Learnig HLSL online is practically impossible because the internet en mass offers little to no real help on teaching the subject. Whitaker's tutorials were nice, but they didn't offer the information I was looking for. I need to find a good 2D HLSL tutorial that will at try to explain the smaller details to me. This is taking too long to search for, and I'm getting tired of trying to use this "foreign magic" as it just isn't working when I need it too. Are there any alternatives to making effective spotlight effects in XNA? My only real goal with using HLSL was to make a spotlight effect during my game. There was supposed to be a dark texture that was undone by a gradient light texture appeared upon it. Does anyone have any solutions to my problem? Could I at least find a competent HLSL coder to assist me in this?
Alternatives to HLSL

