Setting up a 2D world properly

So I plan on setting up a 2D world for my RPG. It will be very wide and I have all the graphics for it. The thing I need help with is, what is the best way to create the scene with the blocks of images that i have? Should I:

  1. Place all the blocks in the scene and just save the scene as is and let the player play on that…
  2. Store all block information on a large array and dynamically load them relative to where the player is in the world…
  3. Neither…?

Or procedurally create one or more meshes with quads (pairs of triangles) and maipulate the uvs to map your tiles to them etc…

Think I saw a Unity tutorial some time ago that covered this but there is otherwise other tutorials on the web that cover this topic.

With option 1 it is easier to modify the world by placing extra blocks or replacing them etc, option 2 will make this a lot harder.

I would recommend dynamically loading the world, you could use a map editor(lot’s of free ones out there) to create/save the map(s) and then load those files into your game. I don’t know if it’s the way to go, but thats how I usually do it.