game content preping

All of the questions you're asking really depend on your engine's workflow. I couldn't give you an honest answer one way or the other.

I guess there cant realy be an answer to my questions, but atleast is there any article that touches on these things a bit?

Look at documentation for whatever engine your using, and the model/texture importer/exporter that goes with the engine.
Generally you'll want to triangulate your models, reduce your textures to 256 colors in the proper format (TGA or DDS usually), and then each exporter is different. Usually they will only export what's needed, so you don't need to worry about throwing away your rig, etc. But too general a question to really thoroughly answer.

I can swear I went over this somewhere else, but here goes:
Create your skeleton, using some generic human proportions.
Model a character based on this skeleton.
Freeze transformations/XForm/delete history, all that jazz, clean up any duplicated edges/0 surface polies, etc.
UVMap and texture.
Bind the character to the bone system (using Skin modifier or Maya Smooth Bind) and export.

Take your bone system and character, and rig it (create a series of controls and expressions for the animation).
Animate it, never using a translation on any bone.
Export either the animations individually, or all in the same file and record what animation occurs when, depending on your engine.

If you want specifics for 3ds and the Rome: Total War engine and/or Maya and the Source engine I can do those.