The Coffee House

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Deleted User 8

While some people here love to spend time with the Arcade, I'm afraid I have bad news regarding its stay here... by the end of 2020, Adobe will be pulling the plug on the Flash player and, I only knew of this recently so basically it's old news. I guess it's still relevant though.

At Jcink however, the Arcade system there is to be deprecated by 2019 and I don't know what myBB will be doing about it. So far though, Adobe has no plans on open-sourcing it so, the future of the humble Flash player back when it was a thing for YouTube is looking grim.

Just thought I'd bring this up and even if the Arcade will have to go in the future, don't know if there'll be a replacement. Sorry guys :(
Yeah, this is something I've been aware of for a while :( . In some ways, I'm not surprised, because the whole thing is a relic from the 2000s: browser-based games have mostly been replaced by phone apps, and what's left of the browser-based gaming industry has ditched Flash in favour of HTML5. But, the arcade can't handle HTML5 games - so, Flash games from a decade ago or more still dominate the scene.  

It seems that there are two options for if the arcade is to continue beyond 2020: 

1) Convince Adobe to open-source the Flash player (or continue support beyond 2020);
2) Modify the arcade to support HTML5 games.

#1 is looking pretty unlikely at this point. I'm not sure how much work #2 would involve, but I'm guessing it would be a monumental task, akin to starting from scratch. And even if someone did do that, the existing games wouldn't be converted from Flash to HTML5 because they were developed over a decade ago and their developers have no doubt moved on. 

It's sad, but I guess we'll need to wait and see what happens - and enjoy the arcade while it lasts.

Deleted User 8

(08-29-2018, 04:49 PM)Kyng Wrote: [ -> ]so, Flash games from a decade ago or more still dominate the scene.
I've seen one that seemed to be from the more recent times, and that's the Candy Crush one. Could be wrong.

Do what you can though, for the near future that is.
Oh, what wonderful news! It's not like I went through hell and high waters to install that damn thing! Wonderful. :) Thanks for sharing. I'm really happy about this.
I reckon this will be a wait and see thing. I recall Microsoft were going to pull the plug on MS Paint until there was an outcry. I feel there's still a chance they'll keep it going.
Yeah, so do I. 

Even if they don't, Flash is supported through to the end of 2020, so we have at least a couple more years of access to the arcade. So, it's not like it was a total waste of effort or anything. 

(But, if 2020 is the end, then that's very sad, because these arcades have always been some of my favourite plugins :( )
Well I imagine many of the popular games will be converted to HTML 5 over the next two years. Regardless Flash Player will not just suddenly stop working in 2020 there just will not be any more updates. Some games yes may end up being wiped out, because there is no developers that seek to convert them. Anyway flash may actually go on further if the backlash is large enough.
Even if they don't stop working at the end of 2020, I expect browsers will immediately stop supporting it, start labelling pages with Flash on them as a major security risk, and so on. So, I wouldn't be surprised if everything Flash just became unusable (except on old browsers) soon after the end of official support :(

Still, I hope that doesn't happen. I hope there's at least some form of archiving, so that we can all still play our old Flash games from 2003 or whatever. I'd hate to see it all disappearing into oblivion :( !
Well... December 2020 has arrived, and sadly, there has been no meaningful progress on this front over the past two years. Adobe is still planning to kill off Flash at the end of the month, and all major browsers are set to drop support for it on 31st December 2020 (meaning the arcade will immediately stop working on Chrome, Firefox, etc.). Perhaps those games will still work on some obscure and/or outdated browsers... but, frankly, it's not worth the security risk that that would entail.

The most popular 'replacement' for Flash is, of course, HTML5 - and, quite a lot of popular Flash games now have HTML5 equivalents. Sadly, the MyBB arcade hasn't yet been modified to support HTML5: the matter was raised on the MyBB forums in March, and the developer said he was planning it, but nothing has happened in the nine months since then. Perhaps the developer was too busy; perhaps the demand wasn't there; or perhaps it was just too difficult, and he decided it wasn't worth the development time... I don't know. Maybe there will be a surprise announcement late in the month that "We upgraded the MyBB arcade for HTML5!", but I'm really not holding my breath.

What all of this means is: unless something major and unexpected happens within the next three weeks, the arcade will very sadly be going at the end of December :( . Perhaps it will be modified one day to run HTML5 games (in which case I'd be very happy to reinstate it) - but, the impending end of Flash was announced all the way back in mid-2017, so if the arcade was going to be upgraded for HTML5, then I expect it would've happened already, at some point over the past three and a half years.

However, if we do end up having to remove it (as currently looks very likely), then it might be worth thinking about what we could replace it with. Perhaps there's some other plugin that we could install to take its place. Perhaps there's some other game-themed stuff that we could do elsewhere. Or, at the very least, perhaps we could write some kind of 'Arcade Memorial' page, listing everybody's high scores in each game. It's not much, but it's something (and it'd at least ensure that the "https://tch-forum.com/arcade.php" link will give us something more than just a "404 Not Found" error).

So... does anybody have any thoughts or suggestions regarding potential 'replacements' for the arcade, or for the content of an 'Arcade Memorial' page?
(12-08-2020, 05:29 PM)Kyng Wrote: [ -> ]The most popular 'replacement' for Flash is, of course, HTML5 - and, quite a lot of popular Flash games now have HTML5 equivalents. Sadly, the MyBB arcade hasn't yet been modified to support HTML5: the matter was raised on the MyBB forums in March, and the developer said he was planning it, but nothing has happened in the nine months since then. Perhaps the developer was too busy; perhaps the demand wasn't there; or perhaps it was just too difficult, and he decided it wasn't worth the development time... I don't know. Maybe there will be a surprise announcement late in the month that "We upgraded the MyBB arcade for HTML5!", but I'm really not holding my breath.

If he hasn't done it, I am sure someone else will. Maybe. I've seen that happen a lot. Also, what would be a memorial page lol
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