Continuos Timer and object for a game AS3 - actionscript-3

Question

I am currently working on a game where you need to survive as long as possible while dodging questions that come your way. (all with AS3)
At the moment I am going from 1 scene to another in between the game field and the question field, but everytime I go to the question scene the timer in the game scene resets itself. I was wondering if it was possible to have the timer continue while being in the question scene?
Also I have a movable character in between the menus which incidentally are also made in different scenes and the player is able to move him around, and I would very much like him to stay in the last position he was in the next screen, as in I move him to the top right in the main menu and when I go to the options menu I want him to still be in the top right and not in his initial position.
As for my timer this is the code I am using at the moment:
import flash.utils.Timer;
import flash.events.Event;
import flash.events.TimerEvent;
import flash.globalization.DateTimeFormatter;
var timer:Timer = new Timer(100);
timer.start();
timer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, timerTickHandler);
var timerCount:int = 0;
function timerTickHandler(Event:TimerEvent):void
{
timerCount += 100;
toTimeCode(timerCount);
}
function toTimeCode(milliseconds:int) : void {
//create a date object using the elapsed milliseconds
var time:Date = new Date(milliseconds);
//define minutes/seconds/mseconds
var minutes:String = String(time.minutes);
var seconds:String = String(time.seconds);
var miliseconds:String = String(Math.round(time.milliseconds)/100);
//add zero if neccecary, for example: 2:3.5 becomes 02:03.5
minutes = (minutes.length != 2) ? '0'+minutes : minutes;
seconds = (seconds.length != 2) ? '0'+seconds : seconds;
//display elapsed time on in a textfield on stage
timer_txt.text = minutes + ":" + seconds+"." + miliseconds;
}
And my character is using this code:
/* Move with Keyboard Arrows
Allows the specified symbol instance to be moved with the keyboard arrows.
Instructions:
1. To increase or decrease the amount of movement, replace the number 5 below with the number of pixels you want the symbol instance to move with each key press.
Note the number 5 appears four times in the code below.
*/
var upPressed:Boolean = false;
var downPressed:Boolean = false;
var leftPressed:Boolean = false;
var rightPressed:Boolean = false;
rutte.addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, fl_MoveInDirectionOfKey);
stage.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN, fl_SetKeyPressed);
stage.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_UP, fl_UnsetKeyPressed);
function fl_MoveInDirectionOfKey(event:Event)
{
if (upPressed)
{
rutte.y -= 5;
}
if (downPressed)
{
rutte.y += 5;
}
if (leftPressed)
{
rutte.x -= 5;
rutte.scaleX = 1; // face left
}
if (rightPressed)
{
rutte.x += 5;
rutte.scaleX = -1; // face right
}
}
function fl_SetKeyPressed(event:KeyboardEvent):void
{
switch (event.keyCode)
{
case Keyboard.UP:
{
upPressed = true;
break;
}
case Keyboard.DOWN:
{
downPressed = true;
break;
}
case Keyboard.LEFT:
{
leftPressed = true;
break;
}
case Keyboard.RIGHT:
{
rightPressed = true;
break;
}
}
}
function fl_UnsetKeyPressed(event:KeyboardEvent):void
{
switch (event.keyCode)
{
case Keyboard.UP:
{
upPressed = false;
break;
}
case Keyboard.DOWN:
{
downPressed = false;
break;
}
case Keyboard.LEFT:
{
leftPressed = false;
break;
}
case Keyboard.RIGHT:
{
rightPressed = false;
break;
}
Thank you in advance for all the help you can give me.
Kind Regards.

Answer 1

in flash there is a fundamental aspect of how timeline and scenes works. Once you move away from a frame to another frame, The content of the frame and it's properties/states/actions are gone and reseted.
Personally I recommend you use a single scene with a timeline divided into frames labeled, there you can specify a layer for the actions and global variables, one for the user interface and another one for the specific actions of each frame. example:
So you never lose the reference of variables because the frame is not constantly recreated, all your important actions, including you timer, should be in your first frame.
I was testing, here you can see a working example: http://db.tt/FZuQVvt3. Here you can download the FLA file to be used as a base for your project: http://db.tt/RHG9G5lo