Hello out there in gaming land! I'm very new to the gaming industry, as such I have questions about level design and development (of which I'm very fortunate to have found my first job doing this!) But, there is some debate right now between the developer and myself in trying to figure out where a problem lies. The problem being the character running out of the world that I created. He keeps asking me to add more random boxes here and there, but I want to know if it's really my geometry, or a problem with the engine.. anyway, here's the three specific questions I need answered for now. When you make a "Bounding Box for a level, A: Is it required, or is the geometry for the walls sufficient? B: If it's one piece of geometry for the bounding box with all verts welded, but with no floor or ceiling will it allow characters or cameras to pass through it? (side to side) C: If there is a geometry ceiling, but the camera still goes through the roof, is that an issue with the collision detection or my model? The ceiling is a separate piece of geometry. Do I need to create a ceiling and add it to the bounding box? Thank you !!

Not that I actually know much of anything about this, but it seems to me that you'd want the level geometry to be supplying the limits for what the player can do, with an overall bounding box that isn't tightly bound to the level geometry which defines what is a legal position for any object. That is, if your world runs from <-100,-100,-100> to <100,100,100>, then your bounding box could be from <-150,-150,-150> to <150,150,150>. This is enough for you to know that anything that hits that box is doing something very wrong. How you choose to handle that is up to you, but e.g. in N64 games it was somewhat common to be able to "fall off the world", with the result that the player would hit an invisible floor and die instantly, even when there was no falling damage in the game.

Any problem with your character "running out of the world" indicates that either you're missing a wall of some kind, or there's a bug in the collision detection code.

No one can answer this without knowing what engine you are using, and how that engine works. There are many ways to handle the region of space that a level resides in. BSP (subtracting or adding space), geometry, invisible collision volumes, etc.

If the "developer" (what position is this, exactly? Designer? Programmer?) doesn't know how his own system works, you guys are in trouble.

I'd tend to agree with your comment about knowing the engine. We are using Reality Builder as our game engine for this particular project. I was hired as a environmental artist, but I'm getting experience in just about every facet of modeling for games. Not that I'm complaining about that, but it's hard to know what I should or should not be responsible for. Hence why I am here asking professionals what they think of this situation.

As it stands, I'm making several interior levels and the character keeps going through the walls or the camera pops outside the walls to reveal the rest of the non-existant world. So, I really don't think it's right to continue to make "band-aid" fixes if there is a problem with the engine. But, I find that it really IS my mistake, then I need to know what I need to correct or a rule of thumb so I don't continue to make the same mistakes.

There are three of us here, the owner/programer, myself (3D Modeler and prop animator, level designer, environmental artist/ and a character animator.) Help please! :)

Thank you all for the comments and help!