C Roguelike game

I've started to code a simple Roguelike game in C but shit tough. First, I'll have to learn to use fucking ncurses. Not that difficult, next step: write the fucking game engine. A shitload of algorithms ( from fucking Dungeon generation to Pathfinding through evolving AI...and worst thing is some shit requires compression algorithms as well ). After I get this shit done, a harder quests will start: class system, quest system and battle system.
I've tried to read some RL games sources but shit is either obsolete ( I've seen inline ASM snippets ) or long as fuck ( Nethack's source...and it's pretty tough to understand, as well )
Can you RL programmers tell me where to start? I feel lost.

>>1
Sad to say
>>2
is correct -- unless you really want to code ground up several man-years worth of stuff, you want to find libraries that do the general game-ish stuff, and then you only have to write the bits that make it your game.

Whether you do that or not, you start by sketching out some idea of what parts there are in the program, what they do & how they affect each other.  Then you can start mapping those interactions to function calls, writing the interfaces and stub routines, and getting the big picture structure right. 

At that point you have divided, and can start to conquer, filling in each function.  Of course may need to repeat the divide and conquer process inside some of the "bigger" parts; but that's the way the cookie crumbles.