Hi guys, Am I right or completely wrong in thinking that 3d games (for example Black&White) are designed in some sort of 3d level editor and stored as one big map (ie. one big 3ds file). Then using optimizations such as octrees/quads rendered this way ? Kindest regards, Steve

Not DirectX related. Moved.

Black&White is tile based. Each tile is 17x17 vertices at maximum lod, and a level consists of a maximum of 256 unique tiles.

I would belive that the tiles and levels are created in a specially made level editor.

500x3

emptyhead
Watch out for advice from the successfull, they don''t want company

Ah, it all depends on how the designers want the data to be stored. I''d say most games store all their information in one file.. and all but the simplest game levels are made with an editor. I have seen a few games that keep their data in seperate files (i believe quake3 stores the bot paths, shaders, and maps in all different files)...
they are probably not stored as one big contiguious block of data though.. unless the enviroments themselves are completely static, i''m sure the file contains the basic maps, then all the entities that inhabit the map, all the triggers in the map, all the cut scenes.. and then references to all the textures and sounds.. so the game level generally won''t be rendered as-is.. it will first be picked apart for the other information, then the static map data itself will be set up for optimization