Okay, so, I'm getting into this whole "teach yourself to code and make a roguelike" business. I've batted it around in my head, and come to the conclusion that yes, I can do it. I understand the functional logic of programming, I just need to retrain my obsolete JAVA fluency into a working grasp of C++. That tutorial posted in the OP, while incomplete, did at least teach me how to make everything actually display on screen, which was my biggest stumbling block. Everything else is just read-ins and math.
I've got a couple big ideas on how to make my game, and put together a function by function plan of action. Get one basic feature (like walking, or walls) working at a time, and move down the necessary list. If anybody has any thoughts/suggestions/comments/advice/words of discouragement, speak up, I'm new.
First, I want to make a roguelike that involves advanced movement - jumping and climbing specifically, along with terrain interaction. The set-up behind my idea is that the Player is a mad scientist, using genetic engineering and cybernetics to make monstrous servants which you send out to do your bidding, using various abilities you build into them for the job. Sort of a combination of Liberal Crime Squad and Alphaman.
Second, and more importantly, came to me while thinking about that word "climbing". I want to make a 3D roguelike, and the plan I've got seems simple in concept. It revolves around a few basic pieces - the map itself would just be a 3D array of integers. The level would be drawn by reading those integers against a big catalog of tile-type information, and any interaction with a tile is done by calling the location's tag, or changing that tag when needed. Essentially, the only object would be the map itself. Line of sight and distances would calculated by basic Pythagorean math. Actor AI would be a little complicated, but really just big piles of simple functions. The levels will be finite, probably 50x23x9 tiles or so.
Looking through the big roguelike history sites, I don't think anyone has made a simple yet 3D gameworld outside of DF Adventure mode. I'm probably wrong.