
Show HN: Flash replacement - 100-xyz
https://its-near.me/flash2/editor
======
k_
There are other flash "replacements", the one I like the most being Haxe [0]
(transpiler to flash bytecode, javascript, and more) + OpenFL [1].

OpenFL replicates flash API [2], can work with Adobe Animate (formerly flash),
and can use swf assets [3]. There are also converters from AS3 to Haxe, both
available and not yet released (like the one used to migrate Forge of Empires
[4]).

Haxe + OpenFL can export to flash player, HTML5 but also to native (desktop,
mobile, consoles).

[0]: [https://haxe.org](https://haxe.org) [1]:
[https://openfl.org](https://openfl.org) [2]:
[https://api.openfl.org/](https://api.openfl.org/) [3]:
[https://www.openfl.org/learn/haxelib/tutorials/using-swf-
ass...](https://www.openfl.org/learn/haxelib/tutorials/using-swf-assets/) [4]:
[https://haxe.org/videos/conferences/haxeup-
sessions-2019/dan...](https://haxe.org/videos/conferences/haxeup-
sessions-2019/dan-korostelev-migration-of-empires.html)

~~~
fenomas
I think this project is aimed more at Flash's authoring story. Haxe etc. are
fine as frameworks, but what really made Flash popular and useful was the IDE.

~~~
k_
Yes, and that's why I pointed out compatibility with Adobe Animate (formerly
Adobe Flash)

~~~
epmaybe
off topic - why do you have different usernames?

~~~
k_
Sorry but I don't understand what you're asking

~~~
epmaybe
I'm dumb, it was the "5 minutes ago" and then "4 minutes ago"

~~~
asdkhadsj
Eh, maybe I was primed, but it got me too for a second. I scanned for the
usernames wondering what might be the issue, and then I noticed there was two
users with similar names, k_12 and k_8 - that must be the confusion!

.. nope, I'm just dumb too. Hah :)

------
userbinator
A lot of others here talk about authoring being what made Flash popular, but
the other big part of it is the SWF format itself, which is highly efficient
because of its compact encoding and ease of parsing. Those who played Flash
games on computers over a decade ago may remember what I mean --- a tiny file
provides high quality vector graphics and interactivity (and the ads, although
I hear that these days they're just as obnoxious even without Flash...)
HTML/CSS/JS doesn't even come close, although it feels like they're slowly
reinventing bits of Flash with things like WASM.

~~~
dynamite-ready
Tbf, you can produce very similar output to .swf with the likes of WebGL,
Canvas, SVGs, or a combination of those technologies. But the authoring tools
fostered a community of developers who didn't see themselves as programmers at
all.

They saw themselves as artists. And users benefited a great deal from that.

In fact, some aspects of the IDE were so good, that some 'developers' didn't
even care to use it to develop programs. They produced cartoons instead. I
think Craig McCracken's Fosters Home For Imaginary Friends was the most
successful work of this kind.

In the place of that creativity now, we have cleaner code, to be sure, but we
now also have an awfully boring technology war, and a load of unnecessarily
complicated UI code.

I might miss Flash a whole lot less, if someone created a HTML5 authoring tool
with the same toolkit the Flash IDE once had.

~~~
WorldMaker
Isn't that what Adobe Animate still tries to be? It has HTML5 authoring
support, and inherits from the Flash IDE directly (not just in spirit).

Arguably I think the saddest difference between Flash and Animate is the
business model. In the old web, Flash was also partly so ubiquitous because it
was sometimes so commonly pirated and passed around among aspiring
developers/artists. In the Creative Cloud era it is a lot tougher to pirate,
and can be a huge cost overhead for small or aspiring artists.

------
tyingq
Do you have an email address? Your app has a bug where it's popping up some
kind of Laravel debugger, and it's exposing things...like where the web-world-
readable file with all the collected emails is.

~~~
iMage
Under a different comment he said his email is "leisenming AT protonmail
DOTcom"

~~~
tyingq
Thanks...found that comment in his history. Email sent.

------
larsnystrom
I never used flash, but if this is what it was like I can see why flash was so
popular. I'm loving it. Reminds of the time I spent doing WC3 maps when I was
younger.

Don't listen to the naysayers, just keep at it. You got something here.

~~~
100-xyz
Thanks for your comment and encouragement. I am amazed at the negativity!

~~~
dang
Negative comments make much stronger impressions than positive ones, alas, but
when I survey this thread I don't see it as so negative (other than
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21750978](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21750978)
which is a trollish post that we moderated).

