Forum:Request help/Luciano's AMA

Forums → Request help or feedback → Request help/Luciano's AMA

I have a bad habit of answering questions on OGFC (the OGF discord server) about OGF - both technical questions and questions about my own mapping or lore. I think that's a bad habit because I want to acknowledge that OGFC is NOT OGF. There are lots of users who don't use discord. Plus, discord doesn't provide much of a searchable "record" of old questions or comments.

To counter this tendency of mine, I decided to create this "AMA" page. AMA means "Ask Me Anything." Post a question here, I will answer. I like trying to answer technical questions, especially - it helps me better understand our systems and often I learn things in trying to answer them. Sometimes, I might not answer very fast, if I'm busy. And some questions might be inappropriate (e.g. "What is your opinion on real world issue X?" - this is supposed to be about OGF, not my whole life).

This is an experiment. Maybe it will work out, maybe it won't. Meanwhile, happy mapping. - "Luciano"

NOTE: Please "attribute" your question as below, to your username, and show the date asked (use ~~~~ in the parentheses after the question). Thanks!

question) What is the origin of the pseudonym "Luciano"? (asked by Luciano 2021-12-09)

answer) It's not my real name. I have used it as a nickname since my early teenage years, in certain contexts. When I lived in Mexico, I would sometimes give "Luciano" as my name when I met people, because my real name is not a typical Spanish-language name and is hard to "explain" to people so they get it right - I'd inevitably have to spell it out and explain what kind of name it was.

question) Why isn't anyone asking anything? (asked by Luciano (talk) 16:30, 10 December 2021 (UTC))

answer) ...

question) We have spoken before about early mapping in Harda and the origin of that name, what other information about Antarephia in general can you share? (asked by Ruadh (talk) 20:46, 10 December 2021 (UTC))

answer) Actually I'm not sure I have much interesting to say. When I was most active in Antarephia, when I was first creating Mahhal and Tárrases, the Harda Archipelago was quite separate from the rest of the continent. The thinking was that it had its own ecological and cultural characteristics. I remember a lot of debates about the climate of the archipelago, and what was realistic. Those debates left me discouraged and the consequence was, first, I moved Tárrases to the northernmost tip of Mahhal (it had been located much farther southeast down the archipelago), then, second, I decided to completely abandon the Mahhal project and retain Tárrases mostly as a kind of example of detailed mapping, but perhaps not completely "canon" within the OGF world. Luciano (talk) 21:08, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

question) So when the server switched over, the Scale Helper came with it and became more directly part of the wiki ecosystem which was good. However, there was one major change in its functionality that I was hoping to see change back- the original Scale Helper had options to compare OGF to OGF and OSM to OSM, effectively having all layer options in both windows. I used to use that functionality a lot to get a feeling for whether my mapping was the same scale between cities, to compare store sizes to make sure I had the right idea for layout, etc, and just to get a feeling for how the map projection & latitude affected the scale on the map. Having the OGF to OSM comparison is really helpful, but it's been a little bit harder to get a feeling for scale within OGF with this feature missing. Is there any chance that functionality will be restored at some point? (asked by --Ernestpkirby (talk) 03:19, 13 December 2021 (UTC))

answer) This is a great question! Although also, basically, it's a request for a software change. Not that there's anything wrong with that. In fact, you're asking the wrong person. wangi was the person who migrated the scale helper. But I will forward your question to him - it's possible it's not a difficult change to make. Luciano (talk) 14:02, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

question) ...? (asked by ~ ~ ~ ~)

answer)