Thanks for that! However the problem still happens! When i change the code to force the program to be creating up to 2000 particles the framerate drops to less than 1 frame a second. Interestingly, not looking at the particles increases the framerate very substantially, but makes the production of such particles useless.

Im quite intrigued as to why a more up to date programming language such as this simply can't handle even a fraction of the (12000 or so) sprites that 7 year old blitz3d can :s

However unless theres a nifty command buried in the system somewhere (i've come across something called nexus in the horrifically bad documentation but have no idea what it is) i think i'll be moving along to something else to be honest!