Flash End-of-Life; a sad time for Zeta Flow and flash games

[MD]

It is with great sadness that I have to write that Flash is dead by the end of this year. Adobe is pulling the plug. I don't know whether it will be possible to bypass it in order to still play Zeta Flow, but I'll look into it.

Adobe's announcement is here: https://www.adobe.com/ca/products/flash ... -life.html

Until Flash is completely gone, I'd encourage anyone reading this to make a video of yourself playing some of your favorite levels! Either with a screen capture tool or just point your phone camera at the computer screen, then upload to YouTube. I'd love to post them on the website so that future visitors can get a glimpse of what used to be here before Flash died.

To all of the Zeta Flow fans: thanks for sticking around and making Zeta Flow a joy to develop. I appreciate all of you. Flash is what hooked me on computer programming, and it was the internet community that made it so much fun to develop content. I started programming when I was 10 years old, and I started Zeta Flow when I was in high school. My goal has never been to make money from this, but to just make a fun, safe game for people of all ages to play. I believe I accomplished that, with your help, and am glad it lasted as long as it did.

I'm putting put up the source code on github for the purpose of archiving and for those that are interested in learning how Zeta Flow was made. I'm hoping that Zeta Flow can still live on, at least in our hearts if nowhere else.

Github link: https://github.com/skylogic004/zetaflow (work in progress)

Thanks to you all,
Matt (~MD)

[Zeke]

I've been enjoying Zeta Flow since I first discovered it on Jay Is Games back in August of 2007. I know that because the comment I left on Jay's site is still there (even though Jay himself is long gone). Over the years Zeta Flow has provided countless hours of stress relief and entertainment.
For me, I found the elegant simplicity of the game to be its main attraction. Many nights it was a Zen exercise to play the games and refocus my thoughts. The Mantra was... move ship, shoot enemies, destroy the core and win! Repeat as required.
Something that should be noted is how civilized the community of players have been. At a time in history when civility has taken a back seat to pompous, egocentric opinionating, Zeta Flow players visited, enjoyed, commented and showed respect for one another with very few exceptions.
Matt, I can't thank you enough for all those hours of pleasure. I wish you all the best!

[asdasdg]

Have you looked into the Flashpoint project?

https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/

[asdasdg]

Zeta flow is unfortunately not available to flash point due to technical reasons at this time. However the Zeta Flow game is mentioned several times on their discord community.

Edit: I'm just browsing at this point. I posted a chat about zeta flow and I'm waiting for a response to my query.

Edit2: So it works but you have to use the ultimate version of Flashpoint instead of infinity. Ultimate is a 500GB file download. Devs are working on solution to this issue as its a problem for several games.

Edit3: from the Flashpoint player "All level data saved. Pick a level in the paginated list and click play. Some levels don't exist because of php server errors on original site." This doesn't work in the basic version of flashpoint so I'm guessing I'd have to download the big mondo flashpoint version to play those levels at this time. But I'm only able to view the oldest gallery page.

Edit4: I just noticed our top active user count jumped to 156 back to this march. WOW

[MD]

Thanks for letting me know about Flashpoint, I'd never heard of it. Their solution works fine for simple games, but it's no use to me. Their main advantage is bypassing site-locks and allowing play completely offline. Let's be completely honest: this is basically just pirating flash games. Now, I'm totally OK with archiving games that would otherwise cease to exist. However, for games that still have the support of its developer (like Zeta Flow...until I die), Flashpoint is not needed because the developer can very simply remove the site-lock himself. Furthermore, Flashpoint intentionally doesn't allow an internet connection, which means that users can't create and save new levels and that users can't rate and comment on levels. So basically, the community aspect is lost. To me, this is the whole fun of Zeta Flow. So, copyright infringement aside, Flashpoint is not the way forward for Zeta Flow.

