8 ms·

I wonder what's going to happen to all the incredible Flash media, especially games, produced over the years. I hope someone's archiving them, because I'd hate

I wonder what's going to happen to all the incredible Flash media, especially games, produced over the years. I hope someone's archiving them, because I'd hate for us to lose them.

ChrisSD 8y ago
They'll still be downloadable and playable in a standalone player. Also it would technically be possible for someone to write a WebAssembly flash player. Although I don't know if anyone will feel particularly motivated to.
- black-tea 8y ago
  It's always been possible to have free flash players. Gnash is one example. But they've never been feature complete or particularly fast. Maybe if Adobe opened their player things would improve.
  - ChrisSD 8y ago
    The advantage now that flash is no longer being developed is that a player could concentrate on supporting the features used by the most popular content. Like dosbox it might not perfectly replicate the environment (at least to start with) but it could run the games everybody wants.
  - ashleyn 8y ago
    Adobe formats are notorious for bloat and scope creep. Implementing a conformant PDF reader would require you to implement a full 3D engine.
    - ygra 8y ago
      And implement Flash. But that's hardly unique to Adobe. Any document format that allows (arbitrary) other things to be embedded is subject to that. A Word document with other things embedded in it is no different. (Just like correctly rendering or editing an OpenDocument file would require you to implement half of SVG and MathML – while they're open specifications it doesn't necessarily mean you have an implementation at hand you can use.)
faitswulff 8y ago
Case in point: I tried to run the orisinal games, like Winterbells, for my daughter and found that they no longer work on Firefox. I was heartbroken - some of these flash games are art and should be archived.
- Asooka 8y ago
  You can just download Chrome, it has Flash built-in. Until they kill it in Chrome as well, of course.
err4nt 8y ago
This should be a solemn reminder about proprietary (especially binary) file formats. They serve a purpose but are an awful way to archive things of value. I truly hope that we have learned our lesson from Flash and choose formats like SVG (human readable and an open standard) from now on for things like animations and games.
- notatcomputer68 8y ago
  It's a reminder that browsers are such huge beasts that no one can viable fork them when they feel the browsers are regressing.
  - superkuh 8y ago
    Then use a succession of non-viable forks that are re-based periodically from the main but with most of the crap choices removed.
- rectang 8y ago
  This. Works in proprietary formats will be lost to time after supporting vendors lose in the marketplace. At best, there will be crippled, lossy exports -- lossy because vendors chasing lock-in and network effects don't want to make it easy for customers to leave. I've cited the demise of Opcode and Studio Vision in the past when making this argument, but that's niche. The Death of Flash brings down the point with greater weight.
- Bahamut 8y ago
  There was a time when the web was not able to handle SVG and Flash was the only option for rich interactive websites.
- blablabla123 8y ago
  Even if you use open formats, if it's a web app it's not unlikely that it has a server side dependency. For single user flash apps it's uncommon not to be self-contained. So actually it's a requirement as well that the source code and the assets are open.
snek 8y ago
there are a lot of tools that will convert flash to html5, although I don't know if any of them support dealing with user input.
simongr3dal 8y ago
People are already working on it. You can check it out here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17629173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17629173
Ajedi32 8y ago
Maybe someone could create a WASM implementation of Flash? I wonder if we could convince Adobe to open source Flash player after they finally kill it for good.
- staktrace 8y ago
  At one point Mozilla was working on a flash reimplementation - http://mozilla.github.io/shumway/ http://mozilla.github.io/shumway/ - not sure of the current status but it's a good place to start looking.
  - NikolaeVarius 8y ago
    I'm pretty sure shumway is dead judging from bugzilla and lack of activity in that repo https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/describecomponents.cgi?product=Firefox%20Graveyard https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/describecomponents.cgi?product=...
vorpalhex 8y ago
> I hope someone's archiving them Why not do it yourself? Archive your favorite games. Datahoarding is a fun hobby that can help others.
pseudalopex 8y ago
Flashpoint[1] claims to have archived over 10,000 games for Flash and other web plugins. [1] http://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/ http://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/

I wonder what's going to happen to all the incredible Flash media, especially games, produced over the years. I hope someone's archiving them, because I'd hate for us to lose them.

