Haaaai! Flashpoint Status Update is starting!
BlueMaxima cost too much, so we fired him!
He left this behind before we kicked him out, though!
Watch it before I get you with my Mirakurun Hammer!
(also please see entry 1 if you're a web developer https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/datahub/Help_Wanted_List, we need someone to help polish our in-the-works submissions site, leave a message in #development-chat and we'll get back to you)
@everyone
@everyone
No tricks. No faffing about. No magical girls. Just downloads.
Flashpoint 10, codenamed 'Absence', is available now at the usual places (#downloads).
* 20,000 new games and 2,000 new animations, with 13 new plugins.
* GameZips now work with Infinity, with the absolute majority of new games being zips.
* Tag Filters for more precise control over what you want to see.
* The Super Hall of Fame playlist for a massive, one stop shop of high quality games.
* Thousands of metadata updates, dozens of game fixes, and general polish.
We've taken a decent amount of time testing this new release, but as always, if you have problems, be sure to put them in #flashpoint-help.
Flashpoint Core 10 for curators is currently not available, but it will be within the next couple of days. We'll send out new messages in this channel with updates.
Please remember that there's over 20,000 people on this server now; if you're having trouble downloading a copy of Infinity, give it a little while. We tend to get swamped.
Absence: https://youtu.be/Dpk9rkBjjD8?t=1348
Core 10 is now available from the usual places.
@Curator @Trial Curator
@everyone
Hello! It's been a month since the release of Flashpoint 10. We don't have a new release planned just yet (still working our way through the curation backlog first). We are working really hard to get the next version of Flashpoint out; it's just going to take a while. We've braced the storm of Flash's death as well as we could have hoped; there's not much that can stop us now, so why rush things? With that said though, there are three things I'd like to go over in the meantime.
The first is that we have a few updated rules. The majority of them are relatively simple - an update to rule 2 to keep less pleasant names and avatars out of the server, a note that multiaccounting to avoid punishments is worth a ban, and that we now have a couple of Discord roles we'll be using to track rules infractions (and that rejoining to remove them is ban worthy). The absolute majority of people here shouldn't be affected by these rule changes, but it's only fair we let you know about them in advance, in my point of view. (The wording of these rules may change in the very near future but the intent and enforcement of them will remain the same.)
The second is that, thanks to the opt-in analytics that we included in Infinity for Flashpoint 10, we can share a few interesting facts. Here's the small and obvious one: that 38,000 users have played over 470,000 games. (These numbers may be slightly smaller due to the way we track users and games, but it should still be 99% accurate.) That is an absolute ton of engagement for one month - 15,000 game plays a DAY. However, we are able to go slightly more indepth, which is what the attached file below is - we were able to track how many unique users launched unique games, in order to see what the most popular games in Flashpoint are. Some of the results may surprise you, some may not. The file below lists the top 2,000 games by the amount of unique users who launched them; you should be able to see the top 100 through the Discord embed if you don't want to go that deep.
Third...well, how about I just show you this one?
I'm making a book about Flash games. To celebrate its history, the games, and show off some lovely art in the process with some of the highest resolution screenshots I can take. The book is currently a work in progress and everything above is subject to change; my artistic design capabilities is something on the level of "graphics design is my passion". With that said, I'm looking for assistance - I'd love to get into contact with a lot of Flash devs to learn more about the history of Flash, have more sections in the book that aren't these dual-spread screenshots for interviews, etc. I'm also looking for a cover, and I'd be happy to commission one if I need to. I'm thinking of something akin to a massive group photo of a ton of Flash's mascots from Newgrounds to ArmorGames and back again. There is a lot more to be done and I doubt this will be finished within the year, but I'm going to keep poking away at it in the meantime. I just figured now would be a good time to finally announce it. To head off a question that I'm willing to bet will be asked as to the games that will be in the book. Why did you think we made the Super Hall of Fame? ;)
That's the long and short of everything that's been happening in the past month. I'll pop in again next month to let you know how everything's been going. Toodles.
