I think the tutorials are good and they brought me up to speed on BMax.
I am struggling with one thing in BM that I don't understand and it has brought me to a halt. I still haven't found the info I need even though I have searched the forum.
Ditto Duffer. Same thing happens to me all the time. Searching these forums is pretty much the primary tool for dealing with that. Learning by example seems to be the mode of operation. I think that more/better/deeper tutorials, a comprehensive manual, wiki, and a big code archive (blitzcoder.com?) would make all the difference. BM seems very community supported and depends very much on the time and expertise of "volunteers". I only hope that I too can contribute somehow someday.
I too found "Learning 2D Game Programming with Blitzmax" to be invaluable for learning the basics of BM and OOP (which is really powerful) in the beginning.
FWIW, I do this for fun and my experience level is "tinkerer". The price was right, the language is awesome, the community is engaging, and I'm having fun indeed. But a comprehensive user manual would really make this waaaaay easier.
-pmc