Howdy all,
I have always been a fan of Dungeon Siege 1 (~2002), but never stood still by the fact that its massive worlds (singleplayer and multiplayer) are completely continuous worlds so without loading times. Here is an interesting article on how they did it and the dozens of lessons they learned it the hard way:
http://scottbilas.com/files/2003/gdc_san_jose/continuous_world_paper.pdfedit: ofcourse the exact way they did it is to much work for indies/hobbyists (to much asset/mapping work anyway); but its chunks, nodes, doors and pathing systems can be helpfull to give you more ideas for your own obstacles you face or perhaps to gain design ideas.
