General Game creation help

I have been working with Blitz3d for about a year now and have got pretty good at 3d modelling and the like.

I have created quite a few small single level games which in my opinion are okay.

What I really need is help with is larger level design.

I have been looking at games on the PS2 like The Getaway and Driver3, all the Capcom titles etc and want to expand my test levels into something larger.

Suppose I wanted to make a large street level design for each level what would be the most effective tools and how would I start......

ie If for example I used Milkshape, would it be better to create a lot of smaller models and call them in Blitz or would I be better off trying to create the whole "scene" as a single model.

I would like to think I could create the whole static model in one go but it gets pretty cramped whem trying to manipulate a large model. On the other hand smaller models are more difficult to align etc.

Maybe I am trying to simplify something which is just not possible or maybe there are better tools for large level design.

Like I said creating the individual buildings etc etc are not a problem to me but I like the idea of calling one model instead of several.

If I need to purchase better software then fine but I want to get your input. Tools to simplify texturing multiple surfaces, easier manipulation etc are what I am after.

Any suggestions would be appreciated...

I would recommend that you plan the whole city out on paper first. Then divide the city into sections and start modelling each section of the city. Milk shape should be well suited to do the job, but you will just have to do enough pre planing on paper for each section of the city. The preplanning will be the most improtant part so work on that and then take the plan for each section of the city and begin modelling in Milkshape. You could probably do something like cutting the city sections by city blocks and then modelling them. Then you could load each section into your blitz program and position them were ever you need to give the impression of a whole city. But that's just how I would do it. There's probably better or similar ways out there. Good luck.

I'm sure most games load there scenes on the fly in small sections as Mojokool suggested. If you built everything into one mesh, then your graphics card would go into overload trying to render EVERYTHING every frame.

If you've got money to spare, caligari has a GameSpace level exporter deal going on at the moment

http://www.caligari.com/gamespace/web_special.asp