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Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

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Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#201

Post by pjmlp »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #161
echelon wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Flash as a technology should never be used now unless for artistic purposes. Nothing filled the gap left by Flash. It was easy, accessible, and drew so many young people to create. Flash had security issues, but they could have been fixed. Macromedia and/or Adobe could (and should) have published an open source standard and realized their tooling would always be ahead of the game. They didn't see the incredible opp…

> I'm not deriding the web -- it's the last free and open space we have left in an ever-eroding tech land grab No it isn't. It has degenerated into being only browsable in its entirety by Chrome, with all other "browser vendors" except Apple having given up due to sheer complexity and infeasibility to keep up - Opera, Microsoft, and now Firefox. That's what you get by putting Google (ie WHATWG, consisting of Chrome d…

The Web is gone, ChromeOS has won.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#202

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

echelon wrote: post #96
boarnoah wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mid 2000s era was a really magical time for me growing up. Just the sheer amount of interesting games and videos available on places like NewGrounds and Kongregate was something else. It was kind of crazy how easy it was at the time to get at least some attention to any proof of concept project simply by posting onto said sites. Something that has definitely gotten much harder over time despite the more advanced…

I think today's creative youth are on Twitch and TikTok. I'm not sure if they're building the same kind of future capital and skill sets that we did, but maybe it'll turn out well for them. Especially if there's an explosion in the creative economy. Still, it's incredibly hard to beat a technology that teaches kids to program as a side effect. Flash and early web raised up a generation of engineers.

Personally I can't help but think that this is our fault, as an industry, for abandoning the idea that users should be able to create programs. In the 8-bit micro era computers booted into a programming environment, then we had things like QBasic coming standard with the OS, then things like VB, HyperCard, Delphi, and to a lesser extent Excel and Access. For a while, enabling users to create their own tools to suit their needs was considered valuable in personal computing.

That's not how we do things anymore. Now everything is an appliance and the user is cattle as far as the developer is concerned.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#203

Post by kencausey »

saagarjha wrote: post #194
ArtWomb wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GemCraft, Desktop Tower Defense, RoboKill, Line Rider, Crush the Castle, Kingdom Rush, Realm of the Mad God ... all classics, all significant, all worth preserving. Trying valiantly like many to replace my current affairs media diet with something more substantive, and Internet Archive has proven invaluable. Currently enjoying a first edition pdf scan of an E M Forester novel from 1920s. And it's transporting to dive…

Realm of the Mad God requires a server to run, doesn't it? It might be difficult to preserve…

Are you talking about preserving an earlier version of the game? It continues to be developed and is available on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/200210/Realm_of_the_Mad_G...

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#204

Post by zyx321 »

shawnz wrote: post #157
echelon wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Flash as a technology should never be used now unless for artistic purposes. Nothing filled the gap left by Flash. It was easy, accessible, and drew so many young people to create. Flash had security issues, but they could have been fixed. Macromedia and/or Adobe could (and should) have published an open source standard and realized their tooling would always be ahead of the game. They didn't see the incredible opp…

While I agree there is an unfilled need after the end of Flash, is the problem really a matter of technology or is it just that nobody has produced a vector animation editor as easy/accessible as the Flash software was? Clearly all the pieces are in place to do everything Flash can do if you can emulate Flash at full speed entirely in the browser.

Flash Animation was made possible by technical limitations as much as by technical possibilities. 480p Flash clocking in at less than 100kB vs RealPlayer needing several MB for the same amount of content in 240p is a huge difference on a slow connection.

1080p streaming in real-time is "good enough" and YouTube will not only host it for free, but even share ad revenue. You could deliver vector animation in HTML5, but a pure animation platform will have a hard time against something that can do both animation and camera recordings.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#205

Post by TremendousJudge »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #202
echelon wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think today's creative youth are on Twitch and TikTok. I'm not sure if they're building the same kind of future capital and skill sets that we did, but maybe it'll turn out well for them. Especially if there's an explosion in the creative economy. Still, it's incredibly hard to beat a technology that teaches kids to program as a side effect. Flash and early web raised up a generation of engineers.

Personally I can't help but think that this is our fault, as an industry, for abandoning the idea that users should be able to create programs. In the 8-bit micro era computers booted into a programming environment, then we had things like QBasic coming standard with the OS, then things like VB, HyperCard, Delphi, and to a lesser extent Excel and Access. For a while, enabling users to create their own tools to suit t…

I don't think it was the developers who made that call though.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#206

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #205
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I can't help but think that this is our fault, as an industry, for abandoning the idea that users should be able to create programs. In the 8-bit micro era computers booted into a programming environment, then we had things like QBasic coming standard with the OS, then things like VB, HyperCard, Delphi, and to a lesser extent Excel and Access. For a while, enabling users to create their own tools to suit t…

I don't think it was the developers who made that call though.

I think it was. Talk about how horrible it is to pile so many abstraction layers together and developers will come out of the woodwork to talk about how much time it saves them. In a lot of cases, developers are rewriting things over and over again in the latest framework-du-jour simply to pad their resumes when they abandon their current employer in two years. Then they turn around and put all the blame on other people like children.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#207

Post by kmeisthax »

Aardwolf wrote: post #11

Newgrounds is also doing a good job of making many of even their interactive Flash animations compatible with modern browsers, which is great! I hope they'll be able to extend this to the games too

Newgrounds is actually one of the main financial sponsors of Ruffle, the project that makes the Internet Archive's Flash support work.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#208

Post by kossae »

xedeon wrote: post #121
kossae wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish there was a way to get 2Advanced SWFs from somewhere.. Those sites were IMO the ultimate displays of what Flash could do visually.

"The website went back up last night: http://2advanced.com for a final 6 weeks until Flash vanishes!" Source: https://twitter.com/fwa/status/1327665766213316608 I managed to grab a local copy. Let me know if you want it.

That would be awesome! Thanks for the heads up. My username at gmail if you get a chance to send it. Thanks again!

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#209

Post by francis_t_catte »

grishka wrote: post #60
pixelrevision wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unity is pretty damn close

Point is... Are there any Unity memes? Haven't seen any :D

yes, actually: https://gamejolt.com/games/luigi-floating-on-an-egg-over-the...
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