There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

There is a trove of flash animation that is completely lost to history

From Homestar Runner to Salad fingers to badgers, stick figure battles, and the End of Ze World, this — dare I call it an artform? — was a cultural touchstone for a generation.

Flash made vector animation available to the masses, and internet distribution of the relatively small video files was a piece of cake. With the filetype now essentially deprecated, the creators gone on to bigger and better things, the distribution sites shut down, it is a dead form. Most of it will be lost forever, although there may be someone archiving some of it for posterity.

dragontamer ,

Flash still got it good.

Consider the entire generation of 1970s and 1980s Betamax footage that is basically lost today.

When format wars snap to one side: VHS vs Betamax, HD-DVD vs BluRay, Flash vs HTML5, QuickTime vs DivX… The losing side basically loses a ton of footage.

For the most part, we know how to play Flash right now and mostly how to upconvert it or otherwise archive it. That’s not true of all formats.

ripcord ,
@ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

What content was released on beta that wasn’t released on vhs or later on DVD or something else?

I don’t think it’s comparable at all.

simple ,

They’re not lost, most of them are archived via Flashpoint. The most notable ones have also been exported as regular videos on sites like Newgrounds. But yeah, I miss that Flash era where people made fun animations and games for whatever was on their mind.

captain_aggravated ,
@captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works avatar

The thing I find that is lost is the blurring of the line between video game and animation. Homestar Runner cartoons were often interactive, they made several outright games but also the things that were closer to animations often had easter eggs in them, from (in Strong Bad’s words) dumb stuff that would pop up to entire extra scenes.

Early Youtube had a thriving animation community, but given the limitations of video-based content they really couldn’t do those interactive elements, then Flash died, and now that culture is basically gone.

lemmyng ,
@lemmyng@lemmy.ca avatar

Homestar Runner cartoons were often interactive

I got fond memories of hunting for the clickies at the end of the videos.

ripcord ,
@ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

And, usually, throughout.

Fortunately, you can still do almost all of them.

jumjummy ,

Hey, the badger is still alive and badgering!

ripcord ,
@ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

So is Homestarrunner. Most of their flash stuff still works, too.

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

If they were popular enough (like all the examples you’ve named), they probably have been converted to a more modern format already (like all the examples you’ve named).

You could also download the files and still watch them on a local machine using flash player to enjoy them in the original format, assuming the .FLVs themselves are still available. Makes me wonder if Newgrounds still has any of that somewhere, even if not accessible by the public. They’re still around, but they’re modern videos now.

PeriodicallyPedantic ,

I’m a little surprised nothing came to take the place of flash.

There are lots of animation tools that export to video, and there are WYSIWYG web editors that allow for interaction and movement.

But nothing really came out, built on html5, that let you easily create interactive motion narratives or games, so that you could just upload them somewhere.

PeriodicallyPedantic ,

Many of the pure animations were done on newgro and they still work.

But the games and interactive videos don’t work anymore. 🤔 I wonder what that means for animations that had a loading screen (even i made one of those, back in the day)

LodeMike ,

We have emulators for it, dude.

PraiseTheSoup ,

I’ve spent a lot of time looking for old stuff from Stick Figure Death Theatre to no avail. It really is quite sad.

arefx ,

Salad fingers is still coming put with new ones lol

Rai ,

hBomberGuy did a long video on Newgrounds! It’s amazing, but I think it might only be on his Patreon.

W_itjust_works ,

Is the tech no longer possible? I have a feeling of no current browser support and security issues, but could one just have a private server for hobbyists?

W_itjust_works ,
pivot_root ,

Ruffle is a Rust-based implementation of a SWF player. It’s not 100% compatible, but it has decent AVM1 (ActionScript 1/2) and AVM2 (ActionScript 3) support already.

It also can be compiled to WebAssembly, making it possible to run Flash in the browser again.

amio ,

A lot of it was lightweight enough that archival sites etc might not have specifically ruled them out, aside from specific efforts to preserve Flash material. There are also modded versions of Flash Player and emulators that can still play SWFs, and FLV remains supported fairly commonly.

Masta_Chief , (edited )

Guys, homestarrunner literally works again thanks to something called the Ruffle Project (just from reading the website). Enjoy the vector graphics and Easter eggs again

Kelly , (edited )

For creators that were still active some jumped ship to pre rendered videos, for example Salad Fingers lives on here:

youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9383CC2C6DBD902F

A major archival project for the whole flash era is Flashpoint Archive (formally known as BlueMaxima):

flashpointarchive.org/?lang=en-US

pivot_root ,

People jumped ship to prerendered videos even before the death or Flash, using Flash as the video player.

It’s been over a decade since I learned this, but if I recall correctly, SWF animations that were large enough had desync issues with the audio and frames. The solution was to export the animation as an actual video file and play that back.

thevoidzero ,

Yeah it is sad that we don’t have flash. But today I saw there’s a program Ruffle (written in Rust) that can run flash, and add support to browser through extensions or something.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • [email protected]
  • random
  • lifeLocal
  • goranko
  • All magazines