Have you tried just drawing the whole scene to a BitmapData object each frame? BitmapData::copyPixels() is quite fast, but it doesn't allow for rotation or scaling or funky matrix manipulation.

Is this directed toward me?  If so, I'm not sure that would help me or I can't see how it would at least.

How can I add a child to a moveclip in a specific layer?  Or are all the layers of a Movieclip flattened into one at runtime?

I want to respawn the player object into the player layer, so he is at the appropriate depth in relation to bg/fg art.

I second the amazing sentiment.

Awesome job.  Good luck

Thanks Chevy!

Yeah, I should've warned people that the fundamentals of the engine could still change before v1.00.

Great! Thanks for this, I'm trying to understand how it works now. (I'm still learning the ropes)

I just discovered a little quirk.

If you jump (without performing a double jump) into a new room, without letting go of the jump key, the player will double jump by itself shortly after entering. A small bug but deadly if you were making a masocore-type platformer.

Thanks, I'll add that to my list for the next version!

Here's v0.920!  Same download link.

v0.920 - April 20, 2009
   Changes:
      -Renamed pm_d to on_ground; moved its definition to obj_moveable's Begin Step event.
      -Removed initializations of hspd/vspd from obj_player - now calls obj_moveable's Create event for this.
      -Added the h_/v_counter variables which keep track of unused remainders in movement and allow movement by fractions.
   Fixes:
      -Fixed a bug with the room system where stageGoto() would be called even if you shouldn't change rooms.

I couldn't repro the slope bug in this version, but if it's still there let me know.

Looking at it now, though, I'm wondering why the vspd is doing that... I can clearly see that Matt set it up to call horizontal and vertical wall collisions using the user events 0 and 1, and the vertical one clearly stops the vspd...

I also can't reproduce the bug, and I'd hate to put a redundant vspd = 0; in the step event unless I absolutely have to.  Hmmm... I'll keep searching for it tomorrow.

I'm great at platformers (grew up on Mario/DKC) and a little above-average at FPSs.

I was pretty amazing with the TF2 Spy at one point, but my skillz have since gotten rusty.  I'll still manage a 3:1 stab:death usually, though I haven't really played since the Scout update.

Thanks guys - I'm currently sorting out an improvement to the movement engine.

As Chevy kindly pointed out, fractional speeds currently do nothing (ie: something with a constant hspd of 0.4 will never move, because this will get rounded down to zero at every movement step).  This will be fixed in v0.920, and there'll be some other new features as well.

[is]

What is a scene?  I don't think I've ever had to use one or come across one?  (Yes, I'm a noob - I'm not up on all this Flash IDE lingo, feel much more at home with pure AS3 but want to take advantage of some aspects of the IDE)

Commercial games used to use command line options all the time in the DOS era. It's just weird to see it today.

Well it made sense in DOS, because games were run from the command line.

[is]

Blow should take a few lessons in user friendliness. I need to use command line to change resolution and language? Most people don't even know how to do that in Windows.

I can't imagine a commercial game being released like that

Braid is commercial, no?

On my playthrough I was also struck by how weird he goes about the process of starting a new file.  I like the idea of the game automatically starting a new file and jumping right into the gameplay the first time you start it up, but the way it's set up (auto-loading the last opened file with no indication of what file is loaded) I can see a lot of people who have two files going at once (roommates who are taking turns playing, for instance) accidentally playing on the wrong file a lot.

enormous throbbing joke

Looks interesting. Was this the engine you started on in flash?

No I just finished my Flash engine, but I'm not confident enough in it to release it publicly since I just started with Flash and haven't even finished a platformer in it yet. 

My Flash engine uses a lot of the same concepts, but there's no real way to "port" a GM engine to Flash (if that's what you meant by this being the Flash engine?).

Download: http://mattmakesgames.com/matt/GrandmaEngine.gmk

Hopefully this will help some people out.  It's only v0.910 right now, bit definitely usable and a good foundation.  I'll slowly add stuff to it as I have time.

It's based on the Jumper Three engine, but with all J3-specifics striped out and the remainder heavily commented.  I also included an An Untitled Story-style room system because I've gotten a lot of requests to explain how I did that.

It's free to use for freeware/commercial, I just ask for a mention and link in your readme/credits.

Is this the untimely end of Super Joe?

Tune in next week.

[is]

It may be made in Game Maker, but it feels like a Flash game.

My main gripe was that the princess seemed completely superfluous.  I mean, the goal of each stage is the feed the monster, correct?  You have so much control that there's never any danger of the knight reaching the princess.

She's a princess in a video game and you're the antagonist.  She is superfluous. 

Also, is Flash > Game Maker in your eyes or the other way around?

I wouldn't really say one is objectively better than the other, I just thought it was cool that you made a GM game which feels like a Flash game.

Is there any way to "restart" a timeline frame with actionscript?  IE: Reload a frame with all the MovieClips returned to their starting positions?

It may be made in Game Maker, but it feels like a Flash game.

My main gripe was that the princess seemed completely superfluous.  I mean, the goal of each stage is the feed the monster, correct?  You have so much control that there's never any danger of the knight reaching the princess.

I like how you are British. Is that racist?

I'm also quite fond of the accent.