hey Tim, fire.fla from your collection seems to be the nicest one. after what youve said, i decided to analise it one more time, and now i get it - its frame based, sure, but... the frames fade each other. thats why the fire looks so smooth. here my version (made from orginal files)... it doesnt look so cool (multiple fades cause CPU slowing down) but shows how it is (i hope) constructed:
P.S.
Bret, your link seems to be dead...
Were did you get the images from to do what you did?
Any programming language is at its best before it is implemented and used.