prototypical

Keep in mind that if you want to have multiple bullets on the screen, you might want to utilize pooling.

When you are constantly creating/deleting bullets, that can be a performance issue. With pooling, you create a bunch of bullets and then just reuse them as needed.I a

I am assuming that is what you are attempting to do, and it's definitely worthwhile.

All three languages are OOP, so in that sense they are all similar. I would suggest starting with Flash/Actionscript as it's really easy to distribute your games as any computer with a web browser can play your games pretty easily. Game development concepts are pretty much universal, so in learning to make games with any of these languages is going to be something you can utilize with your next language. 

 

I'd say that the learning curve from easiest to hardest to learn is :

 

Actionscript 3

Java

C++

 

Another consideration is what is the platform you want to make games for ? 

 

If you are looking to make console games, maybe you should just start with C++.

 

If you are looking to make mobile games, maybe Objective-C or Java. 

 

I'm looking to make computer games to share online. Also, far down the road, I would like to make mobile games as well. 

 

Games created using ActionScript can be more easily distributed because mostly everyone has AdobeFlashPlayer installed on their computers to run the games? If that's the reason, but then don't most people also have Java installed as well?

it's not just the flash player itself, it's the fact that there are tons of sites that host flash game sites and even allow you to monetize them.

More people have the flash player because many sites utilize flash for media players. I believe OSX has dropped Java support.

All three languages are OOP, so in that sense they are all similar. I would suggest starting with Flash/Actionscript as it's really easy to distribute your games as any computer with a web browser can play your games pretty easily. Game development concepts are pretty much universal, so in learning to make games with any of these languages is going to be something you can utilize with your next language. 

I'd say that the learning curve from easiest to hardest to learn is :

Actionscript 3

Java

C++

Another consideration is what is the platform you want to make games for ? 

If you are looking to make console games, maybe you should just start with C++.

If you are looking to make mobile games, maybe Objective-C or Java. 

Smartfox &  ElectroServer are two options for multiplayer games, or any other socket server you can find via a google search.

It terms of a game engine, there is flixel and flashpunk among others. 

When you say it needs to be cross-platform, that's the part you might need to explain a bit more. What platforms do you need to support ? 

So you have no enemies spawning, and only a ship or something ? What graphical elements are active ? 

Is there a scrolling background ?

here's a performance stats monitor that can possibly give you a hint as to what is going on :

https://github.com/MindScriptAct/Advanced-hi-res-stats

I'm assuming if you are experiencing lagging, you'll see the framerate drop, but take note of your memory consumption as well to see if it's fluctuating large chunks.

Also, do you have anything text based on your screen ? Large amounts of text on the screen can hurt performance.

oh.. last one.. Are you tracing any output ? If you are tracing things constantly, that can cause a lag as well.

If you have a background, is it bitmapCached ? 

Something like this is really hard to troubleshoot without knowing more about what's going on in your code. I'd try to isolate it by disabling aspects until you see the problem go away.