It's been a very busy 2023 for Ruffle, so much so that we didn't find the time to write a new progress report with everything going on! Let's fix that!
Adobe Flash Player was deprecated some years ago, so there is no longer any functioning official software that can play Flash games. The modern equivalent are mobile games.
The reason why reimplementing it is a worthy thing to do is to preserve old software, same reason why console emulators exist.
From a technical point of view you are right. But commercially, I am pretty sure many companies and developers that used to make Flash games now make mobile games. There are many mobile games that are ports of old Flash games.
In November 2011, about a year after Jobs’ open letter, Adobe announced it would no longer be developing Flash and advised developers to switch to HTML5.
You can see why someone might think it was ten years ago based off this.
It was on its way out when smartphones and HTML5 became widely adopted. Smartphones didn’t support Flash and HTML5 made sure that the things you used to need Flash for were just implemented in web browsers. Maybe you remember something along those lines.
Game and media preservation, for one. But I’m sure part of it is the technical challenge. There’s still websites where you can download those old flash games to run them locally, but one day Adobe Flash player will cease to work on modern operating systems.
Exactly. Flash was hugely popular, there’s a wealth of content, media, projects and entire websites made with Flash (not just games) that would otherwise be lost and this unbelievable effort brings all that content back to life.
Adding to sleepyTonia’s comment, many flash games have been preserved through Flashpoint Archive, which is like an epic DRM-free Steam client for flash games (as well as other web game technologies, like the shockwave player). However, Flashpoint uses old flash player binaries that, as stated, may one day stop working as hardware and operating systems evolve. If that happens, it’ll be great to have a replacement interpreter ready to go that can be compiled to run on newer tech.
Are flash games still a thing? I remember those old sticky fighting flash games on newsgroupe.
Someone kind enough in webdev to elaborate why someone would care to revive/reimplemente old flash player tech?
Adobe Flash Player was deprecated some years ago, so there is no longer any functioning official software that can play Flash games. The modern equivalent are mobile games.
The reason why reimplementing it is a worthy thing to do is to preserve old software, same reason why console emulators exist.
No, the modern equivalent is Web HTML5 games.
From a technical point of view you are right. But commercially, I am pretty sure many companies and developers that used to make Flash games now make mobile games. There are many mobile games that are ports of old Flash games.
I see mobile games as the commercial successor of Facebook games. But the spirit of flash games stated in the Web scene for sure.
Some? It was more than 10 years ago iirc.
Wikipedia says at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash#End_of_life that the EOL was announced in 2017 and took effect in 2020, much less than 10 years ago.
Same section also has this:
You can see why someone might think it was ten years ago based off this.
Yeah but it was an unsecure piece of shit for more than the past decade
I remember much earlier announces.
It was on its way out when smartphones and HTML5 became widely adopted. Smartphones didn’t support Flash and HTML5 made sure that the things you used to need Flash for were just implemented in web browsers. Maybe you remember something along those lines.
What I remembered was abandoning Linux NPAPI Flash plugin in 2012. The PPAPI plugin indeed existed for longer time.
Game and media preservation, for one. But I’m sure part of it is the technical challenge. There’s still websites where you can download those old flash games to run them locally, but one day Adobe Flash player will cease to work on modern operating systems.
Exactly. Flash was hugely popular, there’s a wealth of content, media, projects and entire websites made with Flash (not just games) that would otherwise be lost and this unbelievable effort brings all that content back to life.
I miss the old flash games honestly
Thanks :) !
Adding to sleepyTonia’s comment, many flash games have been preserved through Flashpoint Archive, which is like an epic DRM-free Steam client for flash games (as well as other web game technologies, like the shockwave player). However, Flashpoint uses old flash player binaries that, as stated, may one day stop working as hardware and operating systems evolve. If that happens, it’ll be great to have a replacement interpreter ready to go that can be compiled to run on newer tech.
Homestuck