Wow SilverWarrior, right on the mark. As soon as I read your reply I thought to myself "I have never done that before, but it has been awhile since I used Delphi....", sure enough it is indeed the timers activate event.

As far as what I use for drawing I am open to suggestions. I am only using dxDraw, dxImageList and dxTimer components, I intend on using BASS for audio as I have in the past and everything else I program myself. I
picked up UnDelphiX again because generally speaking I have never had an issue in using it and it has been updated recently, where as with other alternatives seemed overly complex to do something simple like draw an image to the screen or the result
was undesirable.

Anything similar with all the drawing features I would definitely try out. (I'm using Delphi XE2). Apparently they are up to XE4 now! :|