dont know if this is the right thread but:

what way do you think is bet for creating free roam levels?

-creating the terrain first then detailing it out as you go along?
-create terrain with models?
-create terrain, then sketch out locations and such?
-best way to accomplish 'road' on terrain? painting it on?

...well... basically that's the only idea i have, what do you guys think about this

bump*

personally I'd start with mapping out either the terrain or streets first (depending of course on the setting) then I'd start working on the different areas.

If this is a really large-scaled game with several towns I'd start with the terrain and then build cities where it suits. It's more natural.

For cities I'd start with the center with big office complex and stuff and then add suburbs.

when/if you do this keep in mind terrain height diffrences, granted large diffrences will be obvious (cant easily build a city on the slope of a mountain)
but if your strip of land for a street goes a distace (let's say 100 quants) and your street model is perfectly straight, and pretty flat, even a height of 5 quants will cause your terrain to just up though the concrete. there are a few solutions, the one I usually use is just to make the streets first then make the terrain around the streets.

I had a similar thread about what 3rd party world editor we could use for our project. We've got to reconstruct (in pieces), the better part of North Africa, including many towns and large cities. I've already built the better part of Libya (terrain only) from space shuttle radar relief mapping. But an efficient way of building streets, roads, and rivers is yet to be found. Crysis has that "spline" tool, and various other tools for terrain manipulation that I wish A7 had. I heard GED is supposed to have the painting tools, but it would be nice to have better terrain tools too. I hope we can find something. I've read that you CAN get a license for the world editor of Crysis, but not sure how well it could work in tandem with A7. Hopefully you can export the terrain, textures, and objects the way you built it.