Looking forward to try this. Haven't read the book but I hope that it will be an interesting experience anyhow, or inspire me to read the book.
A tip for you regarding your textures with alpha layers. On the screenshots it's obvious that there's like a white edge running around your textures where you have full transparency in the alpha layer. You can get rid of these with a simple well known trick. I found a link/tutorial for you on how to get rid of these white edges on your textures with transparency: http://www.dxstudio.com/guide_content.aspx?id=740d5b31-96a3-4ea4-b8dd-3070944383f5