Flash Emulation in Browser
Over the past few months @Mike has been working on a way to play Flash in the browser via emulation. We were gonna surprise everyone this fall by suddenly supporting classic content here on NG but it leaked early and the cat is out of the bag. You can see the progress at Ruffle.rs!
Ruffle is being written in the Rust programming language and targets desktop and the web using Web Assembly. The project is open source and contributors are now coming aboard, which is exciting! There is even work being done to create a browser extension that detects old Flash embed code and swaps it with Ruffle, meaning you could visit any old website and the Flash will (eventually) just WORK.
On Newgrounds we’ll be swapping our old Flash embed code so you won’t need a browser extension. We’re adding a true/false attribute to every Flash project to track whether it works in emulation. The initial rollout will cover animated content, then gradually expand to cover more and more games. We’ll also be tracking which Flash games are touch screen friendly because they will work on mobile for the first time ever.
For anyone who is concerned about Flash’s reputation for security - this project is entirely open source and any security issues would be issues with the web browser itself, whereas the traditional Flash plugin was a closed system that created unique opportunities for exploits.
Brave Browser and BAT
This week we set up NG to accept Basic Attention Tokens (BAT) via the Brave web browser. BAT is open-source, decentralized and built on the Ethereum platform. It’s led by Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript and co-founder of Mozilla and the goal is to create a new way to value attention, connecting users, content creators, and advertisers.
If you visit Newgrounds via Brave, you can tip us via the tip button in the browser header! We’ll be watching to see how well this works and if it’s worth expanding to individual user accounts. If you’ve never tried Brave, use our referral link and we’ll get some bonus BAT if you become a regular user.
Brave blocks all of the ads on Newgrounds so it would be greatly appreciated if you became a supporter! That is still the most direct and effective way to help Newgrounds. We’re 170 active supporters away from a big reward - removal of all ads from all E-M art view pages for (at least) the remainder of 2019! In an ideal future, NG won’t need ads.
I’ll also note that Brave doesn’t work with a lot of HTML5 games due to a lack of WebGL support. You’ll still need a browser like Chrome or Firefox to play those.
Other News
Give my August playlist a listen! Each month I’ve been making a playlist of music from NG, generally anything that I like that is also good music to listen to while working.
Madness Day is September 22nd and prizes this year will include Steam keys for Madness Project Nexus and Hank pins.
Robot Day is Monday and you still have time to make some robot-themed art!
Back in May the writing community on newgrounds competed in a competition to create some original Newgrounds Characters. This contest has entered its second phase: An NG OC Art Contest! Artists are invited to come visualize characters from the winning story, which could ultimately become an animated pilot.
Also check out the NG Remix Contest and NEAR DEADline art contest!
On the back-end we’re building a new storage solution, something that happens every few years as the demand for space continues to grow. After that we’ll be setting up tus servers for resumable file uploads, so large files with upload interruptions don’t get scuttled. The new project system might launch ahead of the tus integration, which would get plugged in asap afterwards. We’ve also got ratings filters coming to the Classic Portal!
Your support goes a long way to helping us cover growing hosting costs! You can pay as little as $3 per month or $25 for the year and you get to browse NG ad-free, along with other perks.
I’ll wrap this up with a picture of the Pico’s Unloaded swf playing in Safari on my iPhone. Steve Jobs be rolling.