I promised an update in July, and damn it, you're gonna get one. The downside is that...well, there's not a lot to talk about. But I shall talk anyway.
Next version: Coming along fine. 4300 games, 3300 animations. Way more in the pipeline, especially on the game side. The Game and Animation Master Lists are both up to date if you want to see the new additions so far. Hopefully, the new curation backend we've introduced should help speed that number along, too.
https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/datahub/Game_Master_List
https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/datahub/Animation_Master_List
Player stats: Here's an updated list of the most played games, taken yesterday. First 100 should be viewable through the embed.
Book progress: Coming along. Some new spreads made, some pages tuned up. With that said, the majority of work has been hunting down and having interviews with Flash devs. I've got over half-a-dozen confirmed and more on the way, hopefully. Have a picture of a spread that hasn't been shared publicly yet.
That's pretty much it. We're not dead yet. See you...next month. Maybe.
August news update!
Next version: Still coming along fine. While there haven't been many new games added as of right now, there has been a few thousand metadata fixes merged in. Hopefully that'll make the browsing experience that much smoother. It's also worth noting that the game count is just, barely, under 100,000, but we do have enough games in the pipeline that by this time next month, that number will probably have broken 110k. The Upcoming Games and Animations sections of their respective Master Lists are always up to date, if you want to keep up to speed on that front.
https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/datahub/Game_Master_List
https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/datahub/Animation_Master_List
Player numbers: Since the launch of Flashpoint 10, people who've opted into Infinity's analytics have played 1.866 million games across 119,000 unique users. That's nearly two million plays in three months. These numbers are, obviously, mind-boggling, and it doesn't even take into account Ultimate users, or people who said no to the analytics. With that said, I made a silly mistake with the games played tally last month, so here's a proper one with that problem solved. Once again, you can view the first hundred through the embed, or download it for a full, 5000 game list. (I will note that approximately 40,000 of 10's 100,000 entries have been played in those three months, too).
Book update: As of a week ago, the book has reached 100 spreads. While this is still fairly short of the target, it's a good sign of progress. We're getting there. The biggest news, though, is related to the interviews; I've managed to get two huge names in. One is Tom Fulp, who I'm waiting on answers for right now. The other is Edmund McMillen, half of Team Meat, who talked to me in an audio interview, and gave me permission to host it publically...so here it is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_b1inpKbzE
That's it for now. See you in September.
No September news. Hopefully you'll understand why in a few days.
@everyone
Told you it would only be a few days.
Flashpoint 10.1 - Absence II - is out now at the usual places. (As always, there'll be a rush for the new version; be sure to give it a few days if it's immensely slow.)
Twenty thousand new entries, twenty thousand meta updates, two more plugins and a few more background updates round out this version. As always, the changelog has everything if you want to know more.
One other thing, while you're here. As you'd know if you've been here long enough, I've been working on a book about Flash games and their history. While I've gotten over a dozen devs interviewed for the book as of this moment, the community is just as important in the balance of things. So, I'd like to grab quotes from the community on why Flash was important to you, and I'll be doing it through this Google Form:
Form's closed. Thanks for your input.
There's three questions - do you want to be credited, what name you want to be credited under, and what you have to say about Flash and its impact on you. That's it. The best responses will find their way into the book. Take your time; I'm not closing the form any time soon.
As always; have fun. We'll keep you updated here if there's anything you need to know.
If you have a bug that causes your Flashpoint window to disappear when you try to un-maximise the window, you can do the following:
Sorry about that.
Another bugfix has been reported and fixed.
Some of the metadata edits we made to the 10.1 database were found to be faulty, so we've reverted them and reuploaded Infinity.
Ultimate is still affected by this problem, unfortunately; if you want to fix it, you may download the file here and replace flashpoint.sqlite in the Data folder: https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/flashpoint.sqlite
Infinity users, as long as you don't mind your databases being wrong, you can leave it alone, otherwise, follow the above line's instructions or redownload Infinity.
Sorry again.
