[HN Gopher] Internet Archive expands Flash support ___________________________________________________________________ Internet Archive expands Flash support Author : sogen Score : 197 points Date : 2023-07-14 19:25 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (mastodon.archive.org) (TXT) w3m dump (mastodon.archive.org) | Apocryphon wrote: | Does this mean that previously archived sites that use Flash will | now be viewable? | lucgommans wrote: | That would be nice. I was recently trying to play | https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/scie... | via archive.org, but it doesn't work. Also the swf file itself | does not load in an old virtual machine. I don't know where to | view error output besides the JavaScript console; it simply | does nothing. | | (Previous discussion: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2290936) | | I still occasionally think back to this engine when the topic | of human randomness comes up (I do computer security for a | living, so that's not infrequent) | kmeisthax wrote: | Ruffle ships a browser extension that loads Ruffle into every | tab you open, so Flash sites work as they were originally | intended to. It's available for Chrome and Firefox. Safari | works if you enable developer extensions and download our | macOS app - we have to get into Mac App Store for it to work | normally because apparently notarization isn't enough[0]. | | https://ruffle.rs/#downloads | | [0] It was enough for the old extensions API :/ | lucgommans wrote: | Did that work on the NYT site for you? Because for me it | doesn't see mto | Bakingpotato wrote: | I think so. They had it before, but it worked kinda funky it | should be better now. | codetrotter wrote: | Hope this means that I can play Attak by Johnny Two Shoes | again. | | https://web.archive.org/web/20161126122429/http://www.johnny... | | There was a time when I used to play that game every day. | a1o wrote: | Does anyone how to do this? I could tie existing wasm runtimes to | some binaries that supports it (mostly old abandon ware games | there that aren't flash), but when I asked around in forums no | one answered there - or I didn't understood how their communities | worked. | justsomehnguy wrote: | At some point Flash emulation would solve all the biggest | troubles of the original Flash and.. became a new standard for a | web-based inter/animation? Of course, having a VM with XP with | Macrmedia director would be a problem for Apple M1/2/3 owners, | but nothing a modern emulation couldn't solve... | Bakingpotato wrote: | would it solve the problems? absolutely. would browser vendors | pick it up for a standard? almost definitely not. | | though, nothing is stopping anyone from creating new flash | games, videos, etc. the software is out there, and NG already | does flash game jams. | justsomehnguy wrote: | Well, the modern CSS + animations + SVG solves like 90% of | things Flash could do, with HTML5 and canvas it solves the | remaining 9%. but the biggest problem is the authoring tools | and I if there were anything worthwile enough the web would | had exploded already. | bamfly wrote: | Flash is to web dev as Excel is to desktop applications: it | "sucks" but is also arguably the single best tool the | entire field has produced. The technologies that might | replace Flash are "better" but also so much worse that they | aren't even close to actually replacing it, years on--and, | yeah, that's mostly about the authoring tools, which were | not just excellent, but also _de facto_ free for hobbyists | (thanks, piracy) when Flash was in its prime. | Bakingpotato wrote: | not only that, the shovelware scene proved that it was | piss easy to use, and powerful (especially in the later | years) see as many html5 gaming webpages lately? yeah, | no. the 'death' of flash killed the browser game and | rapid prototyping that flash offered, and there is | nothing on that level in this age. | | the problems that html5, css and javascript could in | theory 'solve' are a moot point when the switch to those | technologies killed any enthusiasm for it. | rhn_mk1 wrote: | I'm not sure if it's included in your 90%, but an advantage | of Flash is that it was _not_ JS or HTML. Meaning that you | could block it easily, when it offended your senses | (animated ads, autoplaying videos), without affecting the | functionality of most web sites. | | CSS + animations + JS + HTML5 cannot be blocked without | destroying the web site as well. | Bakingpotato wrote: | yeah I remember that people demonized flash so much for | that and turned a blind eye once html and javascript was | given that power. | | jokes on them now, I guess | | not to mention flash content could run on a potato, while | javascript is soon to see your processor as fried as a | potato chip instead | justsomehnguy