Messing with Maperitive

For a long time I avoided Maperitive – because when I tried it several years ago it repeatedly crashed my computer. So I thought of it as bad software.

Recently, I decided to give it another try. This is in relation to wanting more tools to be able to develop and understand custom renders, related to my efforts to expand functionality on my own map server.

So just this morning I downloaded Maperitive, got a successful install, and played with it a little bit. I made a google maps style view of my city Ohunkagan.

I tried to make a detailed view of the OGF country called Egani (because my efforts with Maperitive just happened to match up with that mapper’s request for some technical help).

That’s a pretty detailed map – you will have to download and zoom around to see the detail.

Maperitive is powerful, but it’s got a pretty steep learning curve too. I’ll mess with it some more, as it appears to have a stable version that runs on Linux, now.

Here is a map of my village of Goodgrove, on Arhet (my own map server).

Music to view maps by: Muse, “Map of the problematique.”

Best of Arhet, Week 5

The best mapping in Arhet for this week.

User Moskva, here.

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I feel a need to comment on this selection. It is definitely not my preferred style. The geography and patterns of settlement are interesting and well-done, but there are too many motorways relative to underlying detail – there basically is no detail at higher zooms. That’s why the whole thing is being done at reduced scale (i.e. I believe 1 km on Arhet’s globe represents 10 km?).

That said, I appreciate the effort going into it and it’s clearly serious geofiction.

Music to map by: Goo Goo Dolls, “Name.”

Ohunkagan Progresses

Ohunkagan, Makaska, is approaching the year 1900. I’ve done a lot of work on the transit systems: streetcars, elevated rail, commuter rail.

These systems show up very nicely on the “histor” view on OGF:

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[Technical note: screenshot taken at this URL (for future screenshots to match).]

I also added the World’s Fair site (directly east of downtown, on the lakeshore), the beginnings of a zoo, and lots of new neighborhoods.

Music to map by: Jean Sibelius, “Lemminkäinen Suite.”