Introducing the Simulacra Engine

i had mentioned in an earlier post that i hoped to start a game project soon. thing is i've been thinking hard about what kind of game i would like to develop and have tied it down to my favorite genres, fighting games and RPGs (even though like the average nigerian gamer, i've spent more hours on PES/winning eleven). RPGs are complex, and require a good solid story. unfortunately, story-telling is not a talent i possess. fighting games are basically divided into 2 types: classic 2D (think sf2 turbo) and modern 3D (think tekken). personally, i prefer the classic 2D games. games, like tekken (with complex animation and physics), don't impress me in terms of gameplay. also, i believe the 2D games are easier to code for than the 3D games. the biggest pain with developing 2D fighting games is that i'd require lots of 2D sprites for animation and i have no 2D art skill. finding skilled 2D artists to help for free is pretty hard these days. if you're reading this and you've got mad skillz, get at me.
anyway, games ultimately require engines and i have decided to write one from scratch which i've codenamed "simulacra". some argue that there are a lot of good free game engines like OGRE, and cheap commercial ones like torque that i could use so why bother. well, for fun i suppose, besides i need to get back more into low-level stuff. at naturalmotion, i write mainly high-level code and with my poor memory, my low-level knowledge is fading away. besides, i need something to do while i make up my mind on the type of game i'd like to develop :). game engines take shitloads of time to develop - luckily, i've got a good amount of re-usable code (nothing fantastic) from my past projects that should make things easy at the beginning.
now i have to go decide what features the simulacra engine will have.