ruffle-rs/ruffle: A Flash Player emulator written in Rust
78 points by rcarmo 6 days ago | 20 comments
  • teeray 5 days ago |
    It blows my mind to think we can finally run Flash on iOS—all it took was the complete destruction of Flash.
    • BugsJustFindMe 5 days ago |
      > all it took was the complete destruction of flash

      And then 15 years of waiting.

  • alchemio 5 days ago |
    Flash apps and Java applets (via Cheerp) can run again in browsers thanks to wasm.
    • Alifatisk 5 days ago |
      If it's a little Java application, you can also port it to Dart, they share a lot of similarities. I did this and it was quite easy, but in my case, it was a little javafx application that drew to the canvas, not many dependencies where used.
    • MaxBarraclough 2 days ago |
      I imagine this would be possible with just JavaScript. It would probably run somewhat slower than WASM, but still, it's possible to transpile Rust to JavaScript. [0]

      [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asm.js#Programming_languages

  • cultofmetatron 5 days ago |
    what makes this an emulator and not just an alternative open source player?
    • maxbond 5 days ago |
      An emulator seeks to be bug-compatible with a specific language implementation, rather than to implement a language in the abstract. The reference implementation is the spec. But it isn't entirely cut and dry, and I see where your point.
      • ChocolateGod 4 days ago |
        I'm not sure in the case here there's a difference between emulator and open source player.
        • maxbond 4 days ago |
          Rather than emulating the behavior of Flash Player, you could write an implementation against the ActionScript language reference.

          https://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actions...

          And/or the documentation of AVM2, including it's instruction set.

          https://archive.org/details/flash-file-format-specification-... (see page 35)

          That's what I mean by implementing a language in the abstract. I don't imagine anyone would want to do that, except out of academic interest. It wouldn't be suitable for archival purposes, and those are the only practical purposes I can imagine. But that's the distinction that comes to my mind.

    • dusted 5 days ago |
      well, there's not even a proprietary player anymore.. at least on recent linux, you'll be hard pressed to play .swf files without ruffle.
      • lcouturi 4 days ago |
        It is true that the proprietary player was discontinued years ago, but it is still usable, even on Linux. I installed it through the AUR package on Arch Linux, but it can also be installed on any distribution through the Flatpak package. From my experience though Ruffle has much better performance, so I use it whenever possible.
  • dusted 5 days ago |
    I've had a lot of use of the stand-alone ruffle application, I have a bit over a tib of old flash files, and it's a pleasure to be able to dive into this part of online history and relive many of that late 90s whimsy ^_^
    • p0w3n3d 4 days ago |
      Could you share them? Maybe in a form of a museum?
      • dusted 4 days ago |
        I'm afraid I can't, even though I really want to, it would probably violate some copyrights, if not those of the swf authors, then the authors of various content such as video, audio or graphics used in them :(
        • Minor49er 4 days ago |
          Just put them up on Archive.org. They already host tons of Flash media and even include Ruffle as a way to play them on the site natively
  • ChrisArchitect 5 days ago |
  • p0w3n3d 4 days ago |
    I'm looking for a flash game that was parking on a parking lot. It was super accurate in terms of the turning radius and I've learnt a lot in it to apply in real life. This was 2d game btw. Anyone remembers?
    • 0x38B 4 days ago |
      A few Kagi searches turned up a game called "Parking Perfection", is that it?
      • p0w3n3d 4 days ago |
        SIR! This IS THE EXACT game I played! Thank you very much! I don't know how you could nail it so exactly... This kagi search engine - I must try it out...

        I have a feeling that google and duckduck do not find anything anymore, except for products.

  • mclau156 4 days ago |
    Sinjid: Shadow of the Warrior and Swords and Sandals are both great flash games