Your way does look impressive toolic and i've saved that code, it'll probably come in handy very shortly, But I've seemed to have fixed it in a strange way indeed.

 
print flashcount $outcome, "count=".$outcome;
[download]

this code seems to allow the value to continue incrementing. the the result i get in the txt file is 5count=5 I know thats not so pretty but flash will be able to pick up the value from the txt file Strange I know, Thanks again TheZip, Bradcathey and Toolic!