Would it be technically difficult for the game to support natively custom textures in hills? I have an idea that hills could work as a .zip containing an .xml and .png/.jpg/other texture files, but I don't know how feasible would it be in relation to the existing assumptions in the code regarding custom hills. I'm fairly certain though that dsj24.pl could manage that as people can already send their own screenshots there and making a .zip out of the sent files doesn't seem like a terribly hard thing to do.
As for the concerns about moderating that - currently you can upload any picture to dsj24.pl and there doesn't seem to be a flood of nsfw pics. And as for the size of the files - it's 2023 - even if a hill weighs a few MB and there is a thousand of them its still just a few GB - not that much for a modern game. And if it caused difficulties in online play you can always add a graphic toggle not to use the custom textures - many online players already turn trees etc. off. I don't expect much lagging though as the game already support custom textures and a single hill probably wouldn't use that many of the new ones.
Custom textures in hills
Custom textures in hills
Lurker since 2001
Better player than Garrean (for around 25 minutes at a time until he tries harder)
Better player than Garrean (for around 25 minutes at a time until he tries harder)
Re: Custom textures in hills
Sounds good, but in most cases the default textures are sufficient. But sometimes textures of grid, grating, concrete or stones doesn't give a very good effect. I think adding some new default textures to the game would solve the problem. Type terrain, snow and seasonal textures would also be useful.