wrote: | > CSS + animations + JS + HTML5 cannot be blocked without | destroying the web site as well. | | That's a lame excuse. There were enough 'not malicious' | sites, there are enough sites _now_ what treat you like a | 3rd rate netizen even if you are on a 4k desktop in a | landscape orientation. | | If anything, Web is destro^W profiling itself for a | narrow subset of mobile users for quite some years | already, so I can't accept your 'blovk Flash' stance as | anything having a substinence. | j4ah4n wrote: | They certainly were fun days back with Macromedia at the helm. | Full suite of tools that worked extremely well together. | | I remember when Tim Burton put out various cartoons via Director | (the same used for countless DVDs) that opened up more dramatic | storytelling than the business "intros" offered at the time (I | built these too mind you). | | I was even Flash AS3 certified at one point, something I was very | proud of in my early career. | | Good times. | BenFranklin100 wrote: | This is encouraging news. These sorts of efforts help save | information from being buried in the trash heap of history. | | Is anyone aware of coordinated efforts beyond the internet | archive to save data in old formats and media? I actually have | information on 5.25 floppies I never copied over (my bad) that | are almost certainly lost at this point. Also, I have docs in PFS | Write format that will be PITA to recover at this point too. I'd | have to dig out that old 486 that has been gathering dust in my | basement the last 25 years to know for sure :) . | Bakingpotato wrote: | I don't know of too many, but there are some out there like | https://hiddenpalace.org/ (though that is more related to video | games). | Bakingpotato wrote: | huh, so the Ruffle technology is actually something to consider. | Much better than the last 5+ years of flash 'alternatives' tried | some games out, most look identical to FP somehow. | anticensor wrote: | I misread as "Internet Explorer expands Flash support" for a | moment. | Alifatisk wrote: | Part of me feel sad that the big players deprecated flash before | any good alternatives popped up, HTML5 wasn't exactly an | alternative yet. Flash was waaay more powerful, I think we lost a | bit of good technology there. | | Hopefully we'll get it back soon. | Bakingpotato wrote: | yeah. the closest to getting flash back is Ruffle, which works | pretty well, and Newgrounds does flash game jams still, so it | ain't all dead | em3rgent0rdr wrote: | Particularly for vector-based animated movies, can achieve much | higher quality-per-bandwidth than compressed raster graphics, | and are future-proofed to automatically handle higher video | resolutions. | Bakingpotato wrote: | yeah, a lot of flash content that was SVG exclusive can go up | past 4k and look stunning, and flash was the only one around | then (and debatably, now) with an editor to let someone | leverage that | vsnf wrote: | I couldn't find any easily available official notice, but they | seem to be using Ruffle[0] | | [0] https://ruffle.rs/ | jazzyjackson wrote: | Well when you load an emulator on the archive there is a ruffle | splash page before the animation starts, so a good bet! | lucgommans wrote: | Announcement: https://blog.archive.org/2020/11/19/flash- | animations-live-fo... | | > _Utilizing an in-development Flash emulator called Ruffle, we | have added Flash support to the Internet Archive's Emularity | system, letting a subset of Flash items play in the browser as | if you had a Flash plugin installed_ | | I had trouble when adding e.g. | https://archive.org/details/gravityrunner-nolimit because | there's literally zero documentation on this system that I | could find, but the way that it works is that you edit metadata | tags (key-value list) and there is some magic/special tags that | have an effect on how the item is displayed on the site, like | whether to show you the emulator. What you need to set is: | emulator = ruffle-swf emulator_ext = swf | | You can find out what others have set by clicking on 'show all' | at the download options and choosing the <itemname>_meta.xml | file. | db48x wrote: | If you prefer JSON you can also visit | <https://archive.org/metadata/gravityrunner-nolimit>. | cempaka wrote: | Went looking for a good old article about fanimutation, this is | quite the walk down bored-college-dorm-session memory lane: | https://www.austinchronicle.com/screens/2002-01-25/84480/ | haunter wrote: | Highly recommend "Winnie the Pooh's Home Run Derby". It's the | Dark Souls of flash games | | https://archive.org/details/homerunderby_en | | The japanese version is here (no difference) | https://archive.org/details/homerun_20201126 | | They might crash in full screen though (some kind of bug) | mynameishere wrote: | Well now I've got that