Hello... Some news... Yes, I'm a *little* late again.
Since November, I've been a lot busy. Like Freddix said, mainly due to my studies, and other projects (I've created a website that could become one day a french equivalent to GameDev or GamingWorld... Anyway it's my goal).
I'm still busy (no holidays since... March), but I will have some time soon (a little month

), so it's the time to check what has to be done...
About AdvancedSPRITES...
Currently, I don't use DBPro anymore for new projects. There are a lot of reasons to that choice, which lead me to stop the development of AdvancedSPRITES some months ago. The main reason is that I get too limited by DBPro's core, and the not really easy to use DBPro pointers.
Is that meaning that AdvancedSPRITES won't be updated anymore ? Yes, and no.
I'm now developping a programming language (JadeBasic). It is a little slow to create this language due to my lack of time, but it's working really fine.
My goal with this language is to create a fast and easy to use 2D game programming language.
I've studied DBPro's and PureBasic's architectures. JadeBasic is something between the two.
As simple as the first, and near to be as fast as the second (currently, it is 30% faster than DBPro).
Why do I mention this project ? Because the sprite library used by JadeBasic is nothing than AdvancedSPRITES.
Jade is my main project, what means that its librairies will evolved a lot to be as fast as possible. The code used by AS will follow this evolution,
AS is no more developed as a DBPro plugin, but it will profit of the JadeBasic creation.
About my website, at the beginning, it was only the domain name which expired. But when I tried to get a new one, there has been some problems. Then an other problem, then another one, etc. Due to my lack of time, I haven't fixed them immediately (some was dependant of my host). Anyway, everything is now solved.
So here is the link to my website :
http://ns2.freeheberg.com/~modcrea/
I've updated all existing links I posted in the subject.
@ Digital Awakening : I'm not able to find your mails. I'm really sorry if they have mentionned important bugs that may have blocked your software development. Can you explain a new time the problems, if they're still ones ?
@ Mr Personality : your problem is easy to solved, just put the dxs begin sprite render and dxs end sprite render commands outside the for...next iteration. These two commands are
@ Gask : thanks for your test ^^. It's always interesting to read this kind of post

. Here is my answer :
I've used DBPro to create 2D games for years, and AdvancedSPRITES is the conclusion of all the knowledge I've got in this domain.
Step by step, I have eliminated all DBPro's 2D rendering methods, due to bugs, speed or other reasons. I guess that this isn't enough to understand why AS is a lot better than DBPro's sprites, therefore I'll explain why.
A first point to notice is - I think - that you have too much focused on pure speed, and not enough on the common use.
AS has been designed to be a 2D game creation plugin, not just to render some test images. This is why its example programs are massively rendering sprites, and why AS not only render a sprite, but too a tileset or an animated sprite, etc. Its name is AdvancedSPRITES, not FastSPRITES, even if its speed is one of its main quality.
About paste image :
This command can't be used to create 2D game, because it has a (really) great bug.
Imagine a 2D game like an RPG, using a tileset. Because you can't divide images have to create a lot of images, one file = one image. For example, one of my 2D programs used something like 4000 tiles (images extracted from a tileset bitmap).
Try to render 200 times the image 1 : 150 FPS, nice.
Then, try to render 200 times the image 4000 : 1 FPS.
It's a bug (or a conception problem) on the load image command that I've ever reported but that has never been fixed.
Maybe will you think that using 4000 images is too much. But with only 500 images, your framerate is divided by two. The problem exist too with less images.
Conclusion : paste image can't be used to create really fast 2D games.
About sprite :
Because the load image command has a bug, this one is as slow as paste image. And like you said it before, the sprite command has problems with massive sprite rendering. And there is the fact that it's impossible to render two times the same sprite on a frame, what AS can do. If I haven't included DBPro's sprites in my examples, it's because I want to compare what can be compared. DBPro's sprites have functionnalities that AS ones doesn't have.
Note that your example with DBPro sprites has surprised me a little. I haven't tried DBPro's sprites for ages, but it seems that they are faster than before (I used DBPro 6.6). But that is true only for a program with few images

.
About paste sprite with sprite command :
Same thing than above. load image bug -> sprite is slow -> paste sprite is slow.
About paste sprite with create animated sprite command :
It is the only interesting and efficient way to draw 2D with DBPro, because it is possible to cut an image into tiles, what avoid the multiple load image bug.
Then, if you compare animated sprite and AS tilesets, you'll see that AS is a lot faster.
AdvancedSPRITES, an illusion ? I don't think so

.
About the bug you noticed, it's not really one. The dxs add sprite to pack command has just one effect : giving a sprite the same sprite object than the one used by the pack. So it's then possible to render the pack using any sprite from it.