General DIF help.

Could someone please help me out here. I've found a lot of the documentation here very confusing. Most of it seems to assume I already have a significant technical background as a game designer, or seems to be written for past versions of torque.

First of all, I just have some basic questions about DIFs, and I was hoping someone could at least point me to a very straightforward tutorial about them or something.
I'm just confused about how I get DIF files in the first place. I'd definitely prefer to work in Maya, as that's where I have experience. I have downloaded Constructor and played around with it a little, but it seems bit of a pain to use after having been spoiled by Maya. Is there some way I can finagle my files from Maya into DIF files, maybe by exporting them as something Constructor can read.
Or, could someone point me to a tutorial for Constructor.



In general, I have a lot of simple (But important) questions about what to do from time to time, and I haven't had that much luck finding answers in the documentation or getting answers here on the forum. If there are a couple people who wouldn't mind me emailing them from time to time, that would be great.
I'm an art major, and I'm using Torque to make my senior project. I have some experience in Java and Netbeans, but almost no experience in C++, and working in my own file structure. As this is an art project, I'm not too concerned with things like keeping track of score and animating other characters and such. My main concerns are the environment and getting around. I want to know how I can change things like movement speed, jumping distance, gravity levels, what terrain can and can't be walked on, interfacing with microphones, etc. I want to know if I can change these things mid mission depending on where you go on based on input (ideally, I want to alter accessibility to certain areas based on the volume levels of input to the microphone.)