crappy music stuck in my head. | | That brings up a real mystery from 15 years ago that I never | did solve. Back in the day you could go on kongregate or | whatever and play these awful flash games that clearly took 30 | minutes or less to make. Just junky, copy-paste stuff. (Much | worse than the "home run derby" game above.) | | And yet... | | And yet they all seemed to have original sound tracks of more- | or-less passable game music. Where were they getting this from? | Did adobe give everybody a huge catalog of tunes to pick from? | ilayn wrote: | It was mostly from https://www.newgrounds.com/ | | Click the audio tab | kmeisthax wrote: | Newgrounds had the Audio Portal, a repository of free-to-use | music specifically intended for use by people creating movies | and games for their Flash Portal. | | That being said, this sort of licensed tie-in webgame | probably would have just bought a royalty-free stock music | track from Audiojungle[0] or whatever. | | There was also a huge market for licensing custom-branded | versions of whole Flash games, too. That's why every | mid-2000s official site for any sort of media property had | Flash games on it. | | [0] Audiojungle. | Bakingpotato wrote: | a lot of people tended to get CC0 music, free, and didn't | need to make their own though most of the actually good flash | games had an artist make music specifically for the game | samketchup wrote: | I just struck out 5 times in a row, finally made solid contact | and the game crashed. | | Thank you, lol | haunter wrote: | Try not to play fullscreen. Started crashing some months ago. | Or download the sfw file and play with the standalone | Ruffle.rs client | Bakingpotato wrote: | did you report that to the bug tracker? | jdjdjdhhd wrote: | Indeed, it crashed Firefox mobile for me in full screen | | But either way, I played twice and that's enough for me | gjsman-1000 wrote: | What a mystery for how that ever got approved... | | (For context, there is a video of a YouTuber trying to beat | it... and he did, 7 1/2 hours later. He was mostly stuck on the | "Christopher Robin" level which basically requires perfect to- | the-frame timing.) | haunter wrote: | Yeah that's Ludwig. One of the better streams ever. The final | boss is crazy because every pitch is random so you have to | guess instantly + perfect hit it too | | There is some lore behind the game. It was a Yahoo Japan | title https://www.siliconera.com/winnie-the-poohs-home-run- | derby-s... | jonplackett wrote: | The thing I still miss about Flash is the authoring tool. | | It is one of the few bits of software that bridged a gap between | artists and creators and coding in a way that totally | democratised creating interactive websites. | | I see some similarities with Instagram filters and TikTok | effects. The visual-layout-you-can-add-code-to approach, but | Flash was so mainstream and capable in a way filters aren't. | | I wish Adobe had done a better job with flash and just converted | the Flash Player into html5. Surely that could have been done? | | Website creation is far too complicated now compared to then and | I think the level of experimentation - especially by lone artists | - has plummeted since flash died. | LadyMartel wrote: | I fondly remember when I first discovered how to attach a goto | action to a button and I went nuts with it making choose your | own adventure type animations. Drawing was also really easy to | make thing look decent even with a mouse. I haven't found (or | admittedly looked for) a similar vector drawing tool like that | ever since. | ftmch wrote: | Yes, the generated brush strokes were really good. I was at | one point just making static comics in Flash, using just a | mouse because the brush strokes looked like they were drawn | by someone way more skilled than myself. | [deleted] | johannes1234321 wrote: | Yes, I still haven't found a good alternative to easily build | simple interactive animations for the web. Flash was fun, even | with my limited artistic skills. | codethief wrote: | So does that mean I get to play Winterbells and Yeti Sports | again? :) | willhackett wrote: | This is pure nostalgia | NelsonMinar wrote: | Compare with ooooooooo.ooo, recently discussed on Metafilter in | great detail: https://www.metafilter.com/199981/Friday-Flash-Fun- | Forever | CSMastermind wrote: | I was just watching a YouTube video about Home Star Runner | yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wbh9-mNmviE | | I never watched the series myself but I do remember hearing about | it. | | In the video essay he talks about how flash videos like Home Star | Runner were a unique medium. Not quite passive like a video but | not quite interactive like a video game. The videos could be | watched passively but also could incorporate interactive elements | like