Based on a lot of experience moderating these things, I think the issue was
primarily your title. HN users react badly to grandiose claims. Also, the
title "Flash replacement" is so large and generic that it was inevitably going
to evoke comments about Flash replacements in general.

This is obviously a nice piece of work, and the best way to present it would
have been with a more neutral title that depicted what you've built so far,
and then a first comment in the thread giving the backstory of how you came to
work on this, and explaining what's different about it. That tends to seed
discussion in a better direction. And in your comment you could certainly have
explained that your intention is to work on a Flash replacement.

~~~
100-xyz
I had actually submitted with the title 'Flash is Dead? A replacement attempt
version 3'

~~~
dang
Ah I missed that. Yes, the submitted title was "Show HN: Flash is dead? Here
is a replacement – version 3". Not sure that's less baity though. Arguably
more, which is probably why a moderator edited it.

------
_bxg1
In some ways Unity is the new flash. It isn't pretty but it is accessible, it
lets you prototype and throw together highly graphical creations with minimal
technical knowledge, and then ship them on all platforms (including the web).
And it's free.

------
seanalltogether
The scripting interface and stored actions actually remind me more of
Shockwave then Flash. I bring it up because while Shockwave was simpler to use
in some ways, it also couldn't compete with Flash in terms of broader
flexibility.

~~~
100-xyz
How about advising me on how to develop this further? I am looking for people
like you :-) - those who like animations and have some experience in Shockwave
/ Flash. If interested please shoot me an email leisenming AT protonmail
DOTcom

~~~
seanalltogether
The advice I would give you is to maybe decide whether you want to build an
animation tool or a game tool, and stick with that for now. Flash is still one
of my favorite runtimes just because of how powerful it was, but there was a
lot of complexity under the hood and isn't something I would recommend someone
replicate as a side project.

If you want to focus on an animation tool, you'll want to think about things
in terms of timelines, and how you can create independent animations with
their own timelines and combine them into other timelines. A good example from
your website would be the santa walk animation is one timeline, which is
placed inside another timeline that moves from left to right, which is in
another timeline that that controls the top level animation. Nothing needs to
be scripted in this case, you just visually lay out when a timeline should
start and stop and appear or disappear like any other video editor. Timelines
can be played in parallel or one after the other etc...

On the other hand if you're thinking of creating a game engine you would focus
creating a canvas that can programmatically add or remove VisualObjects
(static images or animations that you could create in a simple timeline
format) and then be able to provide other devs control over the x,y coords of
where to position that visual object for every fps time interval that the game
is running at. They would additionally need to be able to control which frame
in the visual object to show so they can control forward, backward, stop,
etc...

Sorry not much more I can provide for guidance but that would be a general
start

------
adamzegelin
Hardly a flash replacement.

------
100-xyz
OP here. I am looking for user advisors with some animation experience who can
direct future developments (which features to develop further). Anyone
interested please shoot me an email leisenming AT protonmail DOT com

Also, the Dilbert and related characters used in the demo are Scott Adams
copyright and are used only for Demo purposes.

~~~
IvanK_net
Hi, are you familiar with my library IvanK.js ? It has the "Flash interface",
but for scripting.

I used it to port several of my flash games to the web:
[http://lib.ivank.net/?p=demos&d=spritesheet](http://lib.ivank.net/?p=demos&d=spritesheet)

------
bdeshi
is this open source? doesn't seem to have any license info.

~~~
100-xyz
Not open source.

~~~
tiborsaas
Being true to Flash? :)

------
afandian
Reminds me of SMIL
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronized_Multimedia_Integr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronized_Multimedia_Integration_Language)

------
100-xyz
This version has the following:

Library of images that you can click to use.

A simple script engine that uses simple english to create the animation
(Action script equivalent)

eg:

Wait 2 seconds.

Car move to Point p1.

Uses sprites.

Created files can be exported and imported into a player.

Can also be included in your pages.

------
nathancahill
Might want to set APP_DEBUG = false for production.

------
Const-me
Animations glitch in MS Edge.

~~~
darkwater
In Firefox (Ubuntu) as well

~~~
adamzegelin
And Safari 11 too.

------
em-bee
it was only a matter of time for something like this to appear. there was a
reason flash was popular.

the problem with flash was not what it did, but how it was implemented, as
proprietary browser extension.

doing the same with standard, browser supported javascript solves that
problem.

getting rid of flash was a long, hard battle. it potentially would have been
easier if alternatives like this appeared earlier.

