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[Sam]

A while ago I experimented with MochiAds, and was very impressed with their Version Control Live Updates feature for games that you embed their ads in.  It allowed me to upload a new version of the game to Mochi and magically every copy of the SWF would be updated, no matter what server it was hosted on - even if I didn't know it was hosted there.

Presumably it works by adding a "call home" function to the SWF so it will check for updates whenever it is started.  Then it would magically download the update and apply that to itself, all the while not triggering virus alarms.

I would love to have this functionality for all my projects!  But I don't want to have MochiAds (or any ads) in all my projects.  So three questions:

Does Mochi provide this service for games without their ads, and I've just not found that option?  It seems like it requires the presence of the Mochi pre-loader.

Are there alternative providers of a similar service?  I'd be happy to pay a reasonable subscription fee for it.

Would it be feasible for me to make this for myself?  I've recently got access to plenty of webspace and bandwidth, but I really don't know where I'd start with implementing this.

[Hideous]

You could always use the mochi preloader, but disable ads.

[Glaiel-Gamer]

newgrounds has version control, but rather than automatically updating it just pops up a dialog box that says "a newer version is available here" and you get to choose where to redirect to

[knucracker]

I don't know of any alternatives.... but I'm very interested if anyone knows of any...

It may not apply in your case, but if your flash app is ever deployed as an AIR app, there is a fairly nice 'check for updates' feature in AIR.  It has to check with some site (like your own host, though).  So you can put an updated .air file on your site, update an xml file, and your game will get the new air file (there are numerous options on when it checks).

[14113]

I haven't done much flash programming in a while, but I remember there being a "load swf" function in action script. if this is true, then surely you could have a "loader" swf, which loaded your game from a predefined server, and if you changed the swf on the server (but kept the name) it would load that one.

just an idea, it may be TOTALLY wrong of course.