Flash Museum

by vvoruganti • 3 years ago

249 86 3 years ago

k2xl2• 3 years ago

Cool to see a bunch of my old games here (one from 2003!) https://flashmuseum.org/browse/developer/danny-miller/

Shameless plug, my original Flash puzzle game Psychopath was recreated as a modern react site (with the original levels imported) and native app and many of the players who are from the original community back in 2005 are playing and creating new levels https://pathology.gg

adotbacon• 3 years ago

I loved playing Psychopath back in 2006 and built a Java clone in 2007 for a class. I love how many awesome puzzles emerge as people pieced them together to make levels on top of the simple rules. I also remember enjoying Stick Avalanche & Boomshine. Thanks for all the fun times & awesome to bump into you!

I've started Pathology.

k2xl2• 3 years ago

Whoa that is awesome! Thanks for the nice words. What is your username on pathology? You should drop by the discord and say hello!

cableshaft3• 3 years ago

I remember Boomshine! Played that a lot back in the day, was quite addictive.

AndrewKemendo2• 3 years ago

Sometime in the late 1990s early 2000s there the website for bomb hip-hop - which was an amazing indie hip-hop production group - had this really great flash demo that I think is gone from the web forever.

Basically just a looped beat and you could play with different elements that made scratch or other hip hop sounds- might have even been what amounts to an interactive link box

If I had any money I’d pay if someone could find it again but alas I think it’s gone forever!

eeegnu• 3 years ago

This one? https://web.archive.org/web/20020926204023/http://www.bombhi...

AndrewKemendo2• 3 years ago

Ha! No but I think it's the one that doesn't load at the top of the "listen.html" page!

Thanks

colordrops• 3 years ago

First one I tired seemed to have some origin check and wouldn't play, with the message "Please play this on Kongregate".

rezonant4• 3 years ago

On another thread domain locks came up. I found this issue on ruffle's GitHub which was closed-- I'm not sure if it was actually implemented-- it would require the dev integrating ruffle to specify a URL to emulate.

https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle/issues/325

Bakingpotato13• 3 years ago

you can spoof URLs on the Ruffle desktop player, but not using the extension

muglug• 3 years ago

My old Connect 4 game is here: https://flashmuseum.org/connect-4/

I created it over 20 years ago while I was in HS. Still works — thanks to Ruffle!

meeks• 3 years ago

This is amazing. The other day I was looking to play "Don't Look Back" by Terry Cavanagh and the game is broken on his website:

https://terrycavanaghgames.com/dontlookback/

But this website has it!

https://flashmuseum.org/dont-look-back/

Awesome. It would be a shame if a great game like this were lost just because flash is no longer supported.

Bakingpotato13• 3 years ago

true, I guess thats why Ruffle is so popular now

a13o• 3 years ago

Holy moly, honored to see my game Bloody Fun Day in their hall of fame.

Unfortunately there seems to be some bugs in their player, the RNG isn't working so all the cuties spawn the same color.

I also wonder if these newer html5 flash players are able to spoof the domain, so all these games can bypass their site locks. which was the style at the time...

rezonant4• 3 years ago

A relevant GitHub issue: https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle/issues/325

Seems like being able to override was the plan, but not clear it was actually done?

Bakingpotato13• 3 years ago

you can spoof URLs on the Ruffle desktop player, but not using the extension

Bakingpotato13• 3 years ago

I don't think Ruffle is HTML5. something about Web assembly and rust?

tekla• 3 years ago

Where is the Flash porn?

zevv• 3 years ago

Aw, I was super exited to see the Requiem for a Dream website again - this really was my first big WTF moment for artsy stuff on the internet (after frog in a blender). Unfortunately it only works for the first 20 seconds or so, than it ends with a white screen :(

nonethewiser2• 3 years ago

How do these work? Obviously not with flash. How did they get “ported” or whatever?

capableweb• 3 years ago

It is Flash files at least (https://flashmuseum.s3.amazonaws.com/htf_ep_45_out_on_a_limb... as an example)

