Thats all going to depend on the hours you put to it each week, the actual programming knowledge you have, and how fast you are able to learn.. each person works at a different pace, so its hard to say how long something like that would take, also saying your going to make an engine isn''t very detailed. you could have an engine that doesn''t really do much, or you could have an engine that you just need to give a car model and a track in some format and you have a game..

I would say since your just starting that you should keep your goals small, if you really want to do C++ and OpenGL then start there and go through NEHE''s tutorials.. and then once you have that knowledge you''ll have a bunch of code to start with to help you start and you''ll have a better idea how everything would work..

After that I''d start with a simple car game at the most (basically just take your Idea and just remove the tricky parts) this way you''ll have a game that you can work on and make better rather then a mess that will someday a long time for now maybe become a game..

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Well DirectX has whats called DirectPlay which I beleive is used for Network Playing games.. OpenGL is just for graphics its self where DirectX has all sorts of different components to do different things like Input, Sound, Graphics, ect.

I use SDL with C++ which allows you to use OpenGL and gives you networking and input control.. It might be something to look at.

But overall there is nothing that would stop you from using OpenGL for the graphics and then adding the networking with DirectX.. so just go with whatever you like best.

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