Hi sagedavis, don't take what I'm about to say too personally, remember I'm only inferring your programming abilities from your 4 posts.
Honestly I don't think you fully appreciate how difficult your task actually is, it would be very unlikely you'd be able to finish it before you friends interests shift over to something else. Getting something like this up to a functional level could take many many years.
You really should look into the alternatives,
DarkBASIC is one I happen to know of but beyond that couldn't tell you if it's any good or not. reggaeton_king's links to XNA is probably better.
Hope I wasn't too harsh, I'm only trying to be helpful, while also being honest.