It seems like the above bugfix has caused yet another problem. Here is a new, actually fixed version of the database: https://bluepload.unstable.life/flashpointdb.7z
To fix your copy of Flashpoint, download this file and unzip it using 7-Zip. Then replace the flashpoint.sqlite file in Flashpoint's Data folder with this one. But be sure to back up your playlists first! https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/datahub/Extended_FAQ#TransferPlaylists
We will let you know when a fixed Infinity build is up on bluemaxima.org.
Apologies for all of the problems with this release! We are working on tools and processes to improve the quality of Flashpoint releases going forward.
The fixed version should be up on the website now.
We've fixed some more problems in 10.1. The main ones being 32-bit support, some Shockwave games not working, and some Neopets games not working. This'll be the last fix for a while.
For Infinity, just download Flashpoint again. This'll be update 10.1.0.3.
For Ultimate, we've collected all these previous fixes since 10.1's launch into one zip file. Download it below and extract it into your extracted 10.1 Ultimate folder, overwriting everything you're asked to. (This will overwrite your current preferences and playlists as it replaces both the database and the preferences file.)
https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/Flashpoint%2010.1.0.3%20Ultimate%20patch.zip
Sorry for the trouble once again.
Hello.
There isn't much to talk about related to Flashpoint right now, but we're working on it. Stay tuned for more info on that.
As for why I'm sending this message...how would you like to see the Flash book?
https://archive.org/details/flashbook-preview
This 330 page preview is a WIP, and everything is subject to change. It's also not content complete; there's still spreads to add and interviews to do. With that said, it should give you an idea of what the book is like.
I'll open a new channel, #book-feedback, if you have something to say about the preview. I'll be looking through it from time to time as I keep working at it.
Talk again soon. Hopefully.
@everyone
Hello, and welcome to the pre-Christmas Flashpoint update. We have three important topics to mention today.
The first is that, if you didn't see it before, there's a preview of my Flash book now available and a channel to give feedback, both of which are available in the post above this one, so I won't spend time on it, feel free to read the previous post if you're interested.
~~The second is that we've been working on a way to automatically convert games from their legacy form in htdocs into zips to make it more convienient to keep and host FP. Part of this process has involved zipping over 40,000 games automatically and putting them into a test build of Flashpoint. ~~
We can't test this all on our own, so we've updated Flashpoint Infinity in order to give you, the community, an opportunity to help us. The new version is available now at the same link as always, and all you need to do is redownload and try games on the new version, which we've marked 10.1.0.4. If any games don't work that do on the older version, let us know. You don't need to update Flashpoint if you don't want to, the old version will still work, and if you need the old version for whatever reason, it will be available on the site.
The third thing is something we haven't wanted to do since the beginning of the project, but circumstances have forced our hand. Flashpoint has grown dramatically over the past couple of years, reaching insane amounts of users. While this is great for us, the server costs over the past couple of years have all been shouldered by one community member, Dri0m, and he simply can't afford it anymore - and without those servers, Flashpoint doesn't exist in its current form.
So, we're starting a fundraiser. This fundraiser will go to retroactively paying previous costs of the server, and funding the server's future costs, in order to keep Flashpoint around for the significant future. If you go to the fundraising link you can see the previous costs of running the server.
There's a minimum of a 1 euro donation if you decide to, but anyone who donates 5 euro or more will receive a special Donator role on the server with a special server icon. We're also planning on adding the list of donators to the credits of the next major Flashpoint version. There are no other perks; no Flashpoint related content or other benefits are behind this, period.
The link to the fundraiser page is here: https://gogetfunding.com/help-us-secure-funding-for-the-hosting-of-bluemaximas-flashpoint/ Use the comment functionality on that site to list your Discord name and four-digit ID in order to get your Donator role.
That's everything for now. Have a good Christmas / holiday period and a happy new year.
Hello.
Turns out, the testing of the new build was unnecessary because a certain vital part of the process wasn't done correctly, and so all of the newly zipped content won't work.
Whoops.
We've reverted the downloadable build to 10.1.0.3.
