Level (area)
From DmWiki
A level is generally thought of as a single, somewhat self-contained area in the game world. It is the largest area of the game world that is stored in memory at one time, so when the player moves to a different level, he or she must wait for it to load. Moving to a new level is taken as an indicator that progress is being made in the game, as a new area has been reached.
Not all games have levels. For instance, MMORPGs might have a very large, open-ended world with no particular order in which areas must be visited. In contrast, almost all FPS games have levels. Sometimes in MMORPGs different maps may be called "levels" even though they are not strictly levels in the classic sense of the word. Historically a higher level was a more difficult area in a game with more skills/equipment/knowledge needed to progress.
The term "level geometry" refers to the static triangles that make up the world. They are the walls, floors, and ceilings, which the player is typically not able to interact with except in trivial ways. For instance, if you shoot the wall you will make a bullet hole, but you usually cannot destroy the wall or make a real hole in it. In many games (particularly the Quake family, including the games made with the Half-Life and Source engines), the level geometry is kept separate from moving objects like doors and elevators (called movers) and other objects, like props, items, and NPCs.
See also
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