I can understand everyone's thoughts about lack of proof, but I want to hold back on too much of the screenshot-iness until I have something more visual to show off. most of my programming thus far has been more internal stuff, such as game states, multi-camera managers, custom file format loaders, and implementing a GUI worth seeing, as well as various other minor tasts such as loading screens, the title screen (which doesn't look too bad right now, considering it's temprorary-- maybe I'll post a shot of that, at least...), and a heightmap renderer for the overworld map.

As far as keeping it quiet is concerned, I'm not OVERLY concerned (although I don't want to be cocky about it...) As I said, I've no desire to be marketing this in any way (as I have no rights to .... pretty much anything), and even if they do manage to put a stop to it publicly, I'm determined enough on this project to continue to develop it for myself, if nothing else.

As far as the considerable work is concerned, it's a free-time project, so it's after work and on weekends and such... so I guess you could consider that a considerable amount of time, especially when it gets more to the 6-months-since-starting mark.

I'm programming in C++, and partway thru the beginning of my project setup, I ported over from VC++6.0 to VC++Express. (I'm aware of some quirks about how to distribute executables from that environment, no need to warn me on that, heh^^)

I -was- working on my own 3D engine with my last project, and it was coming along nicely enough, but I quickly (if you define quickly as 2 years) found out that if I ever wanted to actually get to work on my _GAME_, I couldn't be focusing so much on the engine. And if I didn't focus enough on the engine, it wouldn't be capable of doing what I want it to. End result, use a currently-maintained free engine. My engine of choice: Ogre. It's only a rendering engine, not an entire game engine, which is exactly what I want.

Although, one thing I was curious about recently, is where EXACTLY are the boundaries for the different "zones" of enemy formations on the world maps(s)? I've seen small (read: minimap) versions, but I'd like something like an overlay on top of a 1:1 worldmap... Like I said, I want this to be retardedly accurate, as far as the internals go. I'm even going so far as to program in the original glitches such as psycho cyan, etc.. (But I'll be including an option to "patch" them up, which will by default be on)

My programming background, in 1 sentence: I started programming, myself back in highschool, but the teacher knew nothing about it and thus was unable to teach me anything in the class, and as such, I was left to my own methods, so since then I've been making many small projects and whatnot, mostly for personal reasons/family/friends, and whatnot, so as to improve my skills up until the point where I am at today, which would be the age of 24, and having various small apps/games/etc finished (and more unfinished) distributed to various friends & garbage cans, and really aren't very available anymore, not that I care very much, as this is definately my most important project to date. (Okay, so it was 1 _LONG_ sentence)

Now, let's see what I can do about a screeny or 3...