So...there has been a lot of progress and am working right now on a map format.

I have a question...maybe some programmers could give me an idea:
I am converting the Minecraft world files in C# to a custom format, where there will be Header sections which "points" to the raw data. The pointing is done by providing the offset from the beginning of the file.
In my next step I want to load the new map file into memory with C++ and directly map structs onto it. I would like to dereference but of course the "offset points" cannot be dereferenced because the offsets are obviously not the real addresses. So in a step afterwards I would have to update all the original offsets to pointers.

I was thinking of pointer tables but how do other games or Halo do it (if it all)? Is there a better way?