minigames, easter eggs, and choose your own adventure | stories. | | He points out that even when Netflix dipped into the choose your | own adventure format they couldn't achieve the same flexibility | as a flash animation because if for example they wanted to make a | story change that would dye a character's hair blue they couldn't | possibly film all the permutations scenes required to propagate | that visual difference throughout the story. | | But in flash animation you can. You can easily let the audience | choose a character's hair color and have that effect the | animation for the rest of the story. | | The author of that YouTube video made me wish I could experience | those cartoons and it makes me happy that places like the IA are | making that possible. | goosedragons wrote: | You can already experience them on homestarrunner.com thanks to | ruffles. It emulates the flash player and the old toons seem to | work fine. The site even has it built in so no need for an | extension. | TillE wrote: | Those were fun gimmicks and all, but Homestar Runner worked | because of the cute character designs, funny writing, and | Matt's genuinely outstanding voice acting. It holds up just | fine on YouTube. | | It was more about Flash being a really powerful tool for | amateur animators, and coming at a time when you didn't have | much else in the way of video on the internet. | derefr wrote: | Yeah, but there was a _reason_ that we "didn't have much | else in the way of video on the internet" at the time -- | bitmapped videos were far too bandwidth-intensive for most | people to download _in realtime_. (You could still download | them, and people sometimes did; but a 3-minute, 240p MPEG1 | /RealPlayer clip was something you'd need to dedicate a half- | hour to fetching, either using a download manager or | Limewire. It was _not_ a "click to play" experience.) | | This was also the reason that YouTube didn't get started | until 2005 -- that was about when at least some people were | starting to be "ready" to receive streaming bitmapped video | over their Internet connections, without needing to make a | big production of it. | | Flash _as a distribution format for video_ was distinctive | and successful because it was essentially a standardized | abstract machine for demoscene demos -- a Flash animation | wasn 't a video, it was an ActionScript program that | _rendered_ a video when executed. So a Flash animation could | be arbitrarily lightweight on the wire -- as long as the | author was clever about composing things out of vector bits | and small reusable textures. | | Flash _as a distribution format for video_ was obsolete | basically as soon as people 's Internet connections improved | enough that they could just stream the pre-rendered output of | someone else rendering out the Flash animation program | instead. (Which was around... 2010, I'd say?) Which also | meant that, at that same moment, the "Flash aesthetic" of | vectors and reusable resources basically instantaneously | ceased to exist, because it had all been in the name of | conserving bandwidth, and there was no longer a reason to do | that if you were rendering the result out to MPEG anyway. | | Flash as a distribution format _for games_ stuck around a few | more years, because HTML5 wasn 't fully there to replace it | yet. And the authoring tool (now Adobe Animate) is around to | this day, because it's still an excellent tool for creating | vector-based cartoons... that you render out to bitmapped | video. | bsimpson wrote: | Hanna Barbera is another famous aethetic driven from | logistical considerations. | | Every HB character wears a tie or a necklace because it | provides a seam to separate the head from the body. You can | have a bunch of Wilma or Yogi heads that reuse a single | body. Lets you animate dialog without having to redraw | literally everything. | Bakingpotato wrote: | I think you nailed it on the head with the demoscene | mention. not only was this one of the only ways to get this | kind of content in those days, but any ol hobbyist could | and did pick it up. netflix is the farthest you can get | from ever seeing anything like homestar runner's | characters, plot, etc | echelon wrote: | Flash made it easy for any kid or creative to do amazing | things. | | Homestar, Weebl, Salad Fingers, Charlie the Unicorn, Ultimate | Showdown, Xiao Xiao, Albino Black Sheep, Newgrounds, YTMND... | | It was businesses with splash intros (the kind that Zombo.com | parodied) made Flash suck. | irrational wrote: | Flash really was something special. We created all kinds of | training content in it (all of which was completely replaced | with static text and images after all of our customers adopted | iPads for doing associate training - Which where it still is | today, extremely boring). We all these