Where Do I Start? Marble Game

Another complex RP sim project, this one just in the early planning stages. A game, kind of like marbles, where you hit small balls at each other, or at a spot on the ground. I think I've got the basic idea of how to do things like telling if the marble goes out of the ring and stuff, but I'm not sure where to start with the actually aiming and releasing of the marbles in the first place.

The game is supposed to be fun, easy to pick up and quick to play. It should be a game of skill, but not super precise. I'd like the ability to aim at another ball or a spot on the gaming surface, and then "shoot" the ball with a variable amount of force, that should be able to be controlled. A small amount of randomness added to both the aim and the force could be enough to keep it from being a totally mechanical process. Different marbles could also have slightly different characteristics, like precision and force and stuff, but that's not vital.

I'm not sure where I should start looking for how to control the "shooting the marble" part. I have this vague impression that you can do something by controlling the camera in mouselook and clicking on the screen, but I don't know what functions to use, or how that might combine with a "push strength" control. I'd do something simple, like hold down a button for x seconds, and then click, with the length equating to force. But I don't know if that's possible.

Anyway, any pointers would be appreciated, just which functions to look up on the wiki for ideas. This is very preliminary, and an area I've never scripted in before.

http://www.lslwiki.net/lslwiki/wakka.php?wakka=llForceMouselook
http://www.lslwiki.net/lslwiki/wakka.php?wakka=Mouselook
http://www.lslwiki.net/lslwiki/wakka.php?wakka=llTakeControls
http://www.lslwiki.net/lslwiki/wakka.php?wakka=control

if your planning on this being realtime physics you may run into trouble, get all the shot data and precalc everything, then animate it

i tried making a tick tac drop game once, 12 balls 12 cups 1 box its all happening in, everytime it ran it would litterly stop the sim for a good amount of seconds

Try it again in Havok 4 beta...?