5 ms·

I check in on this project every year or so, and I'm happy to see that their support for AS3 is creeping towards completion. I, like many, wasted so many hours

I check in on this project every year or so, and I'm happy to see that their support for AS3 is creeping towards completion. I, like many, wasted so many hours in flash games while in school that it was sad to see an element of gaming history fall by the wayside. At least Ruffle can pick up some of the pieces. It does remind me that that there is still no way to play Wolfenstein RPG on iOS. I have an old iPod that I bought in 2010 almost exclusively to play it, but that battery won't last forever. But for now, I think I'll go and play some Adrenaline Challenge.

GranPC 3y ago
Wow, last I checked they were just getting started on AS3. Crazy to see how quickly they're getting there.
slowhadoken 3y ago
Same. I’m still looking for a way to play Inishie Dungeon again.
koito17 3y ago
About 18 months ago I recall hearing Ruffle had virtually no AS3 support, and that was a show stopper for me. I wasn't expecting them to get much done on this front for years. So in that time I simply installed the last version of Flash without the time bomb. Thankfully I am wrong :)
- neverdied 3y ago
  the more I look, the more Ruffle seems to speed along. how did they get so good (and this fast) ?!?
  - TheDong 3y ago
    Unironically, because of rust. Rust's type system encodes more information than most languages, and so you can offload more work to it. That becomes more and more valuable as the project grows. Rust also attracts good developers in general, moreso than the average language certainly.
    - bsder 3y ago
      > Rust's type system encodes more information than most languages, and so you can offload more work to it. I suspect at least one of the developers would argue with you as I have listened to his rants. :) Rust is a remarkably poor match to implementing Flash because Flash has lots of object orientation with child and parent pointers--which Rust really hates. > Rust also attracts good developers in general, moreso than the average language certainly. I suspect this is way more relevant.
      - teaearlgraycold 3y ago
        Couldn’t you just have a global object table and make your pointers indexes into this, using Rc::Refcells throughout? Rust is still fast with runtime GC.
      - adrian17 3y ago
        More specifically (assuming we’re talking about the same thing), the issue is with reproducing a standard C++ inheritance hierarchy (used for both the AS2/3 native objects and for the „DOM” tree nodes), while keeping its overhead characteristics, devirtualisation opportunities, having it interact with our GC and borrow checker and still have a convenient, safe Rust API on top. Our current solution works, but has deficiencies in most of these aspects.
      - pcwalton 3y ago
        I suspect that it's two things: (1) the relatively good support for Wasm in Rust; (2) the Cargo ecosystem. In the case of Ruffle, the combination of the two seems particularly effective.
    - subtra3t 3y ago
      > Rust also attracts good developers in general, moreso than the average language certainly. Could you elaborate more on this? I don't think programmers that primarily use a particular language would be anymore skilled than programmers that rely on another language.
      - 3y ago
  - Cloudef 3y ago
    probably because of the sponsors
    - tetris11 3y ago
      Newgrounds being one
- adrian17 3y ago
  Just to clarify: we already had a ton of work towards AS3 done before that, there was just nothing to show for it until we added some final missing pieces. It’s not like we did everything from scratch in 18 months.
neverdied 3y ago
I wish some of the long standing PRs Ruffle has would actually get in
TazeTSchnitzel 3y ago
> It does remind me that that there is still no way to play Wolfenstein RPG on iOS. This may change very soon :) https://github.com/hikari-no-yume/touchHLE/pull/139 https://github.com/hikari-no-yume/touchHLE/pull/139
- bexsella 3y ago
  I will be following this very closely.

GranPC 3y ago

Wow, last I checked they were just getting started on AS3. Crazy to see how quickly they're getting there.

slowhadoken 3y ago

Same. I’m still looking for a way to play Inishie Dungeon again.

koito17 3y ago

About 18 months ago I recall hearing Ruffle had virtually no AS3 support, and that was a show stopper for me. I wasn't expecting them to get much done on this front for years. So in that time I simply installed the last version of Flash without the time bomb. Thankfully I am wrong :)

neverdied 3y ago
the more I look, the more Ruffle seems to speed along. how did they get so good (and this fast) ?!?
- TheDong 3y ago
  Unironically, because of rust. Rust's type system encodes more information than most languages, and so you can offload more work to it. That becomes more and more valuable as the project grows. Rust also attracts good developers in general, moreso than the average language certainly.
  - bsder 3y ago
    > Rust's type system encodes more information than most languages, and so you can offload more work to it. I suspect at least one of the developers would argue with you as I have listened to his rants. :) Rust is a remarkably poor match to implementing Flash because Flash has lots of object orientation with child and parent pointers--which Rust really hates. > Rust also attracts good developers in general, moreso than the average language certainly. I suspect this is way more relevant.
    - teaearlgraycold 3y ago
      Couldn’t you just have a global object table and make your pointers indexes into this, using Rc::Refcells throughout? Rust is still fast with runtime GC.
    - adrian17 3y ago
      More specifically (assuming we’re talking about the same thing), the issue is with reproducing a standard C++ inheritance hierarchy (used for both the AS2/3 native objects and for the „DOM” tree nodes), while keeping its overhead characteristics, devirtualisation opportunities, having it interact with our GC and borrow checker and still have a convenient, safe Rust API on top. Our current solution works, but has deficiencies in most of these aspects.
    - pcwalton 3y ago
      I suspect that it's two things: (1) the relatively good support for Wasm in Rust; (2) the Cargo ecosystem. In the case of Ruffle, the combination of the two seems particularly effective.
  - subtra3t 3y ago
    > Rust also attracts good developers in general, moreso than the average language certainly. Could you elaborate more on this? I don't think programmers that primarily use a particular language would be anymore skilled than programmers that rely on another language.
    - 3y ago
- Cloudef 3y ago
  probably because of the sponsors
  - tetris11 3y ago
    Newgrounds being one
adrian17 3y ago
Just to clarify: we already had a ton of work towards AS3 done before that, there was just nothing to show for it until we added some final missing pieces. It’s not like we did everything from scratch in 18 months.

neverdied 3y ago

I wish some of the long standing PRs Ruffle has would actually get in

TazeTSchnitzel 3y ago

> It does remind me that that there is still no way to play Wolfenstein RPG on iOS. This may change very soon :) https://github.com/hikari-no-yume/touchHLE/pull/139 https://github.com/hikari-no-yume/touchHLE/pull/139

bexsella 3y ago
I will be following this very closely.