Custom-builded constructions copier / format builder

[yorick1234]

Hello,

I'm totally new here, though I think I checked previous posts, frequent suggestions and roadmap well enough to post, as I hope...
I have this time-consuming hobby of mine and it's called OpenTTD! I think I'm allowed to say that the OpenTTD-project really is, by far, the best advancement any game could ever get, as I play from the start of Transport Tycoon (1).

But part of this time-consuming hobby of mine, is that I have to constantly re-build tracks, stations, junctions or perhaps even cities (in scenario-builder) pretty much again and again, as I already invented and engineered great and useful pieces of it, instead of allowing me to select a part of a custom construction(, rotate it) and copy it to any other place as I would like (like train-copy, but now an adjustable rectangle of game-data.) You could say this puzzling and inventing IS the main reason to play the game, but once you've done it once, you kinda know the drill, and get easily bored re-building it all over again. Eg. pretty much building the same junction as before over at the other end of your 8-to-4-way railroad-T-junction. You can find an example of this whole idea in Rollercoaster Tycoon-series; your custom built rollercoaster is store-able(, share-able), re-emerge able and eventually customizable.

I have no programming experience, but I think such a tool could get a good basis by taking the right sub-part of the current game-data / -save and store this in a new file with customizable name. Then, by selecting a file(-name), you can re-write the actual game-data / -save by replacing the selected blocks (with a probable exact copy / local re-mapping in the means of the height and landmasses.) For selection and preview of reconstruction, sizes are stored as meta-data to (re-)call its contours; the adjacent grid lines, fattened and colored. In future solution perhaps, a customizable selection and recalling in means of CTRL- / SHIFT-dragging of individual blocks in stead of rectangular masses, or a solution that passes a recalculating logarithm to turn, lower, heighten, or dismiss selected objects from the stored data.

Perhaps I'm only asking to a known or not-known way; that of rejection, but this feature would absolutely make mý day and would make this game even more interesting to play.
1) Is it just a funny idea I had, or would in improve gameplay? It would improve mine absolutely, this is what I call my dying need.
2) Is it in anyway related to reality. Yeah, I guess. I know the blue-print of my house was copied pretty often, as my whole neighborhood consists of these same houses. It's common to reproduce the same model over and over again, even enormous projects, saves time, efforts and increases overall reliability.
3) Is the average user able to understand/use it. Depends on the architecture and UI, but I think not.
4) If you have any experience in programming, ... I'm sorry!
5) Be clear and specific - Hope to have done that. At least, thanks for reading.

[Eddi]

the funny part about this, since you said you checked out old postings, you missed that someone already implemented this. check out the "copy paste" or "build templates" patch.