How to build and use levels?

Hello, i’m new to 3D gamedev and so far only used some simple geometries to create game level by coding it, but want to make things in more smart way in my next project. It’s gonna be primitive first person shooter aim trainer, and player will be available to configure elevation of the sections(tried my best to draw that), which should be animated. All I know is that I should use blender, level should be 3d model or multiple models, but i have no idea how to do it properly. Are there any good tutorials, books or projects with source code available where I can learn the right approach to building levels?

Every time time I read about “the right way” to do gamedev, I recall Nintendo and their way of making games. It’s all hacks, gimmicks, and patchwork (Animal Crossing is a single cylinder with models stuck to it. Mario faces were never animated - they just decided it’s faster to “swap” faces on the go. Half of Legend Of Zelda maps are actually a single model with swapped tile sets and enabled fog.)

Just do what works for you, there’s no right way. It may be a bit divisive opinion, but imo reading books and stories from gamedevs teaches you about solutions to very specific problems, which probably will never occur in your projects.

As for examples of how people do things in their games - Js13kGames. 100s of completed games, different types and approaches. I’m sure you’ll find something interesting there :smiling_face: (each with source code ofc) !

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Agreed with @mjurczyk, there’s no one right way.

Here’s another example though: https://increment.com/frontend/a-frontend-stack-for-video-games/. There’s limited detail in that article, but the general approach is to use Blender as the level editor, setting Custom Properties on objects that can be used at runtime by three.js to manage game state.

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