Tried working with terrains and textures, so far am not happy with the grid like pattern that all the textures seem to create. Trashed that idea in favor of a plain with a single large texture. Added sound and worked with custom textures and sub emitters in particles, got some awesome effects, LOVE the particle systems.

The most challenging thing to figure out so far was scripting. It took me days to figure out how to access other objects and/or scripts. I just didn't understand that you had to create references to other objects using the GUI before you can access those objects in the script.

Once I understood that concept I re-arranged all of my objects and scripts that control movement/activation. I now have a functional application that launches rockets, plays sounds, countdowns, resets, flys up, tracks with camera etc. My 3 year old loves this thing, and is constantly interrupting development to play with it.

Next on the agenda:

1. Adding different/moving cameras, and the logic of when/how to switch to them.
2. Adding additional structure to the surroundings, right now I just have a few primitives making up the launch pad and tower. This will likely lead to learning Blender.