~~~
krapp
This is not even close to the first Canvas-based animation tool, nor is it a
valid replacement for Flash. It's an MVP at the level of tutorial code. A nice
effort but don't oversell it.

------
to1y
Nice work. Can't help but miss flash seeing this though.

------
siddhartpai
@100-xyz, The current page isn't working as expected. The images are all
getting 404'd.

~~~
100-xyz
Hi siddartpai, By any chance are you reopening a previously created animation?
If so, it may get 404'd. The server ran out of disk space and I had to delete
a large number of animations.

If not, can you provide some more details: are you landing directly on the url
[https://its-near.me/flash2/editor](https://its-near.me/flash2/editor)? What
OS/browser? Are you getting any other errors that may help me narrow things
down?

Thanks

------
jonplackett
Nice. But still miss flash...

------
bbayer
It is definitely something but not Flash replacement.

~~~
djsumdog
Well everything has to start somewhere.

------
thrownaway954
You're database is crashing:

Illuminate \ Database \ QueryException (HY000) SQLSTATE[HY000]: General error:
1114 The table 'errors' is full (SQL: insert into `errors` (`url`, `trace`,
`updated_at`, `created_at`) values (2601:589:4a80:ba00:8590:6c18:79d6:3ffc:
/flash2/editor, /var/www/its-
near/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Connection.php
LINENUM:624<br>/var/www/its-
near/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Connection.php
LINENUM:459<br>/var/www/its-
near/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Connection.php
LINENUM:411<br>/var/www/its-
near/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Query/Processors/Processor.php
LINENUM:32<br>/var/www/its-
near/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Query/Builder.php
LINENUM:2657<br>/var/www/its-
near/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/Builder.php
LINENUM:1353<br>/var/www/its-
near/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/Model.php
LINENUM:839<br>/var/www/its-
near/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/Model.php
LINENUM:804<br>/var/www/its-
near/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Eloquent/Model.php
LINENUM:667<br>/var/www/its-near/app/Exceptions/Handler.php
LINENUM:54<br>/var/www/its-
near/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Http/Kernel.php
LINENUM:314<br>/var/www/its-
near/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Http/Kernel.php
LINENUM:118<br>/var/www/its-near/public/index.php LINENUM:55<br>, 2019-12-10
09:44:05, 2019-12-10 09:44:05))

~~~
100-xyz
Thanks for letting me know. Did not expect such heavy traffic.

~~~
perttir
You should probably put 'APP_ENV=production' and 'APP_DEBUG=false' to your
laravels .env file.

~~~
100-xyz
That is what it is set as. Not clear what the situation is.

------
AshleysBrain
Our startup builds a Flash replacement called Construct 3:
[https://www.construct.net](https://www.construct.net)

It's a web-based animation/game development IDE with support for JavaScript
coding too.

~~~
mrieck
Ok someone else mentioned their startup so I'll mention mine. My startup is a
free cartoon maker:

[https://www.superanimo.com](https://www.superanimo.com)

There's a ton of competitors in a similar space but I think mine is the best
if you want to make cartoon stories quickly. It also exports to MP4/GIF and is
free. It doesn't have scripting, but if you're just looking to drag/drop
things on a canvas and animate them on a Flash-like timeline, SuperAnimo is
great option.

~~~
ActionHank
Both these options are nice, but its a hard sell in big corps to put IP in the
cloud.

------
faraday2211
Laravel seems to be crashing (not surprised). But isn't HTML5 a decent
replacement for flash already?

~~~
welly
Are you here just to make attacks on Laravel?

~~~
dxemy
And you are here only to defend Laravel.

~~~
welly
I think my two replies to your comments are the only ones I've made on the
subject of laravel in my entire time of being on hacker news.

So no, I'm not here to defend laravel.

------
faraday2211
And if it wasn't bad enough that the site is using Laravel, that framework is
also exposing a ton of sensitive data about the server. Perhaps disable dev
mode? Anyway horrible choice of a framework.

~~~
locusm
You went to the trouble of creating an account just for anti Laravel dribble.
Please enlighten us.

~~~
robinduckett
I've had an account for years and I agree. I find it hard to justify using PHP
for anything in 2019.

~~~
welly
That's fine. The year is almost over and plenty of other developers can
justify using PHP for many things in 2020.

