My thoughts a not to even attempt to build a single generic client but use common base code to make it very much easier to build different clients.
All clients will need the following subsystems:
A renderer which can take render a vertex buffer in a particular way.
A rendering queue which will organise what to render and the order to draw it.
An input controller which organised platform dependent clicks and button presses into useful events.
An entity controller which handles movement and animation of models.
A world controller which handles loading and representation of the world.
A physics system for handling movement prediction and collision detection.
A user interface system for drawing overlay windows and routing input.
A sound subsystem for playing music and sounds.
A network subsystem for comminicating with the server.
I'm thinking that much of this code can be made generic and which will be used by game specific code to make a specific client.
First lets make a generic 3d multiplayer world which isn't a game, it just lets you move your cube around a 3d heightmap world (because it's easy to generate) and talk to other cubes. That would need a lot of the basic infrastructure to be made but need little game logic. Then use the basic code for that to build a real game.
I think the enemy is trying to do too much and never achieving anything so lets start very simple and make something which can be built on to make something good.
Going to think about this for a few days now...
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