Something good did come out of my investigations into Flashpoint: their website mentions that for live Flash content in the browser, a system called Ruffle can be used. This allows Flash content to run without the Flash player on their original websites and without requiring users to download anything (not even a plugin) - this sounds ideal for Zeta Flow. I have to check it out more and try it out myself, but the website says they are 70% done implementing ActionScript 1, which is very good (especially compared to ActionScript 3 which is only 5% complete).

I also came across some replacements for Flash Player. These would require the user to download and install a plugin in their browser, which is a hurdle but not the end of the world.

- https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/doc ... ts/Shumway
- https://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/
- https://lightspark.github.io/

I'll look into it more later - I'm still waiting to see exactly what will happen in January when the plug is pulled by Adobe. Will users who already have Flash still be able to play? Maybe - we'll see.

~MD

[asdasdg]

So this weekend I'm going to record gameplay of some of my favorite levels. What are some levels would people like me to record?

[Zeke]

OctoSpider by Magnus_LTD is an earlier level that has visual appeal that should attract interest.

[MD]

These guys made some good levels:

http://zetaflow.skylogic.ca/user/profile/n3cr0m33p5
http://zetaflow.skylogic.ca/user/profile/ryo
http://zetaflow.skylogic.ca/user/profile/MP3228

[MD]

Are you going to do a handful of levels? If so, you can help me by recording which ones you do here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

[MD]

Today (Jan 12, the official end date for Flash) I was met with a new error screen (see attached screenshot below).

The people over at Newgrounds are trying to workaround the issue (https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1462656).

I was able to play Zeta Flow by following the instructions here: https://sonucais.newgrounds.com/news/post/1137244

In summary: install the Newgrounds Player, change the config files in the Windows directory, and change the Windows clock to 2020. Unfortunately, changing the windows clock is not great since it breaks other things, so you'll want to change it back whenever you're done playing Flash. Hopefully a better solution will be found.

~MD

[Zeke]

Kongregate offered an option to the Flash issue this morning. It looks like this is going to be their fix/workaround for the issue.
They have a link to SuperNova which appears when you try to play one of their Flash games, which recommends installing SuperNova to continue playing the game:
https://www.getsupernova.com/

There were a few negative comments posted by players who were not able to play the game (https://www.kongregate.com/games/Xdrago ... he-company), even after installing the SuperNova software, but that could be "operator error". I haven't installed it yet but it still might be a viable option for Zeta Flow worth looking into.

It appears to be a program that the player installs, along with an extension for your browser, which will enable playing Flash games. There is also information for Webmasters offered. Which implied to me that the website running the Flash games needs to make some adjustments to enable their software to run in conjunction with it.

[MD]

Good to know, Zeke. I tried it out myself on my kongregate game. Unfortunately it doesn't work for me, I got as far as the screen below (see attached) but nothing happens when I press Play. I discovered that Supernova is built on Adobe AIR, and Adobe has pulled the plug on that too.

I also tried out Ruffle. It's showing potential and is under active development. But I tried running it on Zeta Flow and it was just glitchy and unplayable (it did render the little red ship though!)

So, we're still in limbo.

[MD]

I have some good news!

I have found a decent short-term solution: basically I run an older copy of Flash Player in an older copy of Chrome. I wrote up all the instructions on my blog.

And I will continue to evaluate Ruffle. It's actually working quite well (not sure what I did wrong the first time). I can play many levels with no problem. But there are some glitches, like graphics that don't disappear when they should and the editor completely doesn't function. I think that Ruffle will likely be the future of Flash on the web (if they are successful in emulating the Flash Player 100%).

Cheers,
~MD

[asdasdg]

On the main page I can see the "how to run flash" blurb but its a blank white box with barely visible text. Was this what its supposed to look like?

browser chrome. OS win 10

[MD]

Aha, that's not right. I believe your browser has cached the old css file and hasn't loaded the new one. I tried something that should force all users' browsers to reload. So, try going to the page again.

~MD