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Albion - A Fictional Britain

Welcome! This thread contains the development of my latest OpenTTD project. At this point in my TTD life I've tired of actually playing the game properly, and I mainly create set-piece networks within a map or play the game in a sandbox format.

I previously toyed with the idea of creating a multi-company game, where a private multiplayer server is established and I control the overall map using a "master company". That stalled because I didn't have a plan in place beforehand.

I've long been a critic of the generation of towns and industries in the map creator, and I was really disappointed that a very pleasing map I had come across using TerraGenesis could not be done justice. R2dical's industry generator sort of helped, but it didn't help with town placement, which left a lot to be desired!

So I decided to combine all of these things. Build my own map, my own game, my own companies, with my own placement of towns and industry.

Albion
The name Albion is an old Celtic name for the island of Great Britain (that is England, Scotland and Wales). The country sits on a peninsula to the south of the continent of Eurica.

There are eight historical counties of Albion:

Mercia - a marshy area in the north west, with Saltwell Lake in the centre.
Caldersex - a typically northern area containing the basin of the River Calder, the longest river in Albion.
Albairnshire - A hilly, windswept county, incorporating the Arrancairn mountains and Loch Cluanie.
Eastmorland - A less hilly area occupying the peninsula forming the northern side of the entrance to Albion's huge estuary plain.
Westhorpe - A central area containing the capital Firbourne, located to the west of the River Thorpe.
Devnentshire - A flat, largely plain area in the west of the country.
Dordenshire - A coastal county in the south west, containing many small communities.
Cambria - A large, rolling land with many raw industries and several coastal communities.
Each of the counties are linked to real English areas, and town names and industry styles will follow these where possible, as follows:

Mercia - Midlands (The old name for the north border of the Saxon kingdom, but has also been used to refer to people of marshes before)
Caldersex - North (Lancashire and Yorkshire)
Albairnshire - Scotland (Albairn is an old name for Scotland)
Eastmorland - Cumbria, North East and Borders (Compare Westmorland)
Westhorpe - East
Devnentshire - South West (Devnent an old name for Devon)
Dordenshire - Kent, South
Cambria - Wales

It's planned to use some GRFs but I'm not revealing these just yet!

Finally for tonight:

The map is entirely fictional, and to that end, I am aiming to use town names that either don't exist, or belong to very small settlements. I have assigned a real British region for each part of the map, and will try and use town and place names in the style of those areas. They don't quite fit in the usual way - it's very rough ...! North (Cent) is a bit confusing - basically refers to Lancashire and Yorkshire. North East and Borders is for the "north north" of England. Scotland, as you can see, has its own area.

Most are self explanatory, but LDN is "London" style names and places, and RDM is random.
As I am making this scenario for myself, I'm using ISR tiles from new objects to reserve areas, and then expanding towns around it. If it comes to releasing this scenario for public use, I'll remove those tiles and leave the areas empty. You can then build as you desire

Is 'Alexandra Palace' a public GRF ? If yes, could you tell me where can I find it ?

It wasn't, as it was part of mph's British Stations effort.

I don't know whether jvassie has incorporated the Ally Pally grf into the British Modular Stations Set, which is also not released. If it isn't, I'll happily send you a copy - it is only a 1 non-track station tile of an incarnation of Ally Pally though.

Right, well I'm on the case - this has been my little project for the last few days. I've finally finished the first of the regions. This is the South West region, but the style of the layout and town names are more south and east. As I said, a few have been made up, but some names have been gleaned from hamlets and features in Kent, Surrey and Sussex.

Currently, I've only placed the dominant industry in the area - farms.

There's a map.
And a screenshot of the area, so you can see other bits like labels and that.

Wow, nice, this is extremely creative! Hope Springs, good town name.

Expect you can have some real fun with West Country, Scotland and NE type names.

are you posting your map when you're done?
because this looks good in my view

Kevo00 wrote:Wow, nice, this is extremely creative! Hope Springs, good town name.

Bit American, but I found a hamlet in Kent ending in ... Spring, so I might change it to Hope Spring.

Thanks for the kind comments, gentlemen.

I stupidly did not save before Windows restarted itself...

Anyway, I've made some changes to the original South West that I posted - which can now be found here. I've not placed the farms this time, but I've added some extra hamlets and an extra proposed line.

See also the "metropolis" I've created in Firbourne, in the centre of the map...

FWIW, Allypally is actually all the station buildings in british stations and they're not currently in BMSS.

Thanks. Will forward it now.

Have a gander at this... County names for the map, which I have now named Albion.

Albion is an old English name for the island of Great Britain (that is, England, Scotland and Wales).

- Cambria is an old name for Wales
- Mercia comes from "marshes".
- Devnentshire is derived from the old Briton term for Devon, and I've put -shire on the end, as per!
- Eastmorland comes from Westmorland, an ancient county in north west England, which literally means Land West of the Moors - the intention was to use the elements of the map to influence the names.
- Dordenshire comes from the River Dorden which runs along its north border.
- Westhorpe is literally west of the River Thorpe.
- Caldersex is intended to mean Saxons of the Calder - which is what I've named the river that runs through the county. The Calder is, of course, a river that's larger than I'd like in terms of "real places", but it's there anyway!
- Albairnshire is a corruption on my part, from Albann - an old Gaelic name for Scotland - again with -shire wapped on the end!

Mercia was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom in the East Midlands.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercia

APDAF wrote:Mercia was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom in the East Midlands.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercia

Yes, but the modern English interpretation is unclear. Some say that Mercians were "border people" - i.e. the northern limits of the Saxon empire. Others say that Mercia was related to the term Marshes, which is what I've used it for, regardless. Although its position on the map means it could easily border somewhere else.

And it is also next to Caldersex which is Saxon it could be named after the kingdom.

Dave W wrote: I am aiming to use town names that either don't exist, or belong to very small settlements.

By very small, do you mean settlements with 5 platform stations like Three Bridges? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Brid ... ay_station

Thanks for your input.

That place is called Three Bridges because - lo and behold - there are three bridges in the town.

And thanks for the Wikipedia link - I'm fully aware of its existence, thanks.

Very good maps - I love the pre-1965 counties! Gets the flavour just right.

Coo - look at this complex setup...

Southern Main Line and the Bow Valley Line will diverge at Bow Estuary Jn.

The South Cambria area (based on Wales) begins to take shape; shown here the town of Duffryn (taken from an estate in Newport). The South Coast Main Line continues over the Afon Duffryn, whilst a single line connects it with Duffryn Pontrhaeadr and what will become a single rural branchline...

Going well, this.