Maybe just nostalgia talking, but the height of Newgrounds really seemed like a golden age for light gaming. The shift to mobile games has just resulted in a large number of gambling simulators, which I'm sure has been a key reason for the popularity of Kalshi, Polymarket, etc.
Gambling aside, the median quality of a modern mobile game is worse than what we had on newgrounds.
NG didn't have multiple 500MB downloads, buttons in the wrong place, pointless currencies. More importantly NG artists actually cared. I understand why Apple killed Flash, but what we got in its place is not better.
> I understand why Apple killed Flash, but what we got in its place is not better.
WebAssembly is better compilation target and runtime than Flash ever was. Many languages can compile to WebAssembly.
I think what you want is an authoring tool like Flash. Why not make that tool? Or if you don't want to make it, Rive's a pretty good animation engine. You can make games with it:
Assuming you're not looking at the file sizes involved...
SWF is extremely compact, since it was intended to be used over a dialup connection. Flash worked because the player was preinstalled on the computer.
The newer Ruffle player is a 10MB download in addition to the actual flash file. You get a new freshly downloaded copy of Ruffle from every site that's hosting Flash content.
The swf player was definitely smaller, through some miracle — I remember marveling at how quick it was to install it the first time, and I’m pretty sure that’s a big reason Flash became so ubiquitous that you could just blindly assume its presence by 2002 or so - the install was small even for dial-up, and required like one click.
But compared to the average internet user’s connection speed or their consumed bandwidth at this time, 10MB is probably smaller. We just don’t put it in a plugin today because the browser cache can handle that just fine, and because it means the code is more sandboxed, and that if it needs updates, managing that is easy for the game publisher to do.
hodgehog11 · · focus · HN ↗
avaer · · focus · HN ↗
NG didn't have multiple 500MB downloads, buttons in the wrong place, pointless currencies. More importantly NG artists actually cared. I understand why Apple killed Flash, but what we got in its place is not better.
cisc · · focus · HN ↗
WebAssembly is better compilation target and runtime than Flash ever was. Many languages can compile to WebAssembly.
I think what you want is an authoring tool like Flash. Why not make that tool? Or if you don't want to make it, Rive's a pretty good animation engine. You can make games with it:
<a href="https://rive.app/" rel="nofollow">https://rive.app/
<a href="https://rive.app/docs/scripting/demos" rel="nofollow">https://rive.app/docs/scripting/demos
Dwedit · · focus · HN ↗
SWF is extremely compact, since it was intended to be used over a dialup connection. Flash worked because the player was preinstalled on the computer.
The newer Ruffle player is a 10MB download in addition to the actual flash file. You get a new freshly downloaded copy of Ruffle from every site that's hosting Flash content.
xp84 · · focus · HN ↗
But compared to the average internet user’s connection speed or their consumed bandwidth at this time, 10MB is probably smaller. We just don’t put it in a plugin today because the browser cache can handle that just fine, and because it means the code is more sandboxed, and that if it needs updates, managing that is easy for the game publisher to do.