Am I wasting my time? - Does Irrlicht already do something like this, or is there code for this freely available?
This is what I'm doing:
Hope you get what I mean. I think its commonly called "loading zones" or something. I'm pretty sure that's what Morrowind does in the outside places. I'm also sure the classic DOS 3D games, F-15 Strike Eagle, and Stunts, do this as well.
I'm making a 'free range' way of storing and moving through a world, by storing all the level data in a grid, and then loading the grid cells in a 'radius' (well a large square) around the player (how many cells is determined by a 'draw distance'), so that as the player moves forward, new cells are loaded ahead of the player, and the ones behind the player are deleted.
The reason being, I wouldn't want to make a huge landscape with a BSP editor (it wouldn't handle it, I beleive) , when I can just have huge open areas dotted with trees, buildings, etc that pop in as the player moves along, because they are all stored in cells.