Seems to be using the Flash Player emulator Ruffle - https://ruffle.rs/

ChrisArchitect3• 3 years ago

On our website, Flash content will run on your browser using the Flash Player emulator ruffle. Ruffle is an open source emulator built using the Rust programming language. It uses WebAssembly to run Flash content on modern browsers

Amazing. Is this related to efforts by archive.org to get all of their archived stuff working? (Believe they also are using Ruffle)

filcuk• 3 years ago

They've reverse-engineered flash and written a player compatible with modern browsers. Crazy amount of effort, but worth it.

nonethewiser2• 3 years ago

That’s really impressive. And good to see. I assumed all this flash content was just lost. Surely there are lots of bugs or unsupported features but hopefully it continues to be developed.

I suppose another option is to just use a browser tgat does support flash? Seems like some exist.

Bakingpotato13• 3 years ago

Ruffle isn't a reverse engineered project, from what I can tell. it seems like they're following some spec, and comparing with the flash player, not decomping it

praptak2• 3 years ago

I contributed to Ruffle. They don't reverse engineer (this is explicitly a no), the knowledge comes from the (poor) documentation and from the open sourced flash virtual machine.

Bakingpotato13• 3 years ago

it looks all the files are unmodified, no nothing seems ported they're probably using a ruffle implementation

Der_Einzige• 3 years ago

Related, the person who made classics like “Mud and Blood” has kept up development of a new version of it on steam. I’ve been a bit addicted to it recently!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1391530/Mud_and_Blood/

metadat• 3 years ago

Is it possible to develop new flash games and experiences that can run in browsers with this kind of emulation layer?

Lots of people purport to miss developing in ActionScript, so why isn't this path more popular?

(I was just thinking about this yesterday and was considering submitting an Ask HN :)

rezonant4• 3 years ago

I don't see why not :-)

I think Actionscript was incredible and comparing it to how JavaScript (and Typescript) evolved is fascinating.

The developer experience of working with RTMP is something we are only now just replicating with solutions like tRPC (or my own Conduit library)

krapp• 3 years ago

Lots of people purport to miss developing in ActionScript, so why isn't this path more popular?

Every popular game engine will export to HTML5/Webassembly now, there's really no need to keep Flash alive just for the sake of nostalgia.

rezonant4• 3 years ago

Let me take a Polaroid real quick.

milesvp• 3 years ago

I think you may underestimate how approachable flash was to non devs. There is something about an animation engine that triggers code on a given frame that upends how most devs think about code. The main reason to keep it around is I’m not sure there’s anything else like it. Hypercard I understand was close.

That said, part of what made flash approachable was also the ecosystem and the world in general. I don’t expect to see another cambrian explosion that was flash again in my lifetime, and it’s probably ok to let it die, given how tied it was to the zeitgeist of the early 2000s. Still, working for a replacment platform rather than just exporting from existing platforms is probably something the world will likely always need every generation. It’s all about what catches the interest of kids, and there is a known dichotomy between building for experienced users and building for beginners. And platforms will tend toward experienced users over time (mosty because repeat customers are much more profitable than new customers).

Bakingpotato13• 3 years ago

There's a reason you don't see too many HTML gaming websites, it itsn't that great for games, as much as they would like it to be.

zenger• 3 years ago

Take a look at https://haxe.org/

OmarShehata• 3 years ago

Newgrounds just hosted a "Flash Forward Jam" recently where people did just that!

https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1517301

Results are here: https://www.newgrounds.com/collection/flashforward2023

Nouser76• 3 years ago

Ruffle[0] can be embedded in your website to make flash work in modern browsers. Neopets actually did just this a few days ago[1] to bring back their catalog of old flash games.

So if you can find a way to write Flash (the old tools should still be fine, but I haven't looked too deep) you can leverage it and let folks play today.

[0] https://ruffle.rs/

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/17/23798368/neopets-relaunch...

