Working on the world

The way I figure it the world/zone we create is what will make or break a game ie: when a user first logs on they need to be impressed with size/complexity/features/textures/lighting etc etc etc it needs to have a wow (not the game) factor.

So I've been messing around in max although I'm hardly a pro with it something as simple as a world should be doable even by someone with my limited skills. However as always there are restrictions.

I can go upto 50k yards in each direction along x,y,z however i very much doubt everyone's pc could handle that.

The zone needs to sit as a gold fish bowl if you like: ie raised sides to stop people getting outside the world either that or i could leave it flat and put an invisible barrier around it however that kinda kills realism don't you think? Name one GOOD game that has invisible barriers? They dont they some how build in the world geometry.

So I figure that if i make it a gold fish bowl then ruffle up the edges alot to make it look like foot hills then I can map onto them a hilly type texture to break up the floor texture. then i can put a bounding box around the world and map out some mountain textures onto that for distance mountains (see where i'm going yet) then i cam map out a geo sphere above that for the sky box. Phew harder work than i first thought.

I've also added in a water area where people will be able to swim/fish it should be large enough.

I've created the initial world at only 5000x5000 yards most modern pc's will be able to render that in real time without thinking about it which is good ie: exactly how we want it. Cos by time i've finished adding in water and sky and backgrounds all smoothed and such and then their bounding boxes and then the complex things come in of adding horses buildings etc etc etc now we're gonna be talking major poly counts. I'll tell you this for nothing now the game its self will look very good no jaggies etc :) the engine does handle high poly's superbly even on my medeocre PC.

ofc any major issues with any of this will all come out in the future when theres more than me running around in the world.