I am working on a RPG using the JMonkey engine. While I was conceptualizing the map, I realized I would have a problem with the terrain.
My problem is this: I want to have a click to move interface, and have the player move in increments of 1 world unit (wu). This is actually rather reminiscent of a tile based engine, but in 3d. While making the world map, do I need to make an object made of the world geometries, and load the one object, or would it be better to build a map out of the necessary tiles, using a file to tell the engine how to build the map (similar to 2d tile games)?
I might also add, the game isn't going to use heavy collision detection or real time physics, which is why I thought a tile based "pass-abilty" system might work.
Would loading that many objects for a tile be too much as far as memory goes? What if I make a single object, constructed of tiles by a definition file, and just make the player move in 1 wu increments, giving the illusion of "tile-based"?
I'm assuming that a combination of any of these might work, it's just that I don't have any prior experience making a system like this and would like some opinions on the most efficient method of doing what I'm trying to do.
