Starting new game

Today is the dawn of a new indie developer. Today I will start my own venture into the world of game design. I wish to eventually have the resulting project be published as an indie game but for now this is really my attemp at creating my own beta  of a game featuring several elements that all work together for a fun experience. Mainly for my own personal demo game since I am in my last year of school. Yes I have worked on other projects within the 3d realm, but all of these projects within the last year have been conducted with classmates as a group. This is my individual project, and to start things off I have started  a short list of objectives to accomplish in the next few weeks.

Game will be developed for windows using direct-x with visual studio 2008, I am unsure of sound but I believe I will be using fmod for sound when I do get to that point. For any of you whom are wondering, no I am not a professional programmer but consider myself very efficient and knowledgable with coding, otherwise I dont have the experience in the field but have advanced knowledge of programming in VS and Direct-X

By: Indie Game Developer; ActiveMinds(Prospective Studio name);

Frederick Box

Game: Momentum

VISUAL STUDIO 2008, DIRECT X, WINDOWS(OBVIOUSLY)

C++, .NET, Anything else I feel is needed for games completion

Things I need In Order to Get a Running Beta VERSION 1.00

1. Terrain working
   1. Capable of having different colors or skins layered into the landscape. This will be for territory control zones.
   2. Flat terrain is fine for now
2. Raycasting for mouse use, or whatever is needed to make boxes and such over an active environment.
3. Create some simple objects in game
4. Ensure there is terrain object collision
5. Create a diameter (Imaginary circle) around terrain
   1. Break circle of terrain into degrees or mills actually
   2. Give a true north to terrains mills system
6. Make another class that creates same Diameter around objects with a mill system
   1. There true north will always be pointing in the same direction as the game terrains true north, to ensure all units and objects can be controlled off the same degree system.

If you are reading this and notice “hey, you can do that with some already existing direct x libraries”. Then please make a post, help guide me on the path to a proper game or just let me painstakingly figure it out myself.