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Ruffle – A Flash Player emulator written in Rust

ruffle.rs

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Re: Ruffle – A Flash Player emulator written in Rust

#51

Post by atesti »

SXX wrote: post #39
apignotti wrote: post #33

A FOSS Flash Player implementation has certainly value, and I hope to have contributed to the cause by starting the Lightspark project years ago. The sad reality is that the Flash runtime is massive and under-documented. The best approach for Flash preservation in the medium term is using _actual emulation_ to run the binary player itself. Further reading: https://medium.com/leaningtech/preserving-flash-content-with.…

I just curious couldn't someone just write down missing part of documentstion looking at something like Scaleform source code? So someone else can make clean room implementation using the doc. Scaleform impplementation of Flash player always looked really decent to me.

You can find some flash player source in Doom3 BFG edition source code! Apparently some people at ID wrote their internal flash player just for the menus!

I don't know how good it is

Re: Ruffle – A Flash Player emulator written in Rust

#52

Post by grishka »

q3k wrote: post #47
StavrosK wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it require Adobe's cooperation?

> To use CheerpX for Flash, a licence is required for both CheerpX itself, and for distributing the Adobe Flash Player. This is a requirement for both self-hosted and cloud-hosted installations. In many cases, we will be able to offer both licences under the same commercial agreement. In some cases, a separate licence will need to be procured from Harman. Leaning Technologies can make the right introductions and faci…

It's even worse than I remember. So, a very b2b very proprietary product. I mean, their website even has pictures of random smiling people and a bunch of logos of random companies. Most everything leads to "contact us". Technical details are sparse. Can't get more b2b than this.

Can't see how this can even begin to approach content preservation we're talking about here.

Re: Ruffle – A Flash Player emulator written in Rust

#53

Post by q3k »

atesti wrote: post #51
SXX wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just curious couldn't someone just write down missing part of documentstion looking at something like Scaleform source code? So someone else can make clean room implementation using the doc. Scaleform impplementation of Flash player always looked really decent to me.

You can find some flash player source in Doom3 BFG edition source code! Apparently some people at ID wrote their internal flash player just for the menus! I don't know how good it is

For anyone who's curious to peep at the code: https://github.com/id-Software/DOOM-3-BFG/tree/master/neo/sw...

But it mostly seems like a simple, reverse-engineered, purpose-built player for their own use, so probably nothing that the open source community will have much use from.

Re: Ruffle – A Flash Player emulator written in Rust

#54

Post by tombert »

haunter wrote: post #49

I really really wish Flash MX 2004 were made free to download by Adobe. That was one of the greatest piece of software they (well Macromedia) ever released. The format is dead, basically abandonware, they should make it available. Adobe already released the universal activation keys cause they shutdown the servers but it's still not legal to use if you haven't bought an original copy https://helpx.adobe.com/x-product…

I think they wouldn’t do that since they might feel it’s competitive with their current Adobe Animate product.

Re: Ruffle – A Flash Player emulator written in Rust

#55

Post by [deleted] »

grishka wrote: post #52
q3k wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To use CheerpX for Flash, a licence is required for both CheerpX itself, and for distributing the Adobe Flash Player. This is a requirement for both self-hosted and cloud-hosted installations. In many cases, we will be able to offer both licences under the same commercial agreement. In some cases, a separate licence will need to be procured from Harman. Leaning Technologies can make the right introductions and faci…

It's even worse than I remember. So, a very b2b very proprietary product. I mean, their website even has pictures of random smiling people and a bunch of logos of random companies. Most everything leads to "contact us". Technical details are sparse. Can't get more b2b than this. Can't see how this can even begin to approach content preservation we're talking about here.

[deleted]

Re: Ruffle – A Flash Player emulator written in Rust

#56

Post by grishka »

haunter wrote: post #49

I really really wish Flash MX 2004 were made free to download by Adobe. That was one of the greatest piece of software they (well Macromedia) ever released. The format is dead, basically abandonware, they should make it available. Adobe already released the universal activation keys cause they shutdown the servers but it's still not legal to use if you haven't bought an original copy https://helpx.adobe.com/x-product…

> but it's still not legal to use if you haven't bought an original copy

But they no longer sell it anyway? And they don't say any of that on that page. If they really wanted to make sure only those who bought it previously got those keys, they'd require logging in with an account you bought it with to see that page.

Re: Ruffle – A Flash Player emulator written in Rust

#57

Post by untog »

grishka wrote: post #52
q3k wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To use CheerpX for Flash, a licence is required for both CheerpX itself, and for distributing the Adobe Flash Player. This is a requirement for both self-hosted and cloud-hosted installations. In many cases, we will be able to offer both licences under the same commercial agreement. In some cases, a separate licence will need to be procured from Harman. Leaning Technologies can make the right introductions and faci…

It's even worse than I remember. So, a very b2b very proprietary product. I mean, their website even has pictures of random smiling people and a bunch of logos of random companies. Most everything leads to "contact us". Technical details are sparse. Can't get more b2b than this. Can't see how this can even begin to approach content preservation we're talking about here.

Seems especially silly as there’s a real business use case here, for people who made apps using Flex. Not sure how many companies actually still depend on that but it was definitely a thing for a while there. Surely much better to focus on that.

Re: Ruffle – A Flash Player emulator written in Rust

#58

Post by haunter »

grishka wrote: post #56
haunter wrote: post #49

I really really wish Flash MX 2004 were made free to download by Adobe. That was one of the greatest piece of software they (well Macromedia) ever released. The format is dead, basically abandonware, they should make it available. Adobe already released the universal activation keys cause they shutdown the servers but it's still not legal to use if you haven't bought an original copy https://helpx.adobe.com/x-product…

> but it's still not legal to use if you haven't bought an original copy But they no longer sell it anyway? And they don't say any of that on that page. If they really wanted to make sure only those who bought it previously got those keys, they'd require logging in with an account you bought it with to see that page.

I'm not sure how does that work legally. For example you can still download the installer directly from them [0] and it's an universal one. If you don't have a key it works in trial mode, if you do have one you can unlock the full version.

http://download.macromedia.com/pub/flash/esd/flashmx2004_tri...

Re: Ruffle – A Flash Player emulator written in Rust

#59

Post by untog »

fulafel wrote: post #42
lxe wrote: post #5

Those sample files.. bring back memories. I think we took a step backwards in serving vector art/animation on the web. When YouTube replaced Flash, we've probably wasted petabytes of bandwidth serving rasterized content when Flash or a similar format would have been much more effective.

SVG is much better at vector art use cases. Flash was horrible from user pov (constant os and browser compatibility problems, unending stream of weekly "ads can pwn your computer" level security holes, proprietary black box nature, ate your battery, hard to procedurally generate, didn't integrate with the web and dom, etc etc).

I’m not sure that’s true when factoring in performance. Every time I’ve tried to animate SVG it’s been an absolute CPU hog in a way Flash never was.

Not saying we should stick with Flash but I don’t think SVGs are a complete answer today either.

Re: Ruffle – A Flash Player emulator written in Rust

#60

Post by whatever_dude »

apignotti wrote: post #33

A FOSS Flash Player implementation has certainly value, and I hope to have contributed to the cause by starting the Lightspark project years ago. The sad reality is that the Flash runtime is massive and under-documented. The best approach for Flash preservation in the medium term is using _actual emulation_ to run the binary player itself. Further reading: https://medium.com/leaningtech/preserving-flash-content-with.…

Wrapping a piece of proprietary technology with other piece of proprietary technology is not the way to go with this. I get that you keep saying it's easier than creating a new player from scratch, but it doesn't mean it's better.
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