My first submission, "I am Frog", featured a crude but functional tilesheet system used for rendering text from the following: text array, bitmap font (font made as an image), and base image/frame. It was great for a dialogue box, and it had all the basic features of a sprite engine.

I cloned this script to a new file, modified it greatly (eventually starting over), and I developed a sprite loader which does the following:

1. loads a tileset image as a sprite
2. determines how wide and tall each sprite in the image is
3. crops the image into a visible sub-image, showing only one tile at a time
4. allows me to use simple methods to control animation and direction
5. allows as big of an image as I want for each sprite
6. automatically handles direction and animation by default

This is similar to a blitting engine, and in my opinion, it surpasses a blitting engine in some ways. It is inspired mostly by RPG Maker, which allows you to use tiled sprites on an image as your character graphics. Now, I can do the same in Flash or anything that supports AS3.

Now, I have both a text engine and a sprite engine. Next, I need a tiles engine with collision detection and dynamic objects. Then, I need a system to control the NPCs in a natural way. You know, dialogue, sets of actions, the good ol' RPG Maker stuff.

I'm not sure how I'll implement the dialogue or action systems, and I'm unsure what kind of tiles engine I'll need. This will all have to wait until I have a good idea what I'm making. I also want to try forming a team to lighten the workload.