Before I try an idea I have, I figure it's better to see if anyone's already invented this particular wheel.
Using the primitive squares from Alice's stock inventory, I've tested a "collision hull" surrounding the lake in my world. When the character steps (approximately) off the shoreline, she drops about a meter into the water and can then "wade" around in the lake. Leaving the lake through the wall, she rises back to ground level -- a very primitive form of terrain-feature response.
But using the rather small squares to line the entire shore of a rather large lake causes Alice to choke on saving the world -- out of memory error. I guess some optimization of Alice in that regard would be helpful, since the world isn't all that complex. Yet
So my idea is to build a "fence" for the lake in Blender and import it, then use the subparts as collision objects. But do the subparts have individual centers (pivots) that I can reference in my collision routine? I haven't yet used multi-part models, so it's
terra incognito for me. Any insight would be appreciated.