I would happy to help. I teach game engine architecture at ITT Technical Institute.
Sonny, Sinjid and SOTW are jealously guarded and copyright... although there is no "atent" (smart folks that they are ... knowing that patents are open for review.)
I recommend using Torque or perhaps Dark Basic if you plan to create a Desktop game. If you plan to create an online game, start your search with "gotoandplay.it" and use their smartfox game server (did I mention it was FREE!)
SFS is a socket server based in the Java enviroment built to serve real-time data to its clients. It is not a development program in itself, but rather a tool used by the Flash community. It is "free," however, it will only allow 20 clients at once to be connected. You will also need a place to host it. You could host it on a PC on a broadband connection, but I have tried that and only get about 3-6 packets a second from the server. If you really wanted to use it, you would need a direct connection to the internet, about $1000 a month, or a dedicated host, about $100 a month.
Torque is an ok engine, but I'd recommend just jumping in to OOP for beginners.
