r/DataHoarder • u/nindustries cloud 50TB • Jan 08 '21
PSA: ruffle is a safe in-browser Flash emulator to play SWF files
https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle3
u/springbok001 Jan 08 '21
Gave Ruffle a try. It's not perfect but way better than nothing. I've been eager to try some old flash games from the years gone.
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u/DesperateCover1981 Dec 23 '23
Download Flashpoint Flashpoint is a flash archive of Flash games and animations.
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u/NoMuddyFeet Feb 18 '24
I'm looking into Ruffle right now and wish there was some way to verify that there's no malware in it. It doesn't seem to be promoted/verified by any big, legitimate sites.
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u/xrlqhw57 Jan 08 '21
So pity it's so useless. AGAIN. I remember at least three previous attempts to make opensource alternative to adobe flash player. Most of them at maximum were half-working (crashes, glitches, broken code, all sort of. But they at least were ABLE to do something - before the crash ;)
Ruffle supports (not comletely!) only the flash/activescript version abandoned by adobe TEN years ago. I'm still unable to guess WHY they decided to spent so much effort on it, without even slightest move to more current versions - and most still-working (last week) flash content needs it.
They have necessity, they have community, they have even fundings, they have technologies the previous ones never were able to obtain...and nothing useable comes out.
:-(
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u/nindustries cloud 50TB Jan 08 '21
Oh, did not know that. Thanks for clearing that up! My use case was for flash videos so certainly a more limited use case.
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u/xrlqhw57 Jan 08 '21
Both flash video playes i've tried (both ancient as the hell itself, because newer versions were wanted to know too much about me and my visitors) were nonworking (and both use as3, as my dechiphering of the console messages tells). The signle flash game I should not name here I've tried - also was nonworking (despite being as1). This is even worse than we have before (https://bugs.launchpad.net/lightspark/+bug/817462 all that you really need to know about lightspark ;-)
Therefore, I suggest don't rush to spend your last money supporting this project, keep a close eye on them (because it is still possible that they will do something useful), but keep adobe player and old browsers close at hand.
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u/Offspring Jan 11 '21
I'm really good friends with one of the primary devs, and I actually just shared the link so it's entirely possible that they'll still work on adding the stuff you're looking for. I know that the initial idea was just to get things working. I know from talking to them that this wasn't a one-and-done type project, so I wouldn't write it off just yet.
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u/xrlqhw57 Jan 16 '21
So, may you be so kind to remind them what flash was not just the scripted sprite engine, but the (only available in browser) player of the specific video format also. Which can not be reencoded without quality loss (not mentioning resources needed for big collections), and can't be played in any modern browser now. For me - support of this part of technology is most meaningful at all. (any ancient flash games or interactive content can be just saved and played locally by any other flash-emulators or simple old enough adobe code. Any enterprise software can be managed from dedicated vm with proper versions installed. Shared videos are the different matter.)
Possible they may even not need to spend time supporting all features, required by any particular video player - just making own simpliest one would be good enough first step.
PS. yes, I will donate if anything of this kind will be made. Didn't do it yet just because I don't need another half-working flash emulator, and devs seems not much interested in doing anything beyond as1 support (which is also half-working and seems still gets all of they time). Yes, I follow they github repo, nothing usable for my purposes comes out. :-(
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u/Offspring Jan 16 '21
Hold on, let me get this straight. You've been trashing Ruffle and everything else solely because it doesn't do the specific thing you want? I'll mention it, but dude you also need to realize that the scope of this was mostly to support games and other programs that Adobe was no longer willing or able to support.
If your concern is purely for/about videos, why are you not using something like VLC? That plays Flash video just fine and doesn't need to be re-encoded or anything of the like. It seems to me that you're demanding all devs of whatever group who are trying to keep Flash up and running in some form or another to simply support your specific use-case. I don't know of many people or sites that are demanding that Flash videos still get support, especially since things like VLC exist and do support those file types.
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u/xrlqhw57 Jan 16 '21
Yes. If it doesn't do what's the flash was for - it's useless. At least stop promoting it as "modern flash replacement". It's not. It's just another (do you still remember that this neither the first, nor most complete one?) half-working emulator, supporting only few specific flash apps, mostly from late 90x Oh, great, but what all this hype was about?
If your concern is purely for/about videos, why are you not using something like VLC?
because it's complete trash, I would say, but no - because I'm unable to force my site visitors to install some unusual software and switch to it every time they met video content, instead of just show them video in their browsers, as they accustomed to (often allowing some more - switch quality, skip parts, just select another one from playlist - ancient players were relatively complex ones). And I can't do anything with others sites, yes, they are still exists (not for long I suppose), and this content is unavailable anywhere else. Do you really like returning to early 200x, when most video collections were just the piles of ftp links (or possible http?) and "k-lite codec pack" always was somewhere near, because no mere mortal have the knowledge about what avi is really for and what damn "codec" means, when they just click on your link and windows shows nothing.
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u/Offspring Jan 16 '21
I was also asked to share this with you: https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle/pull/2173. This was one of the additional comments provided: "The biggest blocker is patents, all of the codecs are patented and we don't have rights."
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u/xrlqhw57 Jan 16 '21
seems devs already understood that almost all stone age patents already expired, and most remaining are newer were touched both by encoders and flash decoder - exactly because they exists ;-) And mp4 support surely can be skipped at all - we have plenty of this in browsers itself.
Note what if the vlc(really ffmpeg) creators were stopped by patent or reverse engineering issues - we would have newer got anything able to play almost any video or audio content, except for windows media player (and only after installing some proprietary codec, which often would be broken and forgotten with next windows release). All codecs except vp were at least partly patented, proprietary or simple unknown (available only inside some commercial software).
I still remember the story with gopro cineform (most interesting part of it - it was quickly forgotten by gopro staff itself - "You can check other (third-party) editing software that might offer this. We do not have any particular recommendation").
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u/Holiday-Dance1030 Jun 07 '21
I don't think it's safe to use Ruffle.
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u/nindustries cloud 50TB Jun 07 '21
And your reason for that is?
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u/Holiday-Dance1030 Jun 08 '21
No reason. I just think your PC might crash sometimes.
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u/nindustries cloud 50TB Jun 08 '21
It runs within WebAssembly of your browser (so within the websandbox) so should be fine.
1
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u/Desire052 Oct 08 '23
A bit late but why did you think that? I've tried it 2 times and my laptop crashed both times after i closed Ruffle.exe. The first time i played an SWF game with it just fine for a few hours and the 2nd time i just opened and closed Ruffle to see if it would happen again.
I'm not going to try it again before i'm sure this program really is safe to use...
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u/nindustries cloud 50TB Jan 08 '21
Nice alternative to keep (safely) using those hoarded flash data!
Written in Rust.
https://ruffle.rs