Hi,
Instead of putting things into a timer, you could place the code into a game loop. After you load things up you'd want to enter the game loop
Code:
sub GameLoop()
  dim RUNNING as boolean
  RUNNING = true ' when it equals false, the game is over
  do
    RUNNING = Input() ' get user input, I have it so if they press  escape the game quits
    Blt() ' draw stuff onto the screen 
  Wait(TimeBetween frames) ' here you can determine how much time you want the system to wait, its somewhat like a timer 
  while(RUNNING)
  Cleanup() ' cleanup phase if you use DirectDraw
  ' then you can quit the game now or play again
end sub
Private Declare Function GetTickCount& Lib "kernel32" ()
function Wait(int Time)
  dim tb as long, tn as long
  tb=GetTickCount()
  do 
     tn = GetTickCount()
  while(abs(tn-tb)<Time)
end function
thats what you pretty much follow for a game loop, you just keep doing things over and over until its done, and forgive me if some of the syntax is wrong, I cut it out from C++ and tried to convert most of it, not sure if I did the loops right.
Hope that helps