ChrisSD 8y ago

They'll still be downloadable and playable in a standalone player. Also it would technically be possible for someone to write a WebAssembly flash player. Although I don't know if anyone will feel particularly motivated to.

black-tea 8y ago
It's always been possible to have free flash players. Gnash is one example. But they've never been feature complete or particularly fast. Maybe if Adobe opened their player things would improve.
- ChrisSD 8y ago
  The advantage now that flash is no longer being developed is that a player could concentrate on supporting the features used by the most popular content. Like dosbox it might not perfectly replicate the environment (at least to start with) but it could run the games everybody wants.
- ashleyn 8y ago
  Adobe formats are notorious for bloat and scope creep. Implementing a conformant PDF reader would require you to implement a full 3D engine.
  - ygra 8y ago
    And implement Flash. But that's hardly unique to Adobe. Any document format that allows (arbitrary) other things to be embedded is subject to that. A Word document with other things embedded in it is no different. (Just like correctly rendering or editing an OpenDocument file would require you to implement half of SVG and MathML – while they're open specifications it doesn't necessarily mean you have an implementation at hand you can use.)

faitswulff 8y ago

Case in point: I tried to run the orisinal games, like Winterbells, for my daughter and found that they no longer work on Firefox. I was heartbroken - some of these flash games are art and should be archived.

Asooka 8y ago
You can just download Chrome, it has Flash built-in. Until they kill it in Chrome as well, of course.

err4nt 8y ago

This should be a solemn reminder about proprietary (especially binary) file formats. They serve a purpose but are an awful way to archive things of value. I truly hope that we have learned our lesson from Flash and choose formats like SVG (human readable and an open standard) from now on for things like animations and games.

notatcomputer68 8y ago
It's a reminder that browsers are such huge beasts that no one can viable fork them when they feel the browsers are regressing.
- superkuh 8y ago
  Then use a succession of non-viable forks that are re-based periodically from the main but with most of the crap choices removed.
rectang 8y ago
This. Works in proprietary formats will be lost to time after supporting vendors lose in the marketplace. At best, there will be crippled, lossy exports -- lossy because vendors chasing lock-in and network effects don't want to make it easy for customers to leave. I've cited the demise of Opcode and Studio Vision in the past when making this argument, but that's niche. The Death of Flash brings down the point with greater weight.
Bahamut 8y ago
There was a time when the web was not able to handle SVG and Flash was the only option for rich interactive websites.
blablabla123 8y ago
Even if you use open formats, if it's a web app it's not unlikely that it has a server side dependency. For single user flash apps it's uncommon not to be self-contained. So actually it's a requirement as well that the source code and the assets are open.

snek 8y ago

there are a lot of tools that will convert flash to html5, although I don't know if any of them support dealing with user input.

simongr3dal 8y ago

People are already working on it. You can check it out here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17629173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17629173

Ajedi32 8y ago

Maybe someone could create a WASM implementation of Flash? I wonder if we could convince Adobe to open source Flash player after they finally kill it for good.

staktrace 8y ago
At one point Mozilla was working on a flash reimplementation - http://mozilla.github.io/shumway/ http://mozilla.github.io/shumway/ - not sure of the current status but it's a good place to start looking.
- NikolaeVarius 8y ago
  I'm pretty sure shumway is dead judging from bugzilla and lack of activity in that repo https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/describecomponents.cgi?product=Firefox%20Graveyard https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/describecomponents.cgi?product=...

vorpalhex 8y ago

> I hope someone's archiving them Why not do it yourself? Archive your favorite games. Datahoarding is a fun hobby that can help others.

pseudalopex 8y ago

Flashpoint[1] claims to have archived over 10,000 games for Flash and other web plugins. [1] http://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/ http://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/