Developer(s) | Mike Welsh kmeisthax Nathan Adams Callum Thomson relrelb |
---|---|
Repository | |
Written in | Rust, [1] ActionScript, TypeScript, JavaScript |
Operating system | Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux |
Type | Multimedia, video game emulator |
License | MIT license, Apache License 2.0 |
Website | ruffle |
Ruffle is a free and open source emulator for playing Adobe Flash (SWF) animation files.
Following the deprecation and discontinuation of Adobe Flash Player in January 2021, some websites adopted Ruffle to allow users for continual viewing and interaction with legacy Flash Player content.
Ruffle is written in the Rust programming language, featuring a desktop client and a web client. Website authors can load Ruffle using JavaScript or users can install a browser extension that works on any website. [2]
The web client relies on Rust being compiled to WebAssembly, which allows it to run inside a sandbox, a significant improvement compared to Flash Player, which garnered a notoriety for having various security issues. [3] [4] The Rust language itself protects against common memory safety issues that plagued Flash Player, such as use after free or buffer overflows. [5]
The desktop client currently uses a graphical user interface to open SWF files. [6] Downloads are available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. In addition, there are browser extensions for Mozilla Firefox, as well as Chromium-based browsers. A website administrator can even install Ruffle to their websites using a script tag for their webpages. [7]
As of August 2024, Ruffle primarily supports older Flash content, which use ActionScript 1.0 and 2.0, with 95% of the language and 78% of the API having been implemented. [8] Support for ActionScript 3.0 has improved significantly since August 2022 (support is currently at about 90% of the language and 76% of the API, with an additional 7% of partially implemented API). In an article, Bleeping Computer reported that all the Flash games they tried in February 2021 "worked flawlessly". [5]
Adobe announced in 2017 that it would stop supporting Flash Player on January 1, 2021, encouraging the use of HTML5 instead. [9] That same year The New York Times began working on archiving old web content, so that readers could view webpages as they were originally published, [10] and now uses Ruffle for old Flash content. [11]
Adobe started blocking the use of Flash Player versions newer than 32.0.0.371 [12] on January 12, 2021, using a kill switch. [13] Various websites, including governmental and educational ones, were not prepared for the shut-off and abruptly stopped working. [14] [2]
Mike Welsh, who worked at Newgrounds until 2012, previously worked on an open source project named Swivel to archive Flash content into videos. [15]
In 2016, Welsh began a project called Fluster. Later renamed Ruffle, this project would morph into a Flash Player emulator written in Rust, with a desktop and web client. [4] [16] [17]
Since 2019, some websites have announced that they would be using Ruffle.
Newgrounds founder Tom Fulp said they realized "the end of Flash was coming" in 2010, but did not know when. [18] In 2019, Newgrounds announced it was sponsoring the development of Ruffle, [19] and would use it for all Flash content, starting with animations and later interactive games. [20] The switch allowed Newgrounds to offer some touch-friendly games on mobile for the first time. Fulp told The Washington Post : "We've been integrating Ruffle with the site and so far, the majority of content [on Newgrounds] from before 2007 is running with Ruffle". [15]
In 2020, Coolmath Games announced that they would be using technologies such as Ruffle to make Flash content playable. [21]
In November 2020, Internet Archive announced they will be using Ruffle to preserve Flash games and animations. [22] Jason Scott, an archivist at the Internet Archive, said: "I looked into adding it to the Internet Archive system, and it took less than a day and a half because it was so well made". [23]
In December 2020, Armor Games announced that Ruffle had been chosen as their player for Flash content. [24]
Homestar Runner has also announced the implementation of Ruffle for their cartoons and games. [25] Though certain elements of the website itself are currently unsupported by the emulator, most of the site's content has shifted to containment within a Ruffle window at the very least. In addition to the official website, this change was soft announced via Strong Bad's Twitter account. [26]
In July 2023, Neopets announced that the usage of Ruffle was being explored to speed up the process of bringing back broken Flash games and other content to the website. [27] Later that month, Ruffle was implemented for a selection of supported Flash games.
Adobe Flash is a discontinued multimedia software platform used for production of animations, rich internet applications, desktop applications, mobile apps, mobile games, and embedded web browser video players.
Neopets is a free-to-play virtual pet website. First launched in 1999, the website allows users to own virtual pets ("Neopets") and explore a virtual world called "Neopia." Players can earn one of two virtual currencies. One currency, called Neopoints, can be obtained for free through on-site features like games, events, and contests. The other, Neocash (NC), is purchased with real-world money and can be exchanged for wearable items for pets.
A browser game is a video game that is played via the internet using a web browser. They are mostly free-to-play and can be single-player or multiplayer. Alternative names for the browser game genre reference their software platform used, with common examples being Flash games, and HTML5 games.
