Well, to be honest, it's something more like "I was able to modify what already existed to do this", thanks to some help, but I still have a great deal to discover and I know that it's all possible because the 'what existed' was designed in such a way that I can modify it myself. Simply getting the four stat system working was probably the biggest hurdle I can encounter.
Also no, this isn't my first time working with the system XD I know my way around this program very well now. And trust me, I'm doing it in steps. I already know who shows up on what floor, so I'm working on things floor-by-floor as much as possible. As opposed to one big game, it's more like (floor number hidden) here smaller games, each game introducing about 4-8 new characters as playable, new areas, new treasure, etc. - and so long as I continue to think about it like that, it's actually very easy to see goals ahead.
In truth, a project like this isn't quite as big as you'd think because I'm not completely working on it from scratch, but rather with an engine I'm already familiar with. I'm saving myself a huge amount of work by, I must confess, 'borrowing' music and art from other sources, even though there's still a level of modification I have to complete to make it work. I'm still working on this as a one-man team at present, so getting graphical or musical aspects to a level of perfect polish isn't too important, so it doesn't drag me down and I can continue on, fixing and rebalancing things as I find them.
That's the one thing I have definitely learned about creating games from my multiple attempts - create the basic structure, create the basic code to ensure it'll run, and -then- build the game in small steps, chunks at a time. Working too long on any single aspect (coding, writing, eventing, databaseing, character creation, graphics editing, music, etc.) tends to become straining, but being able to go "Okay, good enough, let's move on!" and come back later to perfect it makes things far, far easier.
