Author Archives: Matt Roszak

The Future of Flash

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Hey guys, a lot of people ask me what I’m gonna do when Flash dies, and I’m making this post to clear up some confusion. What’s happening is that official support for the Flashplayer browser plug-in has ended, and browsers will block it completely, as it will be a security risk without any further updates. All this means is that browsers will not be able to run Flash files by default. (though I’m sure there’s a few browser extensions that will let you get around that. One that I keep hearing about, but have not personally used, is SuperNova SWF Enabler)

Flash is NOT dying. Adobe Animate (previously known as Flash Pro) is still a commonly used animation program, and you can still program games and apps with it. The programming features may eventually be dropped, but that has not been announced yet. The Flash file format (.swf) is also not going anywhere. These files will still run in Desktop and mobile Flashplayers, often through Adobe AIR, but there are other options. Windows is incredibly backwards compatible, and it will probably have no problem running Flash files for many more years, using any of the standalone Flashplayers that are out there. Adobe’s official one is the Flashplayer projector, which you can download from this page.

Newgrounds, Kongregate and Armor Games have not announced that they will be deleting any Flash files off their websites yet, and when they do, chances are they’ll back them up somewhere. At any rate, other people have already been doing that for a while. BlueMaxima has collected 60,000 Flash files that can be downloaded and run using their launcher.

On top of all that, many Flashplayer emulator projects are the works. Newgrounds is working on one called Ruffle – and it can run many ActionScript 2 games already, with plans to run ActionScript 3 games eventually. If you want to try it out, add “/format/flash?emulate=flash” to the end of a game URL on Newgrounds. These emulators even work on mobile devices, so you can test this on your phone right now if you want!

Here’s some of my old games running 99% accurately in it:
Epic Battle Fantasy 1 – The Kitten Game – Brawl Royale
(Epic Battle Fantasy 3 doesn’t work yet)

Anyway, all of my old stuff will be up on Steam and Itch.io in a few months once the EBF Collection is done. The games will be getting quality-of-life updates, and new content in some cases! The collection will be installed as a launcher that opens DRM-free .swf files, much like how EBF5 runs right now. Even though the launcher is only for Windows, it’s easy to take the .swf files and run them on whatever platform you like. With a tiny bit of luck, they’ll easily survive a decade or more without any further updates from me.

A lot of old-school Flash developers are still using Flash in their game development pipeline. Tom Fulp and The Behemoth (Castle Crashers, Battleblock Theater, Nightmare Cops), Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel (Binding of Isaac, The End is Nigh, Mewgenics), Juicy Beast (Burito Byson), and more. These guys are still doing animation and some coding in Flash, and running it through their own custom made engines. Many old Flash games are also being re-released on new platforms, including Mardek, Swords and Sandals, Henry Stickmin, and probably many more.

All I’m saying is that Flash is very much still around, running in the background in a lot of subtle ways.

Adobe will finally kill Flash in 2020 - The Verge

Battle Station 2020

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Yo.

My office was looking tidier than usual, so I figured this was a good chance to take a new photo of my work/gaming space. I’m pretty happy with how it looks now, especially the cable management. I can’t think of much that I’d like to change, except for maybe getting a proper wooden table instead of this cheapo one. Maybe I could put something else in the corner instead of that fridge, as I haven’t been using it for a while…

Technically I’m on a 4-display setup  – can you spot all of them?

Anyway, I’m playing Terraria with my friends now. Between that and DIY projects, I’ve not been working on any games at the moment. I should probably finish off the Brawl Royale update and stick that on Patreon – it’s almost done already.

Birdworms

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Here’s some more fake Pokemon I gone and done.

In other news, me and Ronja are building a fence. Major mistake. Definitely hiring someone else to do it next time. No need to break your hands and back for such an inconsequential project.

AI-Generated Fakemon

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Hey guys, I spent most of yesterday trying to train an AI to generate new Pokemon sprites. I bought a subscription for Runway ML, gave it thousands of GBA-style Pokemon battle sprites from all the games, including a thousand or so fake Pokemon from DeviantArt, and told it to do its thing. After about 2 hours it started producing blobs that look a little bit like Pokemon – the colors, sizes and linework look about right. But I think it never quite understood that Pokemon are stylized animals, with features like symmetry, limbs, faces, etc. There’s so many radically different Pokemon, that it likely struggled to find out what they had in common. It probably would have worked better on a smaller set of Pokemon, perhaps only dragons, or dogs.

After spending some more time in the oven, perhaps 6 or 7 hours, the final results look a little bit more like Pokemon, but they’re still way off. I doubt the results would improve much past this point, so it’s time to give up for now. Maybe in a couple of years I’ll try again when some new tech is up to the task. But here’s what you get for now…

Behold, Pokemon Nightmare and Acid Trip:

Fanart: At the End of it All

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Hey guys. Here’s a big fanart from Troisnyx, who if you recall, also did the vocal versions of two EBF5 songs – one of which is used in a secret battle, and the other in the EBF Fanart Collab video.

We actually met up yesterday for the first time, so I’ve got a print of this for my wall now! She seems cool.

Ronja was sick so she couldn’t be there, and they’re both quite gutted about that. At least none of us has the corona yet.