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Flashpoint: a webgame preservation project

bluemaxima.org

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Re: Flashpoint: a webgame preservation project

#41

Post by chrisseaton »

janci wrote: post #37
chrisseaton wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And ultimately they failed to port it to mobile and that was its dead end. I don't think they failed to port it - I think they were not invited to do so by the people building the mobile platforms.

> I don't think they failed to port it - I think they were not invited to do so by the people building the mobile platforms. I don't think they were not invited to do so - I think they were not paid for the work or licenses

I'm not really sure what difference you're trying to highlight there.

The point is that the people building the platforms didn't want Flash, so they didn't invite Adobe/Macromedia or whoever it was at the time to port them across, and yes since they didn't invite them to do the work they obviously also weren't going to to pay for it.

Saying they weren't paid for it makes it sound like they were asked to do it but not paid or something like that. I think the reality is it was never wanted.

Re: Flashpoint: a webgame preservation project

#42

Post by benologist »

chrisseaton wrote: post #41
janci wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think they failed to port it - I think they were not invited to do so by the people building the mobile platforms. I don't think they were not invited to do so - I think they were not paid for the work or licenses

I'm not really sure what difference you're trying to highlight there. The point is that the people building the platforms didn't want Flash, so they didn't invite Adobe/Macromedia or whoever it was at the time to port them across, and yes since they didn't invite them to do the work they obviously also weren't going to to pay for it. Saying they weren't paid for it makes it sound like they were asked to do it but not…

Didn't invite is a silly way of putting it. Jobs went to war with Flash, and at the time Adobe was making progress integrating iOS as publishing targets, and today it would have been a moot point as iOS hardware is surely powerful enough. Creative Cloud is heading to the iPad Pro and it is a real shame that Flash isn't part of that.

Re: Flashpoint: a webgame preservation project

#43

Post by the_pwner224 »

dizzy3gg wrote: post #11
sagark1992 wrote: post #5

I downloaded it last month. There are a lot of addictive puzzle games that have the potential of being huge on mobile if someone remakes it for android/ios.

I'm keen to learn game development. I have experience with web & react native but would be willing to go canvas/unity if required. Any ones that stand out that you think would be a good starter game project?

Not flash games, but these are ones that I have done in the past that were good for learning:

For puzzle games, Set is a good one that will let you practice the UI aspect and recording state, as well as scoring. The PDFs here have the rules, https://www.setgame.com/set/puzzle_rules, and you can play the game at https://www.setgame.com/set/puzzle.

For real-time games, Pong is a great first project and can be followed up by a top-down 2D game (probably a shooter is the most common one). For these you'll need to use Canvas.

Unless you're doing something unusual, the game mechanics are usually not the hard part. A lot more work has to go into polishing it and making a finished product.

I would suggest staying away from Unity in the beginning, it adds a lot of complexity and you'll be able to get started much faster with a bare canvas (which you can easily learn to draw on, and create a game loop with setTimeout or requestAnimationFrame) or React project.

Re: Flashpoint: a webgame preservation project

#44

Post by dwild »

mr-ron wrote: post #32
stared wrote: post #22

I saw somewhere "As a frontend developer, I cannot be happier that the Flash is going to die. As a person raised on Newgrounds, there are tears of nostalgia." Speaking of Flash, I miss the most this game... or rather, meme-focused experience (IMHO it is a true masterpiece): "Reimagine :The Game:" by Nicky Case: ( https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/569281 , video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tG1gh5l1YLM ). Two…

Well I never played these games before, what I miss the most is exactly that. A plethora of games that had no monetary reason to make them. Simply because it was possible for a solo non-skilled person to put a inspired idea in Flash in a relatively quick amount of time. I don't think we have any equivalent in the web today

> A plethora of games that had no monetary reason to make them.

I don't know for Newgrounds but actually many website paid quite a bit of money to sponsor games. Gemcraft for example was sponsored by Armor Games and I believe they were in the 10k ranges. The ECPM was also not bad, I believe some were able to reach 10$ because of video ads.

MochiAds, which was one of the most used ads provider also had a distribution platform which was quite useful.

