penumbra compiling?

[Thomas]

There are TONS of stuff to learn about. If you wanna make a 3d engine here is an intro how those work:
http://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/98/
http://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/102/
http://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/109/

After that, you want to learn Direct3D or OpenGL and some linear algebra. And then read, code, read, code, etc for 1000s of hours :

Depending on your experience in programming you might need to learn more C++ first too.

You got some learning ahead of you. It is great fun though, so just keep at it :