While writing this book, I was fortunate enough to work with an excellent team at Packt Publishing Ltd, whose contributions vastly improved the presentation of this book. James Lumsden helped me to transform the idea in the final book and to take my first steps working with a new Beginner's Guide. Zainab Bagasrawala made everything easier with both her incredible time management and patience. Darshana Shinde helped me realize my vision for this book and provided many sensible suggestions regarding the text, the format and the flow. The reader will notice her great work. Arani Roy made the sentences, the paragraphs, and the code easier to read and to understand. He has added great value to the final drafts.

Special thanks go to Einar Ingebrigtsen (http://www.ingebrigtsen.info), Balder's lead developer. Einar's work inspired this book. He made it possible to have a game engine for Silverlight 3. This book was possible because Einar helped me with each new feature added to Balder. His outstanding knowledge on game development made it possible to work with an excellent engine. I also have to thank Petri Wilhelmsen, another Balder's developer who also helped to improve the engine. I would like to thank my technical reviewers and proofreaders, for their thorough reviews and insightful comments. I was able to incorporate some of the knowledge and wisdom they have gained in their many years in the software development industry. The examples, the pictures and the code include the great feedback provided by Tarkan Karadayi. Tarkan helped me a lot to include better and shorter code to simplify the learning process. I would like to thank Mark Dawson, Kit3D's developer. Mark's work also inspired the development of many simple 3D applications using previous Silverlight versions and his simple yet powerful engine. I wish to acknowledge Bill Reiss, as he worked to show the world that Silverlight games were possible. He was another great source of inspiration for my work on this book. I would like to thank Doug Holland, as his blog posts at Intel Software Network always helped me to stay tuned with tips related to many products used in this book.

I must acknowledge David Barnes, Beginner's Guide Series Editor at Packt. His help in my previous book and his wisdom is also part of this new one. I must also thank Shilpa Dube, Rakesh Shejwal and Rajashree Hamine. They helped me in my previous book written for Packt and this new one was much easier bearing in mind their excellent tips.

I wish to acknowledge Hector A. Algarra, who always helped me to improve my writing.

Special thanks go to my wife, Vanesa S. Olsen, my son Kevin, my nephew, Nicolas, my father, Jose Carlos, who acted as a great sounding board and participated in many hours of technical discussions, my sister, Silvina, who helped me when my grammar was confusing and my mother Susana. They were always supporting me during the production of this book.