most of the documentation i'm finding is related to the blender functions to actually open these in the blender program, but am having difficulty finding specifics about the file type so that i can open them in my new and shiney 3d engine [because i'm poor and can't afford 3dmax/maya, which both can export into nearly every type of file you could think of, and blender seems only to shoot out files in .blend], anyone happen to just know here this info is found?

blender is open source so you could find the answer in the source ;)

Here are blender importers/exporters.

You probably don't want to be using .blend files in a game - there's a lot of unneeded information in them, and the file format is subject to change with new releases. However, if you really want to do it, the best way would probably be to dig through the Blender source code and try to find the relevant information.