# Fun fact, I actually care a LOT about digital preservation. That’s why I emulate all my roms, er… That’s why all my Flash games are self-contained and have EXE versions that’ll run on everything from the original version of Win XP to the latest version of Windows 10.
# https://twitter.com/metasynthie/status/1081227148558548993
# “Some works didn’t make it to the public domain this week. When necessary to prevent culture from being lost forever, we have an ethical duty to violate short-sighted copyright law and preserve works in a viable format. This is a higher duty than preserving an income stream.”
~ Metasynthie
# This is still relevant. Practically all digital storage only lasts about 10 years at best. Discs rot. SD cards fade. Hard drives gum-up and rot. Tape storage fades. Even discs made with non-organic compounds don’t last as long as advertised. Even the internet itself changes often.
# Windows has always had stand-alone flash players, but I have also been testing stand-alone Flash Players for Linux and Mac OS X which can run my games. They’re all very easy to use, but sometimes hard to find online, so I might add them to my website as a download in case browsers stop running Flash.
# I can also use stand-alone Flash players to convert games into EXE’s and native apps for Linux and Mac, but it’s better to leave them as Flash files and include Flash players for the sake of future compatibility. It’s kind of an “Emulator + Rom” approach to preservation.
# Also, it’s a pain to get OSX running in VMware. I only managed to get the “Marklar Tiger” version of OSX working (google it.) But networking doesn’t work, so I used ISO’s to bring files in, and a mapped HD to transfer files out.
# I just spent the day testing and prepping my games for the FlashPoint archive. It’s a Flash game preservation project headed by BlueMaxima. His team’s been scrambling to download and archive every Flash game he can find on the internet before Browsers drop Flash next year.
#
The FlashPoint game browser and full archive can be downloaded here.
And people can submit and test games on his Discord channel.
# FlashPoint is not JUST a game browser, it creates a virtual server so that ANY Flash game will run from your computer, even ones that try to check which website they’re on.