Hitech could speed up terrain production for players who want to try it with an additional tool in the terrain editor if this even really has anything to do with terrains.
Over the last 15 months and now into my third terrain, even with L3DT if I wanted to put as much detail into my production as I do, it would take the same amount of time for my custom designs. Trial and testing of ideas for micro terrain features will still take the same amount of time unless I build one, then bore the wonkies out of the GV community by repicating at every single spawn like I did with my first terrain. Oceania was also an experiment is changing that up. New things take time to test.
The terrain editor needs a clone tool or suite of tools.
1. - For gross cloning of mountains or similar geo features, a highlight of the rectangular area it sits on, pull into a sub editing space. Then the ability to reorient for the new location in x,y,z and paste in. Then you clean up and do the inbetweens by hand. A sub tool of that, build a one of feature to save as reusable feature that can be cloned onto your terrains from a library.
2. - Cloning of surface textures that can be cloned like painting with the terrain tiles. Even the ability to save in a library for future use.
3. - The ability to run Artik's tool, import into the terrain editor, then capture and clone parts into another project(1. is probably that tool). The Melee arena is a three country fantasy arena where you are trying to provide features to inspire players to generate activity. It is not the SEA or FSO where WW2 is reproduced down to the historic geo locations using Artik's application.
Creating Melee arena terrains is a painfully slow process due to a lack of copy and paste style cloning of 3D structures. I have an idea that many players over the years have burnt out and given up on MA terrains during their very first attempt. Directly becasue of how long it takes to create features all over that work space. Aside from the ongoing 15 month acrimony towards myself by some in this community over terrains, you can look in the documentation posts I've run while building my terrains to see just how long and grinding the process is. The only reason I've gotten faster is because I've been creating terrains with the terrain editor nonstop for the last 15 months. I'm starting to run up against the limits of that now.
Is there a program out there that the average casual AH player can afford that clones large scale 3D terrain structures like I'm describing? Or am I missing knowing about a tool that will allow me to look at RAW grayscale heigthmaps in such a way that I can pick and choose specific features to copy and paste into another project space? I could have been cloning heightmap features from Artiks programs heightmaps then, and really speeding up my production. Or just features of my own. 4096x4096 grayscale heightmap geo feature gradient shapes just don't jump out at you unless you zoom down to almost the pixel level to catch the shades of gray demarcation lines. There is no contrast to differentiate anything zoomed out that you can outline and copy to another project space.
The upshot is we all could build faster with the ability to clone 3D features or grayscale gradient features between RAW files. 8thJinx should hop in here and talk about the objects he is creating to see if Hitech has looked at any towards inclusion in the object menu. So that just leaves novelties, new rides, and new functions which when Hitech or Waffle has finished creating, they show up magically.