Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Internet Archive expands Flash support

mastodon.archive.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 231 posts

Re: Internet Archive expands Flash support

#21

Post by ilayn »

mynameishere wrote: post #13
haunter wrote: post #4

Highly recommend "Winnie the Pooh's Home Run Derby". It's the Dark Souls of flash games https://archive.org/details/homerunderby_en The japanese version is here (no difference) https://archive.org/details/homerun_20201126 They might crash in full screen though (some kind of bug)

Well now I've got that crappy music stuck in my head. That brings up a real mystery from 15 years ago that I never did solve. Back in the day you could go on kongregate or whatever and play these awful flash games that clearly took 30 minutes or less to make. Just junky, copy-paste stuff. (Much worse than the "home run derby" game above.) And yet... And yet they all seemed to have original sound tracks of more-or-les…

It was mostly from https://www.newgrounds.com/

Click the audio tab

Re: Internet Archive expands Flash support

#22

Post by lucgommans »

Apocryphon wrote: post #20

Does this mean that previously archived sites that use Flash will now be viewable?

That would be nice. I was recently trying to play https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/scie... via archive.org, but it doesn't work. Also the swf file itself does not load in an old virtual machine. I don't know where to view error output besides the JavaScript console; it simply does nothing.

(Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2290936)

I still occasionally think back to this engine when the topic of human randomness comes up (I do computer security for a living, so that's not infrequent)

Re: Internet Archive expands Flash support

#23

Post by justsomehnguy »

At some point Flash emulation would solve all the biggest troubles of the original Flash and.. became a new standard for a web-based inter/animation? Of course, having a VM with XP with Macrmedia director would be a problem for Apple M1/2/3 owners, but nothing a modern emulation couldn't solve...

Re: Internet Archive expands Flash support

#25

Post by BenFranklin100 »

This is encouraging news. These sorts of efforts help save information from being buried in the trash heap of history.

Is anyone aware of coordinated efforts beyond the internet archive to save data in old formats and media? I actually have information on 5.25 floppies I never copied over (my bad) that are almost certainly lost at this point. Also, I have docs in PFS Write format that will be PITA to recover at this point too. I’d have to dig out that old 486 that has been gathering dust in my basement the last 25 years to know for sure :) .

Re: Internet Archive expands Flash support

#26

Post by Bakingpotato »

justsomehnguy wrote: post #23

At some point Flash emulation would solve all the biggest troubles of the original Flash and.. became a new standard for a web-based inter/animation? Of course, having a VM with XP with Macrmedia director would be a problem for Apple M1/2/3 owners, but nothing a modern emulation couldn't solve...

would it solve the problems? absolutely. would browser vendors pick it up for a standard? almost definitely not.

though, nothing is stopping anyone from creating new flash games, videos, etc. the software is out there, and NG already does flash game jams.

Re: Internet Archive expands Flash support

#27

Post by Alifatisk »

Part of me feel sad that the big players deprecated flash before any good alternatives popped up, HTML5 wasn't exactly an alternative yet. Flash was waaay more powerful, I think we lost a bit of good technology there.

Hopefully we'll get it back soon.

Re: Internet Archive expands Flash support

#28

Post by Bakingpotato »

BenFranklin100 wrote: post #25

This is encouraging news. These sorts of efforts help save information from being buried in the trash heap of history. Is anyone aware of coordinated efforts beyond the internet archive to save data in old formats and media? I actually have information on 5.25 floppies I never copied over (my bad) that are almost certainly lost at this point. Also, I have docs in PFS Write format that will be PITA to recover at this…

I don't know of too many, but there are some out there like https://hiddenpalace.org/ (though that is more related to video games).

Re: Internet Archive expands Flash support

#29

Post by Bakingpotato »

Alifatisk wrote: post #27

Part of me feel sad that the big players deprecated flash before any good alternatives popped up, HTML5 wasn't exactly an alternative yet. Flash was waaay more powerful, I think we lost a bit of good technology there. Hopefully we'll get it back soon.

yeah. the closest to getting flash back is Ruffle, which works pretty well, and Newgrounds does flash game jams still, so it ain't all dead

Re: Internet Archive expands Flash support

#30

Post by TillE »

CSMastermind wrote: post #16

I was just watching a YouTube video about Home Star Runner yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wbh9-mNmviE I never watched the series myself but I do remember hearing about it. In the video essay he talks about how flash videos like Home Star Runner were a unique medium. Not quite passive like a video but not quite interactive like a video game. The videos could be watched passively but also could incorporate…

Those were fun gimmicks and all, but Homestar Runner worked because of the cute character designs, funny writing, and Matt's genuinely outstanding voice acting. It holds up just fine on YouTube.

It was more about Flash being a really powerful tool for amateur animators, and coming at a time when you didn't have much else in the way of video on the internet.

Post reply on HN