animated characters, | with their own backstories and personalities, that each had | their own professional voice talent. Associates in Asia | especially loved them. Another project was for people who | repaired printers. All the printers this company produced were | 3d models inside of flash that could be rotated on any access | and disassembled to the smallest screw. A tech could choose | something to repair and it would show them step by step how to | do the repair. They could rotate/zoom the printer however they | wanted to see the current step playing out. Neither video nor | static text/images are a good replacement. | | The best thing was, everything was vector graphics, so the file | sizes were minuscule. | derefr wrote: | > He points out that even when Netflix dipped into the choose | your own adventure format they couldn't achieve the same | flexibility as a flash animation because if for example they | wanted to make a story change that would dye a character's hair | blue they couldn't possibly film all the permutations scenes | required to propagate that visual difference throughout the | story. | | I mean, that's not a distinction of Flash as a format; that's a | distinction between animation and film. Netflix could certainly | do a CYOA for a cartoon series. | Cerium wrote: | It is not a distinction between animation and film, it is | around when the content is generated. A CYOA series needs the | content generated in realtime. Each binary decision that | impacts basic facts about the series (hair color in this | example, or which character has something happen to them, | etc) in the entire series doubles the number of possible | versions. | derefr wrote: | My point is that animation _can_ be procedurally generated | "at runtime", while film [motion-photography of actors] | cannot. | dylan604 wrote: | >He points out that even when Netflix dipped into the choose | your own adventure format they couldn't achieve the same | flexibility as a flash animation because if for example they | wanted to make a story change that would dye a character's hair | blue they couldn't possibly film all the permutations scenes | required to propagate that visual difference throughout the | story. | | Oh, how little credit you give to the magic of editing. If they | needed the same footage to be reusable with minor differences | in things like hair color, they could do it all in post. With | the magic of m3u8 play lists, they could see where they even | have the variations of videos to as minimum duplication of | video as possible. It becomes much more of an asset management | nightmare than content creation issue. As an aside, theatrical | releases of movies were sometimes given "fingerprints" where | small details in a scene would be changed like the | adding/removing of a prop in the background, the color scheme | of the books/towels/whatever in the background, etc. They | didn't film all of those variations. They were modified in | post. | Bakingpotato wrote: | yeah, lots of Flash games were actually innovative. plenty of | developers got their start on NG with flash before moving on to | make console or steam games. flash had plenty of shovelware, | but you can still make incredible stuff with it. | klenwell wrote: | Good example here: | https://archive.org/details/thequestfortherest_flash | | It works! It had been effectively defunct for years: | | https://amanita-design.net/thequestfortherest/ | Bakingpotato wrote: | good pick. | themagician wrote: | Flash was a great technology for so many reasons. I really wish | Adobe had open sourced it at the end. I suspect it would have | paid dividends _somehow._ | | Flash died because Adobe couldn't get a version running on iOS | that wasn't garbage. I was working with Adobe when the iPhone | came out and they did have dev versions where it was running, | but it was awful. Visibly laggy, nearly unusable. No real | thought into UI mapping for touch input. Apparently they showed | this garbage to Steve Jobs several times and he shot it down, | and I can't blame him. | | Tragic, really. Even still, today, if Adobe open sourced Flash | and Flash CS4 I think it be a huge hit. Homestar Runner and | Newgrounds. Such an interesting space for creators. I can't | even imagine the things people might create if it was still | around today. | bsimpson wrote: | Flash was epic for creative coding, and I haven't seen | another software environment come close. We lost a really | great onramp to UI development when Flash died. | | I suspect there are deep licensing problems with the Flash | codebase. For instance, video was such a heavy investment for | them towards the end, and I'm sure they licensed plenty of | that tech. I wonder how usable it would be if they just open- | sourced the parts they owned free-and-clear. | themagician