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Hello, I have posted a similiar thread to this in Game theory, but as I don't think a lot of peeps visit there, have decided to post here.
I have been trying to work on a basic driving game and have so far attempted numerous things for level design.
1. A terrain. looks nice, but I find them hard work to make using terrain editors and paint packages. the main problem was making a road go through it nicely. Simply having a big texture on the terrain looked pretty poor.
2. A 3D object. One huge track designed in a 3d package. Looked good again apart from texture. Again one large texture over the entire map looked horrid. Harder to implement ground collision, although I have it working thanks to a little help on here using intersect object. Still a little unsure about it though.
3. One large 3D object made of many limbs. I made the track out of basic segments and as well as I could pieced them together in a 3d package. This improved texture quality on the road as it was uvw mapped for each piece, even though I saved them as one object. This has worked best, but is far more difficult to make a large track with varied turns and more importantly hills.
I think on balance that the last method is the best, it annoys me as I can make some really nice wavy tracks but not in segments. So I have had to manually make corners and such, which is not easy without destroying the uv data and having to attempt to re-texture each segment .
I have considered an editor in db to place segments down, but feel it will slow down more than loading one large pre-made track. Plus having one large object is easier to work ground collision than having say 100. Also it is a real finicky process putting the segments together as I cannot think of a way to snap them into the exact position needed (the objects will not line up using their existing pivot points and simply gridding the objects).

To anyone who has done or attempted this sort of thing before, or even if you haven't but have a good idea, any advice on how to figure out the best way to develop your levels?
I include a screenie of my best track so far, still needs a lot of work of course but that is my point of posting here One thing I have noticed, but not sure if it is in the screenshot is a noticable glitch on the segments of the track. I thought it was uv mapping originally but have pretty much eliminated that, so can only think it may be because there are polys hidden under the track which are casuing the glitch? Easy enough to eliminate them, and that is my next move. Don't want to spend lots of time messing with my objects, until I know I'm going to use them or not.
I am unsure exactly what type of driving game I am attenping as yet lol, torn between a Road rash style game or a proper racer like Hang on, or even trucks lol, nothing like, but I did like the 18 wheeler game on arcade and Dreamcast, although I think may be a little too much work. I'm not planning to use realistic physics as such just (hopefully) smoke and mirrors lol. So the hang on/road rash idea is probably the one which will prevail.
Anyway I have noticed this post is an essay so will stop there, any ideas are appreciated!

If your road was somehow in mid-air, I would suggest copying Trackmania, and using lots of segments that snap together. That would be the easiest method, and could even become part of the game (ala Trackmania). Because your roads are on the ground, you would need to alter the terrain to suit, perhaps automatically setting the ground height for road segments. I would use a grid, the same resolution as the terrain, then the segments would be based on the same size grid.

The traditional method might be best tho, if your happy making tracks in a modelling app. I would make a long road strip then bend and twist it, lay out the whole track first. Best to break it into managable limbs, but using the same texture etc. Then I'd put a terrain underneath it and edit it to suit the track, and get rid of any polygons that will never be seen. I would then export the track and terrain - with any extra detail exported with the track. Once you have that, you could use a blend shader on the terrain object, so you could have say, 4 detail textures and a mask texture to 'paint' the detail textures onto it. I used a similar technique in Tersculpt. Green Gandalf has come up with a non-shader method which should be worth a look too, using blend modes and mask textures. The road object could have a normal map, so nice bumpy tarmac if you like, because it's best to seperate your level as much as you can to allow for shaders and effects.

This was a great solution by @paul5147:
http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=158864&b=8

I don't know if he's still working on it...

Van B - That is pretty much what I will do although my segments method does not allow me to make a large and twisty road in that way or at least not that I know of.
baxslash - I saw that post awhile ago looks great but as it is a little complex, have not really given it much consideration. I also hate trying to decipher other people's code in general. I have never looked into vertex manipulation and it seems a little daunting. If my efforts to build it manually drive me nuts or I find it will never look good enough for my liking then I will take a longer look.