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Hello everyone,
I hope this is the right place to ask. I have a lot of saved progress-point files from online NES and SNES emulator games. But the website I use them with uses Flash. Supposedly, Flash will "expire" at the end of the year. After that, how will I use my files?
Hey there Collin! While Flash will indeed no longer be supported by adobe, they can't force you to uninstall it from your computer, or force websites to stop using it as a plugin unless the browser itself is updated to no longer support flash. However, Flash stores its saves in the AppData folder of your computer. You will most likely find it in (AppData/Roaming/Macromedia/Flash Player/#SharedObjects). From there, there should be a listing of websites, and local flash .sol saves
I have one .sol file in the directory you mentioned. There are also my files of the form nes*.zip.save and snes*.zip.save in the c:\users\owner directory. What would I do with these?
Welp, I would back them up. I don't know a way to convert these SOL files to conventional emulator saves, but you could try downloading the flash emulator you are using to play the games with a swf downloader plugin. You could then download the offline flash player from adobes website to play the games without the web browser. :)
EDIT: wait a sec, have you tried opening the zip.save files with winrar or 7zip to see whats inside? It might have a regular emulator save
1. I installed WinRar and 7Zip. Neither one could find an archive in the zip.save files.
2. I copied all zip.save files to a new directory under the root. I turned on the Hidden and Compressed attributes, and I turned off the Indexed attribute.
3. I installed ThunderSoft, and typed in the web address of a game on the emulator website. It did not find any swf file.
P.S.: The window the games run in has an about box with the name of the emulator software. I don't know if I'm allowed to say it here.
I found the swf file address from the webpage source code and typed it into ThunderSoft. It found it, but couldn't do anything with it ("divide by zero" error), apparently because it's an app rather than data.
The software, as it's presented by its dealer, requires you to supply your own ROMs via a personal OneDrive cloud. I don't have any ROMs; only save-points. The emulator downloads each ROM ephemerally through the app.
At this point, it would be better to move to a normal emulator, rather than a flash app, and start over without your saves. It would save you from such trouble in the future.
If there are specific games I'm looking for, that aren't in any of the emulators listed, is there any quick way (i.e., quicker than trying to make sense out of the mess provided by Google :)) to search for an emulator that may have it?
When it comes to actual emulator programs that you can run on your pc, they do not come with games. You will download an emulator and then the games as extra.
Obviously we cannot tell you where to get the games from but google will give you the results.
So by "actual emulator" you mean a desktop app that plays ROMs from one's hard drive?
Emulators that play ephemerals have been around for at least a year. I simply want to know how to continue to play ephemeral games if I can't use Flash. If that's not what you offer, please point me somewhere else.
Yes, I am referring to emulators that you have to keep on your own PC, not through a web browser.
The only thing I could find for you was a list of sites here: https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/i..._a_web_browser
If you cannot use something in that list then you will need to download an emulator.
Right now, the only way to "preserve" flash games (and flash software) is the Flashpoint project ( https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/ ) and unfortunately not everything is available there (or fully 100% compatible). Thundersoft, the software you mentioned earlier, is designed to convert flash video (like the one youtube used to have in the past) to regular video that can be stored and played locally (not flash applications). That is why I recommended downloading a standalone emulator.
Thanks.
I also, just today, discovered a listing of sites: http://www.similarweb.com
I'll have to try out various sites in the list to see if any runs without Flash.
I'll also see if I can post my question on the gametechwiki Wiki Help Desk.
Unfortunately, Flashpoint will be of no use to me. For all the hundreds of games they say they've ported, none of them are from the famous Mario Hackers. :(
A standalone emulator would not be the way I do things. Fifteen years ago, I sided with Winamp against Napster; and I still believe in that principle.
https://ruffle.rs/
https://ruffle.rs/#usageQuote:
ruffle is a Flash Player emulator built in the Rust programming language
https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle/...26_windows.zipQuote:
Using the desktop application
If you want to run Flash content on your computer without a browser in-between, we have native applications that will take full advantage of your GPU and system resources to get those extra frames when playing the original Meat Boy.
Currently this is just a command line application, but we intend to develop a GUI for it soon for ease of use. First, download the appropriate executable for your operating system from our releases.
To use the executable, simply start it with the path to the swf you wish to play - it may be either a local file, or a URL to a file online. We do provide more advanced options if you wish to control how this file is played. To view the full options available, run ruffle --help.
https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle/..._26_mac.tar.gz
https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle/...6_linux.tar.gz
https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle/..._extension.zip
https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle/...26_firefox.xpi
https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle/...selfhosted.zip
