Rating: 
Summary: Best game programming book on the market!!
Review: This book is awesome! Jonathan Harbour takes Visual Basic and makes it easy to create really cool games using VB. He walks you through all the steps you need to create the four complete games included in the book. It's a quick, easy read despite the length--a page-turner as programming books go!
Rating: 
Summary: Good Reference, However...
Review: This book is in fact a good reference, but I hit snags trying to run the sample code. I have Visual Studio .NET and I love it, and thought that this book would be a good starting point for game programming. And it was until I hit the first program "ChunkyPixels" I put the code into the VB.NET IDE and it would not compile. The examples are all writen in VB 6.0 and has no compatibility with VB.NET. So, in conclusion, if you want a good reference and do not have VB.NET, buy this book, but if you have VB.NET you are, as am I, out of luck
PS IF anyone knows of any websites that would have updated code samples, I would be happy to hear where! :)
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but not exactly as expected
Review: This book was very informative and helpful although several things keep it from being perfect. First of all, because the author is a fan of 2d games more of the book is set aside explaining how to produce these than 3d games. In fact, its coverage of Direct3d is small. If 2d games are what you want, then its great for that purpose.
Also, the beginning focuses too much on the windows api as opposed to directx. And although the writers seem to think that someone with very little experience could jump in and understand everything, I do think that one should have a little experience with vb to understand it. Aside from this, it covers direct sound, input and draw nicely, and has good example programs.
Very Helpful.
Rating:
Summary: I Love this book
Review: This has to be the best books ever published on game programing and development with VB. I am new to the field of game programing, but not to Visual Basic 6. I thought there wasn't anything left to learn in Visual Basic, but now I know there is much more!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent introductory book
Review: This is a REALLY good starting point if you are interrested in learning how to program games. Although it talks about a strange rank system and promotes you to a new rank when you finnish a chapter, (ranks like Newbie Gamer and Adapt Programmer) it has very serious code and is verry easy to understand. If you have never used VB before though, i reccomend that you do a few lessons in the official doccumentation or the MSDN library before trying the projects in this book. This book doesnt just show you how to how to do something in VB, it teaches you how and then shows you how to do the same thing the Windows API AND DirectX. A few of the projects are even made with the goal in mind of showing you how fast the Windows API is and comparing it to the VB ActiveX Controls. I have only read the first several chapters and skimmed through the rest, but i have read enough to know that this is a VERY good starting point.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book!
Review: This is an excellent book that I recommend anyone who is interested in game programming. It shows that Visual Basic is a very good tool for games!
Rating:
Summary: Not Only a Great Book, Great Resources
Review: This is an excellent book. It not only covers DirectX, but also covers many aspects of the theory of game programming. While it does cover Direct3D, 2D is covered more. Covers all aspects of DirectX including DirectDraw7 (this is the only thing covered from DirectX7, but DX7 and DX8 can be used together, which is also covered), Direct3D, DirectMusic, DirectSound, DirectX Graphics, and so much more! Also, it comes with a game library on the CD so you can get to work on a game right away! Overall, it's an excellent book and a great resource for anyone looking to make games in Visual Basic!
Rating:
Summary: Not Only a Great Book, Great Resources
Review: This is an excellent book. It not only covers DirectX, but also covers many aspects of the theory of game programming. While it does cover Direct3D, 2D is covered more. Covers all aspects of DirectX including DirectDraw7 (this is the only thing covered from DirectX7, but DX7 and DX8 can be used together, which is also covered), Direct3D, DirectMusic, DirectSound, DirectX Graphics, and so much more! Also, it comes with a game library on the CD so you can get to work on a game right away! Overall, it's an excellent book and a great resource for anyone looking to make games in Visual Basic!
Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: Well I have found this series to be great. In particular, this book by Jonathan Harbour is really well done. It takes you through hands on use of DirectX with VB 6.0 My only complaint is that it doesn't get into 3D game development. All the examples are 2D, top down games... which could feasably be done in Shockwave. However, you learn a LOT about game development and VB's use of DirectX. I think anyone interested in VB DirectX programming needs this book. The other books in this series are very well done as well (but the others are all from a C++ background, rather then VB.)
Rating:
Summary: Not terrible, but not great
Review: While I applaud the author's attempt to tackle the subject of Direct X programming for VB, I am disappointed that he spends so little time actually explaining the details of how the code in the book actually works. He spends a great deal of space developing Windows API based classes for displaying graphics, but in my opinion that space would have been better used for providing better explainations of how the Direct X code works, and for more examples. To be fair, the API code that's presented is explained pretty well. Occasionally the author uses technical lingo when discussing a new topic without ever bothering to explain what it means. Also annoying are the author's constant (and largely irrelevant) opinions about the superiority of various consoles and video games. I actually agree with many of his opinions, but I didn't really buy the book so I could read them. In the end, there aren't that many books out there on this subject, so this book is worth getting. Just be prepared to do plenty of extra legwork if you want to really understand how the code presented in this book works.
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