What really goes on behind all of these events and actions in Game Maker?  When are they performed, how much memory do they take up.  Well, this page is a repository for this kind of information.  As soon as I find out about it, Ill post it here.

Event Order

1. Begin step event

2. Alarm events

3. Keyboard, Key press, and Key release events

4. Mouse events

5. Normal step event

6. All instances are set to their new positions

7. Collision event

8. End step event

9. Drawing event

Memory Usage

Reals use 8 Bytes

Strings use 5 Bytes + (Characters in the string * 1 Byte) It is speculated that every string is initially allocated 1024 Bytes to divert any early memory management.

Rendering

Game Maker renders a frame per logic step. What this means, is that if the logic part of your code is slow, the rendering will be slow. Also, if the rendering is slow, things like input and calculation will be slowed down as well. They are linked.