Oh yes!
You also asked about the 3DS and X file format thing. I know that DBC at least does best with .X objects, and actually converts the 3DS objects to X when they get loaded. (Or so my informers have told me.) So the X is the native form, since that's what Direct-X likes.
Now when it comes to collisions you have a few options here;
set object collision to boxes
set object collision to spheres
set object collision to polygons
Box is probably the fastest of the collection, because it has less computation. Polygons is the most complex, because it uses the object shape itself. (And thus is the slowest.) Sphere is a "trade-off" between boxes and polygons, which falls into that "or very close" category of detecting positions.
Which you decide to use is up to the game you're building, and you can optionally "make object collision box <object>" for the things that collide.
You should also try; if oject hit(object1, object2)=1 then (hit) in your code, after you've selected the above options.
Again, good luck... and I hope this helps.
S.
Any truly great code should be indisguishable from magic.