I am immediately placing this as a community wiki thing. I don't want to ask for help in programming yet or have even a specific question about programming, but rather the process and the resources needed to make such a game.

To put it simply: My college friend and I decided to give ourselves a really big challenge to further our skills in programming. In six months time we want to show ourselves a Pac-Man game. Pac-Man will be AI-controlled like the Ghosts and whichever Pac-Man lives the longest after a set of tries wins.

This isn't like anything we've done so far. The goal here, for me, isn't to create a perfect game, but to try and complete it, learn a whole bunch in the process. Even if I don't finish in the time, which is a good possibility, I would want to have at least tried this.

So my question is this: How should I start preparing myself? I already have started vector math, matrices, all that fun stuff. My desired platform would be DirectX 9.0c; is that advisable? Keep in mind that this is not a preference just for this project, but I wish to have some kind of future in graphics develepment, so I want to pick a platform that is future-safe.

As for the game development in general, what should I take into consideration? I have never done a real game before, so any and all advise to development of mid-scale projects( if this would be a mid-scale project ) is greatly appreciated.

My main concerns are the pit-falls and demotivators.

Sorry if the question is so vague. If it doesn't belong here, then I will remove it. Otherwise, any and all advise regarding making larger projects is greatly appreciated.