Civilization

First off, I was able to solve the black screen problem I was having earlier.   I did this by using a different way of accessing the assets.  I was using old code is what the problem boiled down to.  Once I found a new way to load in the assets, the problem went away.

Today I was able to finish what I wanted to do before the black screen problems.  I am putting objects into the levels to give the game more than just flat ground.  Here are some pictures of my town:

EDIT: looking at the pictures now, the shadows appear to be too intense.  I put the game light about where the sun is in the cube map (the picture in the background), which is why the shadows are this intense.  I think I will raise the game light up a bit tomorrow!

I have not yet hooked the model upto the physics engine to prevent the helicopter from flying through the buildings.

Loading trees into the game now will not be hard at all, though I have not yet decided on a way to put trees into the game.  Making Vector3f (three float values) coordinates for each tree in a level is a daunting task.  I still am thinking of different ways to do this, hopefully some googling will turn up something!