All of Super_Sniper's suggestions are valid. We were working on an Ldraw importer for RTB 1.05 (for v2 BL), and made some progress. I just went and fished our old thread about this up (from June 2006):
I think that ldraw loading and saving is probably the most important feature of 1.05. I also think that we should try and make it the only format that people can save in. Why? Here's why:
* It's "future proof". Since it's not tied to Blockland v0002, then it will make sense to make it work for retail, or any other lego building game. Even Lego's Digital Designer software loads ldraw files.
*It will allow people to load all kinds of saves that people have posted on the internet that aren't even related to Blockland. Thus increasing the catalog of builds that we will have access to.
*It will allow people to render their builds in external applications, and all that good stuff.
I don't think we should need the ability to save in any other format, though I suppose that could possibly change. It would be nice to be able to load persistence files. It would be cool if we had a system where people could write their own interpreters so they could load other formats if they wished, though I don't see that as being something that we could write officially. All I'm saying is that a plugin system might be beneficial (for loading only, not saving).
So far I know that CFSworks was working on getting our chain reaction selection system working, and BlueGreen was working on client side saving with txt files, and Ephi was working on something with saving too.
I know that with client side saving, the clients might only be able to save things that they can see. I don't think this would be a big problem, since most clients are going to want to only save certain parts of builds anyway (which they can select on their own hopefully).
Ldraw has this great .mpd file saving format that saves multiple pieces of builds in one file. So one could have an "aircraft.mpd" that could contain a plane, a helicopter, and a blimp. The user can choose to load each of these individually.
Tutorial: What Are And How Do I Make MPD Files (Ldraw.org)
LDD to LDRAW Conversion Fixes (Lugnet)
Discuss!!! :)
A bunch of that stuff is irrelevant today, but the first part and the links are still useful today.
SNOT building would be great, but it would take some engine mods from Badspot to work with the rendering and net code BL has now. Unfortunately, without SNOT building LDRAW support may be iffy, depending on the builds we want to load.
In short, I also still really want to see LDRAW support, both loading and saving. Just think how cool it would be to export your BL save, then order the exact pieces you need with instructions from LEGO. Luckily, we wouldn't have to wait for Badspot to put this in since it can be done by script or with PHP, or whatever.