A Flash Player emulator written in Rust • Hacker News Board

Re: A Flash Player emulator written in Rust

#11

Post by ink_13 » Fri, Feb 05, 2021, 6:38 AM UTC

I first heard about this project when it saved homestarrunner.com from the dead.

I'm glad it exists, there's a lot of 2000's-era web history wrapped up in Flash.

Re: A Flash Player emulator written in Rust

#12

Post by villgax » Fri, Feb 05, 2021, 6:42 AM UTC

Please FFS let flash die a peaceful death

Re: A Flash Player emulator written in Rust

#13

Post by LASR » Fri, Feb 05, 2021, 6:43 AM UTC

dleslie wrote: post #4

I'm excited for this; flash is still wholly unmatched as an artistic expression tool. HTML5 and WebAssembly can, obviously, provide the technical chops; but we've never recovered the experience of a novice Flash user who, with no prior domain experience, could realize an inspired prototype game or entertaining animation in less than an hour. The tool was just that accessible, and the community that good.

Ironic that “accessibility” was one of the downsides to flash as opposed to html5.

But I agree with you.

Re: A Flash Player emulator written in Rust

#14

Post by pvg » Fri, Feb 05, 2021, 6:44 AM UTC

Previously:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25242115

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20728019

Re: A Flash Player emulator written in Rust

#15

Post by etaioinshrdlu » Fri, Feb 05, 2021, 6:45 AM UTC

McDev wrote: post #8

daypay wrote: post #7

Can't wait to play Runescape in the browser again.

That runs on Java unfortunately

There are actually a good number of ways to get Java to compile and run in a browser. It should be OK, perhaps the 3D or other advanced API's may be a mess however.

Re: A Flash Player emulator written in Rust

#16

Post by acidburnNSA » Fri, Feb 05, 2021, 6:46 AM UTC

Just tried it out on all my flash animations and games I made in 2005-6. Haven't busted those out for a while. What a throwback. Handled them all pretty well except for one game that loaded images of my friends. Must've had the image files not embedded or something. Great work, and thanks!

Re: A Flash Player emulator written in Rust

#17

Post by josefx » Fri, Feb 05, 2021, 6:47 AM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #3

but if it's written in Rust are they going to be able to emulate the security holes so you get the full experience?

Just run it on an Intel processor with some modern RAM.

Re: A Flash Player emulator written in Rust

#18

Post by imhoguy » Fri, Feb 05, 2021, 6:50 AM UTC

villgax wrote: post #12

Please FFS let flash die a peaceful death

Please not. Such projects are essential for historical preservation. Shall we let C64, Atari die too and stop improving emulators?

Re: A Flash Player emulator written in Rust

#19

Post by lxe » Fri, Feb 05, 2021, 6:53 AM UTC

Quite a few things on Newgrounds are actually running on Ruffle!

Re: A Flash Player emulator written in Rust

#20

Post by jtwaleson » Fri, Feb 05, 2021, 6:57 AM UTC

Ok, funny story about ruffle: Years ago in 2012 some co-workers stumbled on the greatest website ever: http://www.novalight.net/NOVALIGHT.html (takes a while to load now) To prove that HTML5/CSS3 was finally ready, I started a side project to recreate it in JS: https://github.com/jtwaleson/NovaLight-Challenge . I never got far and I don't know if that means I never finish side projects or if Flash is officially superior to HTML5. Anyway, the owner of the original site found it and emailed me his appreciation and I think we both had a good laugh about the situation.

Two weeks ago he emailed me again to ask if I could maybe finish the project because flash is now dead, and the site is part of his legacy etc. Instead I slapped ruffle.js on it and everything is back up! It's quite slow to load, but apart from that everything looks great! Ruffle is an amazing project :)