[tim57282]

I did a little game maker a few years ago, so ill see if i can help a bit.

The first thing is to learn GML, it makes some thing much easer, plus you cant do anything flash without it.

"How can I keep my attack going after it strikes an enemy, so the attack doesn't disappear as soon as it comes in contact with one?" - thats easy. you will probably have created a 'destroy this' thing under the object collision. If you want to keep the bullet going then it should only destroy the enemy, not the bullet. The problem with that is that you will need something later on the destroy the bullet, otherwise it will continue off forever, and you might get lag. So to fix that just put a timer on it, or make it destroy when it reaches the edge of the screen,

"How can I give enemies a little more health, like I have to hit it three times with my attack or something?" - to do that set up an object variable with initial value 3, say and when the bullet collides with it make its new value = its old value -1. the only problem is if your bullet goes through an enemy then it will be continually colliding.

The rest are a bit tricker, and i cant think of easy answers off the top of my head. have you looked at the tutorials section of the game maker site? That is still there, right? If its not pm me your email, and ill send you some gm stuff from my computer.

Well i hope this helps. Good luck.