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Rating: 
Summary: Great book for VB .NET game programming
Review: I have the C# version of this book and wanted to get into VB .NET. This book is clear and concise. I especially liked the Managed DirectX9 introduction. Very cool!
Rating: 
Summary: quick copy and paste from the C# version
Review: It seems like a decent book, but there is quite a few mistakes in the code in making reference to methods that don't exist and even using C# code mixed with VB.BET. (this is exactly the text, no typo on my part)
page 34 Public Class GameField
public class GameField {
public Shared Color BackColor as Color;
End Class} I am just starting the book, but I have found 4 errors already. I guess as long as you are paying attention to what you are reading you should be able to figure them out, so I guess it keeps you on your toes. You just have to be ready to figure out why their code doesn't work when it doesn't. Other than that I am sure this book is still worth buying though.
Rating:
Summary: you can write OO code in VB!
Review: One of the authors, Weller, recently co-authored a sister book on .NET game programming using C#. Here, Weller and others direct their attention to using VB as a game language. Both books follow a broadly similar approach. Each shows how to access DirectX graphics calls via their chosen languages.
For example, this book starts with a basic program in many games. How to recognise collisions between your objects? It shows how VB can be used to write object oriented code in simple fashion. And how .NET enables the code to use the underlying DirectX. The VB OO code is syntactically simpler than the corresponding C++, Java or C# code, though perhaps more verbose. Those of us who use these other languages now have to face the fact that yes, indeed, you can write decent OO code in VB.
Another chapter shows what it calls Artifical Intelligence usage. I would just say these are more complex coding than earlier chapters. Game programming books often indulge in such puffery, independent of what languages they use.
The book goes on to recapitulate common graphics ideas like textures and meshes, but all in VB. This is not really an algorithms book, so the treatment is more to show how to do it in VB, than a detailed exposition of the methods.
Rating:
Summary: Lots of Errors
Review: This book is an effective game programming theory lesson if you are a capable VB.NET Programmer who can figure out how to correct the numerous coding mistakes made by the authors. There are countless examples where they've accidentally dropped C# code blocks into the mix instead of VB, and many other occasions where they change variable names that should have remained the same. If you aren't well-versed in VB, I'd caution you against buying it...you're probably not going to be able to make it through without encountering errors that end your session in frustration.
The book was still useful to me, as I needed to learn the theory behind game programming more than I needed the actual code, but it was still annoying to have had to figure out why the provided examples weren't functioning properly.
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