• N0x0n@lemmy.ml
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    9 months ago

    Are flash games still a thing? I remember those old sticky fighting flash games on newsgroupe.

    Someone kind enough in webdev to elaborate why someone would care to revive/reimplemente old flash player tech?

    • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
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      9 months ago

      Adobe Flash Player was deprecated some years ago, so there is no longer any functioning official software that can play Flash games. The modern equivalent are mobile games.

      The reason why reimplementing it is a worthy thing to do is to preserve old software, same reason why console emulators exist.

        • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
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          9 months ago

          From a technical point of view you are right. But commercially, I am pretty sure many companies and developers that used to make Flash games now make mobile games. There are many mobile games that are ports of old Flash games.

          • jol@discuss.tchncs.de
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            9 months ago

            I see mobile games as the commercial successor of Facebook games. But the spirit of flash games stated in the Web scene for sure.

    • sleepyTonia@programming.dev
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      9 months ago

      Game and media preservation, for one. But I’m sure part of it is the technical challenge. There’s still websites where you can download those old flash games to run them locally, but one day Adobe Flash player will cease to work on modern operating systems.

      • luca@lemmy.today
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        9 months ago

        Exactly. Flash was hugely popular, there’s a wealth of content, media, projects and entire websites made with Flash (not just games) that would otherwise be lost and this unbelievable effort brings all that content back to life.

    • Onihikage@beehaw.org
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      9 months ago

      Adding to sleepyTonia’s comment, many flash games have been preserved through Flashpoint Archive, which is like an epic DRM-free Steam client for flash games (as well as other web game technologies, like the shockwave player). However, Flashpoint uses old flash player binaries that, as stated, may one day stop working as hardware and operating systems evolve. If that happens, it’ll be great to have a replacement interpreter ready to go that can be compiled to run on newer tech.