wrote: | I don't doubt the licensing and patent issue. But also, | it's Adobe. They have the money. Instead of spending tens | of millions on ads and media they could just do this. | nolok wrote: | > I really wish Adobe had open sourced it at the end. I | suspect it would have paid dividends somehow. | | Same way pdf does, because the money was in the authoring | tools and they had the best ones around. | | But adobe mostly inherited flash because they wanted the | death of macromedia, so they didn't really care about it. | weard_beard wrote: | _cough cough_ Magento _cough cough_ | Bakingpotato wrote: | adobe was the death of flash. Macromedia had a better handle | on it, and when adobe bought it, then ran it into the floor | and gave up early, leaving it to rot. | | I don't think they could even open source it, with all the | other companies' copyright work they shoved into it, like | dolby | kmeisthax wrote: | The problem was that Flash Player needed significant | rewrites and Adobe didn't want to pay for them. Or at | least, not without finding a way to get more money out of | game developers for the privilege. | | The story starts with Adobe. They proudly announce AS4, | along with an "FP Next" intended to run it. Then they also | mention new _revshare_ rules mandated on anyone cross- | compiling 3D game engines to Flash Player. This is | specifically to keep Unity off the Flash platform. This, | predictably, causes huge backlash from Flash developers - | even those who don 't care about cross-compilation. So they | kill the revshare... as well as any plans to fix Flash | Player's problems. | | This all happened a year _after_ Steve Jobs posted | "Thoughts on Flash" and tried to ban Adobe AIR apps - and | all other third-party development tools in the process[0]. | We'd learn way later on that preceding this, Apple had | begged Adobe to ship them a Flash Player build that would | actually work on iPhones, and their attempts were... | anemic[1]. | | [0] This was only stopped because the Obama administration | threatened an antitrust lawsuit. | | [1] While the iOS ports of Flash Player haven't been | publicly released, they did ship NPAPI Flash plugins on | Android, which were just as bad as Jobs had claimed. | Actually they probably were the same codebase given that | jailbreakers were able to get them to work on Safari. | cubefox wrote: | I don't quite get why the Flash plugins were do slow on | mobile. On Windows desktop, Flash was much faster than | other NPAPI plugins. Most other plugins froze the whole | browser for a second or so (Java even longer), while | Flash didn't do that. And at the time, early native | "HTML5 replacements" for Flash ads/games were actually | _slower_ than Flash. | chongli wrote: | Adobe is the Autodesk of the creative side of things. | They've swallowed up almost everything in the space and | exist only to collect rent. When something requires | finesse, such as Flash, they fail miserably. | Bakingpotato wrote: | oh god, autodesk. don't remind me. exactly correct. | lucgommans wrote: | They link to a collection called "Software Library: Flash". How | do I add something there? I've uploaded gravityrunner years ago | and recently (45 days ago, the site tells me) figured out how to | activate the emulator for this swf file (not sure why not offer | to emulate any .swf file but ok), but it's also not showing up1 | in things like Flash game collections. Is there any documentation | on this? | | Edit: wait, I think I found it. Below the About text, there is a | filter for "AND primary_collection:softwarelibrary_flash". | Probably I need to add that tag to my item. Now I wonder how I'm | supposed to know of the relevant collections to put things in? Is | there a list of all software categories? | | 1 https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_flash?query=grav... | whereas it is on the site-wide search: | https://archive.org/search?query=gravityrunner | Bakingpotato wrote: | not that I've seen. one thing you can try to do is add the | Ruffle emulator flags to your metadata, and they'll probably | pick it up and place it in that category whenever the next time | they do a sweep. I guess you can also email them, hey are | pretty prompt by email, usually. | dayvid wrote: | Xiao Xiao was a nostalgia kick: | https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_flash?query=xiao... | Bakingpotato wrote: | amen. | codedokode wrote: | In case anyone is wondering how much CPU Flash emulator uses: | "Isolated Web Co" - 12%, Firefox - 16%, gnome-shell - 25%. | nathants wrote: | working on a game right now. the second to last attempt was in | godot 4. it reminded me a lot of flash, especially in 2d mode. | | to anyone missing flash go checkout godot! ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-07-14 23:00 UTC)