I already have work and project experience so you can expect that I can identify what's important and how to achive this. Most of you are very young, but you have lot of will and enthiuasam and that is what is great! First of all, look at this steps:

1. Story and Background?
Let's start with a Sci-Fi FPS game; Lots of banging, explosions, enemies, different weapons and like... ok, but that's not all. We need to have strong story, belivable, because that is what makes player to go further, all other is just details which makes game more enjoyable. I'm not a story teller, I hope that someone can contribute here, because when we agree about this we can see, or "materilize" in our mind what is really that what we want to accomplish. This is also important because team have to be accomplished of people which love the same or similiar things, in that way they can more contribute to project, opposing to end up in some conflict and confusing situation which is not rare, belive it to me.

2. Technology

Programming
PC Windows platform, I think that everybody here agrees with this; this is time of 3D cards, so creating some sprite-2D game is really out of time; we dont have money to license some commercial 3D engine, what means that we have to create our own (that means, belive me, lots of work and pain); however, we can choose between OpenGl and DirectX 3D, because that APIs support most of the cards on the market today; both APIs have con's and pro's for using them but if it's up to me I would rather use DX (this is only my prefered platform, I cant say that's ultimetly the best). We can even implement both API's in one engine but that things makes more complex...

Modeling and texture creation
Modeling should be done in some 3DS file compatible 3D editor, whats yours opinion? Is there any shareware or freeware editor? How about Lightwave and Maya? I used 3DS because i had mesh exporter, with which I could import that mesh as object (.X file) into my scene, but this exporters exists and for other editors.

Texture creation could be done in PhotoShop or some other 2D tool, shareware or freeware, any suggestions? All textures will be from 256 to True colors.

How about music and sounds? Tools? Output can be a wave, or some crunched data (like mp3), and it is not really a problem how to programmaticly output that data ina application, but how about creation?

3. Work positions

Programming
Graphics Programmers (D3D, 2D DirectDraw, VC++6)
- I can be one of them, but who else can contribute here?
- ?
DirectX Input and DirectSound (VC++6)
- ?
Art
3D Modeling (3DS Max, or 3ds file compatible) (one or two people)
-?
-?
Textures (PhotoShop, or something like) (one or two people)
-?
-?
Music and Sound (..., your sugestions)
-?
Story (this could do man from some other positon)
-?

4. Schedules

This depend from following factors: story, technology, and available people, and it can be from few months to couple of years. Our main goal for start is to create game with one or two levels, like beta or demo copy.

5. Comittment
Because this is not commercial product(or is it?), it could be better that this is open source project, what's your's opinion? That way if someone leaves, some one can continue his work.

I would like to hear your suggestions.
Good source of information for game developers is www.gamasutra.com, check their 'features' section which consists of great aricles and developers project experiences.
Best Wishes!