2023 in review
ruffle.rs
It's been a very busy 2023 for Ruffle, so much so that we didn't find the time to write a new progress report with everything going on! Let's fix that!
  • feoh@lemmy.ml
    451·
    10 months ago

    This project just warms the cockles of my nerdy old heart :)

    Bringing a crappy CRAPPY old protocol to life with awesome, secure, new 100% FLOSS technology so boatloads of homegrown art and culture can be saved?

    YES PLEASE! :)

  • Vincent@feddit.nl
    39·
    10 months ago

    Wow, I’m amazed by the number of contributors that a relatively niche product like this has managed to gather - very cool!

  • Rbon@lemmy.sdf.org
    351·
    10 months ago

    Ruffle is one of the most important pieces of game preservation currently out there, and it warms my heart to see it constantly improving!

  • N0x0n@lemmy.ml
    313·
    10 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
      62·
      10 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
          9·
          10 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
            3·
            10 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
      45·
      10 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
        25·
        10 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.orgEnglish
      16·
      10 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.

  • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.eeEnglish
    161·
    10 months ago

    blog updates seem to be signed by someone named Dinnerbone

    ɐɯ I ʇɥᴉuʞᴉuƃ oɟ ʇɥǝ ɹᴉƃɥʇ pᴉuuǝɹqouǝ ɥǝɹǝ¿

  • QuazarOmega@lemy.lol
    123·
    10 months ago

    Incredible improvements! Love seeing people so dedicated to such an important project

  • Dizzy Devil Ducky@lemm.eeEnglish
    2·
    10 months ago

    I really like this project, but may be it’s just a my desktop problem the nitrome games I downloaded like to lag using it. It’s still really cool, though.

  • rdri@lemmy.world
    42·
    10 months ago

    The performance is really bad though, can’t see it improving any time soon. Maybe it has to do with how it relies on wasm.

    • wiki_me@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      3·
      10 months ago

      I tried a few games that are considered classics and didn’t notice any performance problems, maybe open an issue with a test case?

  • leopold@lemmy.kde.socialEnglish
    18·
    10 months ago

    People keep talking about preservation whenever Ruffle is brought up for some reason. Deprecated or not, the old Flash Player (which is still on Flathub) still works perfectly fine and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Flash games have never been in any immediate preservation danger. Ruffle is cool because it’s more secure, it performs better and it works in modern web browsers. It’s not really preserving anything.

      • leopold@lemmy.kde.socialEnglish
        3·
        10 months ago

        Falkon. It’s the only web browser I can think of that still has PPAPI. Maybe Konqueror and Angelfish also do? Would have to check. Either way, these browsers all kinda suck and obviously any browser you’d want to use has dropped support, as I already conceded. Ruffle works in most modern web browsers, Flash does not.

        I just didn’t really consider that necessary for strictly preservation purposes. All you need is an archive of SWF files you can download like flashpoint and software that can launch them. Flash Player and Ruffle are both perfectly suitable for this.

    • Daxtron2@startrek.website
      81·
      10 months ago

      It’s the same concept as old DOS games. Sure you could install a super old version of windows but by giving a more accessible, secure, and free version, the games are essentially preserved from becoming totally abandoned.