Yes! There was a great Graphics Gems article on implementing quad trees. The things that change are the sheer number of things you might have in your environment.
End the end I gave up :-) The problem I was trying to solve was a physics based deformable environment. Something like minecraft but without the blockyness. Basically allowing one to dig as deep as one wanted into the planet, build as high as one wanted, and re-arrange as much as one wanted all with physics rules combined with some matter composition rules that would give one an 'authentic' experience. It was a stretch in the 90's and I think I stopped poking at it around 2005 :-). But part of the problem was when you broke things you got multiple sub-objects. Potentially down to the level of "sand" (which in my world was a .001cc chunk.)
