Since it'll be a little while before Flashpoint 13 arrives, so I wanted to write about upcoming changes now rather than do it all in one big post on release. There'll probably be more of these later!
Given I work on the software development side anything I post will likely focus on that. For today, I want to focus on how some Launcher functionality has been moved to its own library.
flashpoint-archive is a Rust crate that's been written from the ground up to provide all database operations (and a few other utilities) we use in the Flashpoint Launcher. It's easier to us to maintain, and having that logic separated from the Launcher makes it easier for third parties to use. @fparchive/flashpoint-archive is also available for Nodejs. Docs will come later.
For this post, I'd like to focus on the search system.
The search system has been rewritten from scratch. Queries have been restructured and support more complex searches with nested queries and fancier comparisons. The library also contains a parser function to turn a user's text input into a query object ready to pass to search functions.
Searches will now also support:
series="Sonic RPG" - An equals sign can be used in place of the semi-colon to exactly match instead of fuzzy matching.tags>5 - Greater than (>), less than (<) and equals (=) are valid for tags, platforms, gameData, and addApps to return results with a specific number of each.dateAdded=2021 - Greater than (>), less than (<) and equals (=) are valid for dateAdded, dateModified and releaseDate to return results in a specific date range to the accuracy given in the format YYYY-MM-DD. Examples of valid dates: 2021, 2021-02, 2021-02-12I'll probably talk about performance gains in another post. 🙂
Hello again!
Here with a short mention of a long running issue being fixed with Flashpoint 13 that'll likely relate to a lot of you reading.
If you've had games miraculously vanish from your Playlists (and you didn't forget to check your active tag filter groups) then you've probably had the ID of a deleted game in the list. The vast majority of deleted games are duplicates of others in the archive, and now we have live metadata it's become even easier to spot and remove them... but it also means these deleted IDs not loading from existing Playlists has become more frequent to see.
Starting with FP 13, your database will contain a list of duplicate game IDs and their new game ID, Game Redirects, downloaded from FPFSS with each metadata update. Every time a duplicate game is deleted from the archive, it will leave a redirect to another, existing game. Anything using the old ID in places like Playlists will automatically substitute in the existing game that it was a duplicate of when required. For the most part this shouldn't be something you'll have to think about.
Small 9o3o update
If you're using https://ooooooooo.ooo/, then you might notice that the game browse page behind the [Browse] button has been replaced by https://flashpointproject.github.io/flashpoint-database/
The reason is that the fancy game browser (which was literally web FP Launcher) was very difficult to maintain and some recent changes broke it, so away it goes forever. 9o3o is a side experiment so such things might happen once in a while.
When you search for a game on our database search tool, there is a Play at 9o3o button in the top right corner which will redirect you to 9o3o, assuming the game is made in Flash.
You might want to point out that there is no practical way to browse games in this search tool, and you would be correct. Eventually there will be something better.
@9o3o
Chiral Filmworks is currently crowdfunding a documentary on Flash.
This will involve interviews with our own staff as well as important figures in the Flash community like Tom Fulp (Newgrounds), David Firth (Salad Fingers) and Adam Philips (Bitey / Brackenwood).
If it's something that interests you, consider taking a look.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/soshabelle/flashback-a-y2k-flash-animation-documentary
dateAdded, dateModified, releaseDate and lastPlayed (e.g releaseDate=2009)tags, platforms, addApps, gameData, playCount and playtime (e.g tags>3)>, < and = comparators (: is equal to =)playtime>1h30m for secs, mins, hours, days, weeks, Months and years.Release Date and Platform
Flashpoint Infinity 13 - Dart FrogTotal Games Count (2024-03-28) - 200,350
We passed 200k entries! 🎉
Flashpoint 13 has been focussed on building a better technical foundation. Whilst most of this is invisible, you'll still find improvements like much faster search times, more comprehensive search options and fancier results pages when ordering by Playtime or Last Played. There are plenty of small fixes and improvements elsewhere too.
Ultimate 13 is planned to release during April.
dateAdded, dateModified, releaseDate and lastPlayed (e.g releaseDate=2009)tags, platforms, addApps, gameData, playCount and playtime (e.g tags>3)>, < and = comparators (: is equal to =)playtime>1h30m for secs, mins, hours, days, weeks, Months and years.Update:
Just use the bottom left Update button in the Launcher.
Download:
https://flashpointarchive.org/downloads
Want to support the project?
Curate 📁 : https://flashpointarchive.org/datahub/Curation_Tutorial
Donate 🪙 : https://opencollective.com/flashpointarchive
Translate 📖 : https://crowdin.com/project/flashpoint-launcher
Reminder:
Please regularly update your database to receive game updates. You can do so by hitting the Update button on the home page, in the top left corner.
@everyone
We're aware of an issue relating to required software not running on Windows 7.
There will likely be a fix deployed later today.
This is a reminder that it's now 4 years past end of life, and that support for Windows 7 will be dropped once the inconvience of remaining to support it becomes too much of a burden. The absolute earliest this would be is August, but as usual we hope to go longer.
Just pushed out a small update that should improve boot times and fixes the tags list being out of order in the sidebar.
Expect another bug fix patch sometime next week.
By this point you should have gotten the update already. The earliest you'll see another minor update will be with Ultimate this month, if there is one at all.
Minor Launcher Update:
Fixed:
Changed:
Flashpoint Ultimate 13Total Size - 1.68 TB
Flashpoint Ultimate 13 is now available for download. The format has changed slightly this time around, but should make it much easier and faster for people to download and install.
