I'm curious as to how you would go about programming your own tutorial and presentation software. It's important that is has interactive features similar to Adobe's Captivate.

Any ideas anyone?

I wouldn't do that. Programming so large and complex application would take too much time and money. I would check existing open source/freeware alternatives for eLearning. Or if you have $$$ why not buy Captivate. This is my personal opinion.