Instead of starting a new thread for each quesiton I'm just going to add them here (and others can too) in hope that eventually there will be some useful info.

Q) Some game objects I need to apply realtime fx like roations, scaling, additive blending, etc. I think I have 2 options, use Sprite() or Draw(). Which renders faster? If they both use the same pipeline I think Draw() might be better but might come at an expense of more code to support it.

Q) I realize Draw() has the capability to scale, rotate, blend, etc. But I can't find any good tutorials how to use this method. Can someone point me to a good tutorial on using Draw()? Ultimately I would like to Draw() and have it center on all scaling and rotation values.

Q) Matrix. Seems like you can do alot with this. I "think" this how alot of warping fx I'm seeing are done. Can someone point to a good tutorial to learn how to use these matrix's? I'm hoping you can xskew and yskew as well using the matrix.

Q) Loader. I'm embedding all of my data. Can you still do a loader screen or is the only option a black screen until everything is loaded?

Thanks.