Honestly, no I haven't even looked into the truespace free sw.. I'm so bogged down it's incredible.
I've been modding for a long time as well - not loadrunner tho' I had a blast playing it, but never modded it..
my first real effort was a DOOM1+2 mod which changed a lot of the sprites, and increased rate of fire, and projectile types.. BFG5000 hyper-rocket cannon kind of stuff.. "Doom Carnage" was never released unfortunately.. and I lost it in a drive crash
in any case.. Luca's actually really nice. All I include a name and a linkin the credits, and I'm good as gold..
I'm hoping to have a release near the end of next month.. I have about 50 maps to make (guessing), and I'm turning out 2 every three days at the moment - which isn't nearly enough.
Spending the time to learn new software, and figgure out how to scale render and set iso will have a major impact on my schedule. I'm trying to get it out before my novel get's back from my editor.. because once that happens I have to make corrections, and get back to work on my book.