Newgrounds is a company and entertainment website founded by Tom Fulp in 1995. The site hosts user-generated content such as games, films, audio, and artwork. Fulp produces in-house content at the headquarters and offices in Glenside, Pennsylvania.
SWF is a defunct Adobe Flash file format that was used for multimedia, vector graphics and ActionScript.
Adobe Shockwave is a discontinued multimedia platform for building interactive multimedia applications and video games. Developers originate content using Adobe Director and publish it on the Internet. Such content could be viewed in a web browser on any computer with the Shockwave Player plug-in installed. MacroMind originated the technology; Macromedia acquired MacroMind and developed it further, releasing Shockwave Player in 1995. Adobe then acquired Shockwave with Macromedia in 2005. Shockwave supports raster graphics, basic vector graphics, 3D graphics, audio, and an embedded scripting language called Lingo.
A stick figure is a very simple drawing of a human or other animal, in which the limbs and torso are represented using straight lines. The head is most often represented by a circle, which can be filled or unfilled. Details such as hands, feet, and a neck may be present or absent, and the head is sometimes embellished with details such as facial features or hair. Simpler stick figures often display disproportionate physical features and ambiguous emotion.
A Rich Internet Application is a web application that has many of the characteristics of desktop application software. The concept is closely related to a single-page application, and may allow the user interactive features such as drag and drop, background menu, WYSIWYG editing, etc. The concept was first introduced in 2002 by Macromedia to describe Macromedia Flash MX product. Throughout the 2000s, the term was generalized to describe browser-based applications developed with other competing browser plugin technologies including Java applets, Microsoft Silverlight.
Adobe Flash Player is a discontinued computer program for viewing multimedia content, executing rich Internet applications, and streaming audio and video content created on the Adobe Flash platform. It can run from a web browser as a browser plug-in or independently on supported devices. Originally created by FutureWave under the name FutureSplash Player, it was renamed to Macromedia Flash Player after Macromedia acquired FutureWave in 1996. After Adobe acquired Macromedia in 2005, it was developed and distributed by Adobe as Adobe Flash Player. It is currently developed and distributed by Zhongcheng for users in China, and by Harman International for enterprise users outside of China, in collaboration with Adobe.
Adobe Flash Lite is a discontinued lightweight version of Adobe Flash Player, a software application published by Adobe Systems for viewing Flash content. Flash Lite operates on devices that Flash Player cannot, such as mobile phones and other portable electronic devices like Wii, Chumby and Iriver.
Thomas Charles Fulp is an American programmer known for creating the website Newgrounds and co-founding the video game company The Behemoth.
Adobe AIR is a cross-platform runtime system currently developed by Harman International, in collaboration with Adobe Inc., for building desktop applications and mobile applications, programmed using Adobe Animate, ActionScript, and optionally Apache Flex. It was originally released in 2008. The runtime supports installable applications on Windows, macOS, and mobile operating systems, including Android, iOS, and BlackBerry Tablet OS.
Away3D is an open-source platform for developing interactive 3D graphics for video games and applications, in Adobe Flash or HTML5. The platform consists of a 3D world editor, a 3D graphics engine, a 3D physics engine and a compressed 3D model file format (AWD).
Adobe Animate is a multimedia authoring and computer animation program developed by Adobe.
Modern HTML5 has feature-parity with the now-obsolete Adobe Flash. Both include features for playing audio and video within web pages. Flash was specifically built to integrate vector graphics and light games in a web page, features that HTML5 also supports.
Google Swiffy was a web-based tool developed by Google that converted SWF files to HTML5. Its main goal was to display Flash contents on devices that do not support Flash, such as iPhone, iPad, and Android Tablets. Swiffy was shut down July 1, 2016.
The Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) is an open-source software framework for embedding a Chromium web browser within another application. This enables developers to add web browsing functionality to their application, as well as the ability to use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to create the application's user interface.
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Pico's School is a 1999 Flash game developed by Tom Fulp for his website Newgrounds. At the time of its release, it was "one of the most sophisticated" browser games, exhibiting "a complexity of design and polish in presentation that [was] virtually unseen in amateur Flash game development". It has been widely credited with kickstarting the Flash games scene and helping launch Newgrounds "as a public force".
Flashpoint Archive is an archival and preservation project that allows browser games, web animations and other general rich web applications to be played in a secure format, after all major browsers removed native support for NPAPI/PPAPI plugins in the mid-to-late 2010s as well as the plugins' deprecation. The project contains over 200,000 applications from over 120 browser plugins, most notably Adobe Flash, which can be installed and played using the provided Flashpoint Launcher and its associated tools.