Creating/Loading a world for a RPG

[Dumblecore]

During the last few weeks i tried to learn the basics of jPCT. Now i want to start my first, bigger project.
Therefore i need a world (which will be rather big), but i've got no idea how to create this world, and load it later on.

First i thoght of generating the map from a heightmap (don't know if that is a good approach), but i don't know how to fill this generated world with life. I want to have accessible buildings with furniture and stuff, but i do also want to have a vast (well maybe not soo vast) outdoor area. So are there any tools to achieve this goal, or do i have to add every single chair by hand?

[EgonOlsen]

Doing an RPG isn't a "bigger project"...it's a really really big project. That said, on to your question: As you might have noticed, i'm working on this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oew62wECxqY...so at least i can tell what i used to create what's already there (which is still not even close to completition). I used Terragen for the outside world, a basic text editor for the dungeons and xml for the object placement. I'm in no way advocating that this is the best way, it's just my way. I've created the terrain in Terragen, reduced the polygon count using the approach described at http://www.jpct.net/wiki/index.php/Reducing_high-poly_models and exported it as OBJ. The terrain's texturing is done via a splat map and a custom shader that blends grass, rock, dirt and sand textures.
Trees, bushes, flowers and rocks are placed at random and saved. Houses, ruins, chest and stuff are described in a xml file that defines x and z position. They are then "dropped" onto the terrain and (if the xml says so), the terrain will be flattened by some code so that they don't sink in are fly above the terrain.
The dungeons are simple ascii maps and are rendered by using a set of 3d tiles. That makes them look a little (or very) old school, but there's no faster way of building levels than that IMHO.
I choosed this way, because my time is limited and my talents when it comes to 3d modelling are limited too.

I hope this helps somehow.

There might be other ways like using this tool: http://www.jpct.net/forum2/index.php/topic,2346.0.html or creating your own in game editor (which isn't very complicated either).

[Dumblecore]

Well with bigger project i meant to say something like: "It's easily going to take more than a year to code this"
Although i noticed it'll probably take even longer due to my lack of knowledge in 3D programming stuff. 

I guess i will approach it quite similar to your way. Thanks you helped me a lot.