Once I made a game during a boring math class, I was able to get 500k views out of it (sadly mostly from China which had an ecpm of like 0.01$, it wasn't a market that MochiMedia was developing much for ads, they tried later on but Flash killed them before they were able to increase it enough). I made a bit over 100$ over that game made in an few hours. I was able to reproduce the experiment a second time, with similar result, less views, 300k I think, but much more in the US, a bit under 100$ that time.

I was hoping that Unity would bring that back, because they came during the crash of Flash, but while they still push toward faster development, they were going toward a different market.

Re: Flashpoint: a webgame preservation project

#45

Post by chrisseaton »

benologist wrote: post #42
chrisseaton wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really sure what difference you're trying to highlight there. The point is that the people building the platforms didn't want Flash, so they didn't invite Adobe/Macromedia or whoever it was at the time to port them across, and yes since they didn't invite them to do the work they obviously also weren't going to to pay for it. Saying they weren't paid for it makes it sound like they were asked to do it but not…

Didn't invite is a silly way of putting it. Jobs went to war with Flash, and at the time Adobe was making progress integrating iOS as publishing targets, and today it would have been a moot point as iOS hardware is surely powerful enough. Creative Cloud is heading to the iPad Pro and it is a real shame that Flash isn't part of that.

> Jobs went to war with Flash

He just ignored it. It was redundant on the iPhone, with native apps and the rise of web applications.

Completely ignoring something seems like the opposite of 'going to war' with it.

Re: Flashpoint: a webgame preservation project

#46

Post by chownie »

heeen2 wrote: post #13
samstave wrote: post #3

So they ONLY provide a ~275GB torrent zip file??? Lame. Why not allow the DL of only certain games? I don't need 38,000 flash games... nor does my laptop have 500++ GB free to fiddle with this. Poor delivery decision IMO.

You can just partially download the torrent

Not if it's an archived file, which it is in this case.

Re: Flashpoint: a webgame preservation project

#47

Post by zyx321 »

janci wrote: post #37
chrisseaton wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And ultimately they failed to port it to mobile and that was its dead end. I don't think they failed to port it - I think they were not invited to do so by the people building the mobile platforms.

> I don't think they failed to port it - I think they were not invited to do so by the people building the mobile platforms. I don't think they were not invited to do so - I think they were not paid for the work or licenses

Apple were (and still are) openly hostile towards any sort of third-party interpreters / runtimes on their platform.

Re: Flashpoint: a webgame preservation project

#49

Post by amelius »

the_duke wrote: post #4
Animats wrote: post #2

Next, Flash emulation running under WebAsm?

I don't think Adobe ever open-sourced the Flash codebase, right? The attempts at building something compatible like shumway have all been rather unsuccessful. Even if the code was available, porting it to WASM would probably be a pretty big task. It would be great to retain access to the huge amount of flash content out there though.

> I don't think Adobe ever open-sourced the Flash codebase, right?

This shows we should only allow technologies on the web if they have a clear path to preservation.

I think a similar thing should hold for DRM'ed video. Such videos may be supported on the web, but we should demand they lose their DRM when their copyright expires.

Re: Flashpoint: a webgame preservation project

#50

Post by zyx321 »

dwild wrote: post #44
mr-ron wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I never played these games before, what I miss the most is exactly that. A plethora of games that had no monetary reason to make them. Simply because it was possible for a solo non-skilled person to put a inspired idea in Flash in a relatively quick amount of time. I don't think we have any equivalent in the web today

> A plethora of games that had no monetary reason to make them. I don't know for Newgrounds but actually many website paid quite a bit of money to sponsor games. Gemcraft for example was sponsored by Armor Games and I believe they were in the 10k ranges. The ECPM was also not bad, I believe some were able to reach 10$ because of video ads. MochiAds, which was one of the most used ads provider also had a distribution…

IIRC, Tom Fulp paid hosting out of his own pocket for a long time, but eventually he started turning a profit and paying out cash prizes for well-received flashes. Also, including your own monetization was always allowed. Ads on the loading screen were the most popular, but some later games even included micro transactions.
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