Edited for citations

Bakingpotato13• 3 years ago

Absolutely. Get the authoring software, (I hear a certain animate archive has them) and post to NG like all the Flash forward jammers have Ruffle works wonders

ChrisArchitect3• 3 years ago

Where are they getting all the Flash files from? Just downloading them all out of the Internet Archive? Kinda weird. Why not just support IA's archiving and hosting efforts

ChrisArchitect3• 3 years ago

https://archive.org/details/barbie_in_monster_high

https://flashmuseum.org/barbie-in-monster-high/

textfiles• 3 years ago

Plenty of room for multiple collections.

DicIfTEx• 3 years ago

When I saw the title I thought it was this Flash archive, which was recently featured on Kottke.org: https://ooooooooo.ooo/static/browse/

Maybe we're in the midst of a Flash game renaissance.

Bakingpotato13• 3 years ago

for sure. what with people making new flash stuff for the NG flash jams and all. thank goodness for Ruffle.

nosamu3• 3 years ago

Both are web frontends for the Flashpoint Archive's database: https://flashpointarchive.org/

The difference is that 9o3o is Flashpoint's official (experimental) site, whereas Flash Museum is a third-party site that imported Flashpoint's database into WordPress and reuploaded the Flash files into an S3 bucket (without preserving directory structures or accounting for multi-asset items).

pwenzel• 3 years ago

I'm going to spend the rest of my Friday watching Happy Tree Friends.

alexwasserman• 3 years ago

About 15 years ago there was a cute flash game where you had a little cube world that was a puzzle to grow into a bigger fancier environment by clicking on trigger points in the correct order.

I have no idea what it was called, and can’t describe it well enough to search for it if it still exists. Every couple of years I try.

Resources like this give me hope that little gems and works of art from the past will live on, even if the underlying tech is gone.

Edit:

Wow, this time I found it: https://www.eyezmaze.com/grow/cube/

HTML5: https://www.eyezmaze.com/sp/2016/08/growCube.html Original: https://www.crazygames.com/game/grow-cube

HN is just serendipitous

nineplay• 3 years ago

It makes me so happy to see this again - thank you!

( There goes my afternoon )

mcphage• 3 years ago

There was a whole series of them—my favorite was GrowRPG, where you play an adventurer and pick which order you do encounters.

simlevesque• 3 years ago

This one is a classic !

andai• 3 years ago

I played this game back in the day! Thanks for reminding me.

The author seems to be in poor health and in need of financial support: https://www.eyezmaze.com/sp/2020/12/onlineSupport.html

Throwthrowbob• 3 years ago

Interesting, I found it here previously, but it appears to have disappeared from this site (hence archive link): https://web.archive.org/web/20211222213700/https://www.gamed...

moralestapia• 3 years ago

From that same guy, try Tontie.

Super cool game!

https://www.eyezmaze.com/flash/tontieV1.html

ktothe2• 3 years ago

I used to love the eyezmaze games and for about a year or so, I would eagerly await the next instalment in the series. Recently I learned that the developer has cancer and his wife seems to have left him. I think his Twitter also went silent a while ago. Very sad, considering how much joy these games brought me and certainly countless others in the mid-2000s.

Edit: it wasn’t cancer but a heart defect of some sort.

ktothe2• 3 years ago

Can’t edit my comment from Octal for some reason. It wasn’t cancer but some sort of heart defect.

vvoruganti• 3 years ago

OMG I remember as a little kid watching my older brother play this all the time. This unlocked a core memory

Dwedit• 3 years ago

Or... you know... Newgrounds.com. That's also a "living flash museum" in a way, as it has been around continuously since 1995 and still will show you flash movies from any date.

Bakingpotato13• 3 years ago

yeah, pretty much. they're even making new ones, too

fallinghawks• 3 years ago

They have a bunch of neutral's games, which I'm very happy to see. They've made some of the best escape the room games I've ever played. Neutral is still actively developing (https://neutralx0.net/) but I don't think they've ported their old stuff over.

Edit: I tried to load a few but unfortunately none of them actually work. Tried a game from another dev I like and though the game loads, the screen is cut off so you can't see all your inventory.

ehPReth• 3 years ago

Flash Museum

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