Ultimate is now made up of a collection of 35 zips each roughly 50 GB in size and containing a unique set of files. They can be downloaded and extracted independently and in any order to create a complete install, and have been categorised into 5 groups:
These zip files are uncompressed and should be much faster to extract than before. Our testing brought us to around 8 hours on Windows writing to a secondary drive.
Download:
Update:
The Ultimate Updater is available to use, just point it at your existing installation or an empty folder. It will verify any existing files as it goes and download any missing ones: https://github.com/FlashpointProject/FlashpointUltimateUpdater/releases/download/1.0/Flashpoint_Ultimate_Updater.exe
DISCLAIMER - Ultimate Updater has been known to have issues with some people's machines. Installing fresh is still recommended.
@Flashpoint Ultimate
You may experience some downtime when accessing Ultimate direct downloads, and game downloads whilst we work on some infrastructure.
We'll update once it's complete.
All services should now be restored
@Flashpoint Ultimate
The Flashpoint Ultimate 13 torrent has been updated to support HTTPS connections from our own server.
This should resolve the seeding issue. If you want to apply the changes to your existing torrent, add https://ult.unstable.life to your HTTP Sources / URL List for it.
If your torrent folder is Flashpoint Ultimate 13 then grab a fresh download. It should be 13_packed
(Apologies for the double post, discord being whacky)
Our 2020 project trailer has been remade, come check it out: https://youtu.be/0nIbn3vvvMc . Looking back, it's kinda insane how much content and improvements have been added since.
You may also want to see our YouTube channel. Like on TikTok, we have been regularly adding Game of The Day entries as shorts there.
Minor Launcher Update: are correctly handledtag= as well as tag:Copy Text no longer returns a single monstrous line of text= instead of := instead of :Copy Text now returns in a format that is easier to read, and closer to the launcher.log file format.Curators: If you've curated games, it's recommended to reset your database to fix issues with tag aliases in loading submissions. (Delete database, open FP, then press update and wait ages)
Expect some downtime on services as we undergo a migration.
Disruption should be kept to a minimum, and which services are available at a given time may change.
Usually we wouldn't do this, but a little warning for everyone.
The new discord scam going around to impersonate bot and Discord staff messages is very much real. They replace the clickable links in the text previously only available to Discord staff and bot messages to lead you to scam sites and steal login details.
Luckily, when you click, it does give you a pop up and tells you where you're going, but please please be careful and don't click on untrusted hyperlinks from people you don't know!
We've included an example below which leads to a youtube video.
Only you can see this • Dismiss message
#old-playlists has been replaced with #playlists and #nsfw-playlists, both of which are forums where each playlist can have its own thread. If you previously shared a playlist in the old channel, you are more than welcome to repost it in the new channel(s)!
Status Update - August 2024The next major update is going to be focused on improvements for Searching and Playlists, this post covers the features we know we're including and wanted to show off. We don't have a time frame for release so please be patient but if you're feeling daring and don't mind potential breakages you can check out the ongoing changes on the development channel. (Flashpoint Manager -> Settings)
Aside from the gradual improvement in Search syntax, searching in Flashpoint has been largely untouched for a long time. We're making changes with focuses on making filtering accessible without needing to understand the syntax, and adding more options to personalise the search system to best match your needs.
Part two below
Playlists have been second class citizens for a while when it comes to interacting with everything else. These changes should bring them up to the standards we expect and give you a few new ways to make use of them.
flashpoint://playlist/add?url=https://path/to/playlist.json links
We are pushing a survey to gather feedback and thoughts on the current state of Flashpoint:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc3xC9TmWqVGbVGzhuJb3VNLSrrOw39MNL5rEvY01CFLkjBYg/viewform
If you have the time, please take it. The survey is short, with only a handful of questions. Your feedback matters!
We're aware of an issue affecting the availability of infinity.unstable.life. This will affect on-demand image loading and roughly 10% of Infinity games which are still Legacy. Please be patient. 
Things should be behaving again
Infinity will be down at 28th 2:30-3:30 utc for datacenter maintenance reasons
For users on Windows 11 24H2, you may find that games occasionally do not fully close. This is something that will be addressed in future hotfix. It isn't something to worry about.
Status Update - December 2024We'd been hoping to get an update out before the end of the year, but that's not looking very likely at the moment. Expect something in January (hopefully). There isn't a whole lot to expand on there right now. There's still a few things worth going over in the meantime though!
Due to Windows removing the wmic.exe utility by default, one of the dependencies we use to end game processes no longer works. Once it has updated, expect a hotfix. If you are technically able, you can add WMIC back under Optional Features in the Windows settings.
The Game Data Index is now available to download as an sqlite database at https://download.unstable.life/hashes.7z (2.7gb unpacked) which contains data up until November 2024. This details every file path, size, their hashes (md5 / crc32 / sha1 / sha256), associated game id and associated game zip date from the combined collection of all game zips. I'm sure some of you might find a use for this. Most fields are byte arrays and not strings, so keep that in mind when using SELECT or WHERE.
Trial Curators and Staff can also obtain real-time data given a files hash (md5 / crc32 / sha1 / sha256) or path prefix (e.g https://newgrounds.com/) from the Game Data Index FPFSS api. You can find details of this at https://fpfss.unstable.life/swagger/index.html, extensions will also be able to take advantage of this with the next release. As usual, if you wish to make an oauth'd application involving authenticated FPFSS api routes, please DM me.
There are plans to include in-launcher tools to support searching and downloading files / zips from this index in the future.
Lastly, thanks to everyone who filled out the survey. 🎉
We got a whopping 700 responses, and we'll try and compile something from them in the new year.