Antigoans who get out can seek refugee status at the AN office (is there a refugee one like the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees? Maybe I will ask bhj867 to map one.) in St. Richards (just across the border), and hopefully get to somewhere far from the regime all out to bring them back. (Watch out for the Antigoan spies!)

So, the AN may need to consider a few safe sites for resettlement of the Antigoan defectors. Will you set aside space in your city/town/country for an Antigoan District? It can as small as a few blocks, but doesn’t need to be so large. It needs to be well protected as well, lest spies will suddenly raid the blocks and take out the Antigoans, so there needs to be a police station. Any country unfriendly to the regime is also welcome (lessen the chances of spies infiltrating).

Zhen Kang (Z.K.)

Given the fact that a notable number of users, especially newbies, have decided to come over to Antigo, I decided to write this entry to standardise the different styles of mapping so far in Antigo.

… See full entry

Parodying this: https://wiki.opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/User:ParAvion/Bliki/2018/12/31

Disclaimer: Some shameless propaganda in this entry.

Antigo is wrapping up its massive celebrations of the 111th birthday of the late leader and founder J. L. Briarmack, and replacing with decorations for the New Year. Our Great Supreme Leader T. K. Briarmack is now endorsing a law to allow celebrations for tonight’s party to welcome the new year of peace and prosperity of the great nation of Antigo.

I am not sure how long Antigo has existed on OGF, but I believe it is around three years, thanks to bhj867 who decided to make a dictatorial nation just next to his primary country the Imperial Kingdom of Pretany, under which Antigo suffered at least 700 years of oppressive Pretanic rule. The nation of Antigo has seen quite massive changes and additions to the map, with new towns and farms in Dunthagalia and Kuyak (thanks to Rustem Pasha), some nice border towns (Gut and Daulselon) and probably some corrections to its duchies, down from 50 to 39.

Let me give a few highlights of Antigo, which I doubt I managed to elaborate much on my 2nd-anniversary diary.

Places of interest

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Ok, so there is this guy who told me that the Alam desert sea that borders between Antigo (not the Pretanic Faction State) and this nation of UL137 (meant to be an Arabic homeland), is unrealistic, because this map is actually based on currents. Based on our planet Earth climate, the desert should not be there, because it is at around the 50 N latitude instead of within the 15 to 40 N latitude where deserts usually are (because of something called pressure and what nots, but my geography lessons never covered these so…)

So what am I (and bhj867) going to do with the desert? Should it become plains? Or a large lake/sea? Should the desert remain as it is or shall I turn it to other biomes? (bye bye military training* in deserts lol).

By the way, also no offence to the guy who made that terrain map. Also hope that these plans will not affect any planning of UL137.

*nukes testing

While still building up the rural areas of Antigo, I need this question so at least I cam design nice farms by myself. (Honestly there should be a guide on this; this is very important.)

Yesterday, 13th November was the day I signed up for OGF. 2018 has been quite an eventful year for me, whether in OGF or in real life.

For starters, I had a brief amnesty back on the wiki, before getting banned again. I had fun, however, developing some content for Singkangia. Anyway, after my 2nd wiki ban, I decided to totally drop Singkangia, since it is pointless for me to continue what I don’t really enjoy, and moved on to the Pretanic Faction State, where I have greater fun developing the Briarmacks’ cult of personality, develop slums for the lower-class, and create Soviet-style neighbourhoods for the middle-class. (Hey, that is socialism to you!) It is fun collaborating with bhj867 as well, though he may not be active on PFS all the time, and also other mappers in the country.

What I have also done this year is to create a metro system for Antigo City, created some detailed forest covers, and other notable structures including the border city of Daulselon (meant to imitate Kaesong).

I have also grown closer with other mappers, such as oneofbeatlefan, developer of Wallea; TCC, guardian and fixer of various parts of Commonia (whom you better not argue with); Zekiel/Trombonist 2003, who has redone his capital multiple times and also doing other parts of Beaumontan (establishing Antigo-Beaumontan ties in the process), and other notable people which have also given sufficient guidance to my mapping and plans (e.g. Austinhuang, Eklas, Eretra, Ernestposcby, Stjur, Luciano etc). Also thanks to Eklas for the railway tutorial, to newbies designing railways, please read them!

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First off, actually how is a nuclear weapon base designed? What do you think a nuclear base should have? Because I have plans to create sites for nuclear testing for the Pretanic Faction State (the name will be changed soon), but so far I have seen a barely mapped nuclear site from North Korea: osm.org/#map=14/41.2264/129.1105. Is it because all nuclear sites are underground?

Anyway, does your nation have ever possessed nuclear weapons, or at least have ambitions to possess some and hence created such test sites? Or let’s reduce to a milder level: Does your country also do nuclear power? Show some of the nuclear power plans/ test sites if necessary.

I am not going into further details about Antigo’s nuclear weapons programme, without any consensus yet from bhj867.

Today is the 53rd year since Singapore was expelled from Malaysia and gained its independence. Between last year and now, I have gone through quite a journey in OGF. Well, not going to describe my journey, since it will mean writing much more. Basically, I have been unbanned and banned again from the wiki, totally abandoning my country of Singkangia and decided to take a new step in mapping the dictatorial nation of the PFS, or Antigo.

Taking someone’s suggestion, I decided to create a blog to detail about my mapping progress in that nation. This blog isn’t really anything like the blikis, but check it out yourself if you want.

https://mdiantigo.wordpress.com/2018/08/09/the-journey-begins/

Today is also Antigo’s Liberation Day, the day when an armistice was signed 79 years ago between Antigo and Pretany to cease the war between the states. Since then, Antigo has been de facto independent of Pretany. This date has been agreed between me and bhj867.

By the way, also thanks to all who commented in last year’s diary entry. It really gave me an insight into what other nations celebrate.