I like the book and the examples have been great (I've been learning XNA for a bit and just wanted a nice book to verify that I'm actually starting to understand what I'm doing :)

Just wanted to make a note about your source code for the Pelmanism example in Chp 14. I think it comes across as slightly confusing since you've switched rows and columns from the norm.

i.e. when you have the dpad pushing right it advances a 'row' when that's actually a column. If it mirrors an Excel style interface, rows would be up and down, columns, left to right. Same idea with the diagram on page 257, it would normally be

(row/col)
0,0 - 0,1 - 0,2 - 0,3 - 0,4 - 0,5 - 0,6
1,0 - 1,1 - 1,2 - 1,3 - 1,4 - 1,5 - 1,6
etc.

Either way works (as long as its used throughout) but i think it just comes off a bit confusing for anyone that's used to rows/cols the excel way. Just threw me off a bit at first thats all :)

Otherwise - a very nice intro book - added a good review on Amazon :)

Just a thought, is this a US thing? (figured it was that way everywhere but I could be wrong :)

Thanks for the review. You might like to know that I'm presently working on a second book which will follow on from the first and address a lot of the issues that you have mentioned. I actually wrote an entire chapter on using classes and interfaces to properly implement component based design but in the end I figured that I could only do a rushed and confusing job in the space I had available. So instead I went for some sample game code for people to get their teeth into.

As for the issue with rows and columns, I've had a look and you are right, I have put rows first. I'd like to claim that it is a British thing (like driving on the wrong side of the road) but actually I think it is just a "Rob" thing....