Hello, @everyone.

Flashpoint 5.3, "Revolution", is now available. We have a lot to talk about in relation to that codename. But if you don't care for that and just want to go to the release...#downloads, and have a Merry Christmas.

With that said though, we've been trying to wrap this release up quick so that we could get this out in time for Boxing Day (Australia time), and outside of some hard drive issues on my part, we managed to pull that off. The reason for that is, on Boxing Day, ~48 hours from when this message goes up, is the one year anniversary of Flashpoint; the day I decided "screw it, let's save as many Flash games as we possibly can".

Considering that we've hit 10,000 games...yeah, I'd say we've saved a lot. In fact, and I'm going to hammer this point home - we've started a web game preservation revolution. We're beyond most preservation efforts by a country mile at this point, and it's kind of amazing.

First things first is that I've decided to make a new Medium article, which just went live as I was typing this. It describes the revolution of Flashpoint development, with a blow-by-blow on the major stuff we've added, along with going over the beginning of the project really quickly. If you want to read / share that, it's right here: https://medium.com/@bluemaximax011/how-we-saved-flashs-gaming-legacy-and-started-a-web-game-preservation-revolution-51c2e5098209

I've also created a new 'general purpose' video trailer for Flashpoint, again for advertisements' sake, to go over the bright points. If you have any forums or things that appreciate snappier advertisements, send 'em this: https://youtu.be/qrU6RJbeKfo There's links in the description if you need to copy-paste them.

Let's go over the new features of this release really quickly.

* Flashpoint Infinity has probably benefited the most from 5.3. It's leagues ahead in terms of being beginner friendly.
* We cut the size down several hundred megabytes by including low quality Flash logos by default. This is helped out massively by...
* Integrated support for downloading other tech and screenshots! No more 'download three zips and extract them on top of eachother' nonsense. Just go to the home tab in the launcher and click the Download buttons. Once they've downloaded and extracted, restart Flashpoint Launcher and everything will be in place.
* Support in the router for file streaming from supported servers. This will make files download part by part, instead of waiting for the whole thing, if you're on a supported server. Here's the cool part though: remember Flash loading bars? Guess what you can watch on Infinity now...(this also helps with reliability. You probably won't need to close and reopen a game while it's downloading.)
* There's also a couple more things, such as download progress being displayed in the Logs tab, and a fix for an annoying bug that's been bothering us for months.
* We have a new tech! 3D Groove GX is a plugin that previously only worked on Internet Explorer 6. Yes, SIX. It only has one game, but hey, we've built it.
* Unity, Shockwave, and Flash have been updated in several ways to improve their compatibility.
* Four new playlists! Three by me, one by nosamu.
* The usual set of updated games, fixes and updates to the database. You can see (most) of them in the changelog, as always.

(One thing I forgot to mention: there's no Flashpoint Theatre, for this release. We're working on that. Stay tuned.)

The web game preservation revolution is truly underway. 10,000 games saved, in an easily playable format, only a few clicks away, inside of a year. Just this time last year, this kind of convenience, quality and preservation of this many web games was almost unthinkable. So come on, and join the fun. We always need not only people to play it to test it, but more people to help add to the archive. We still have big things coming down the road, and the list of web games, Flash or not, that need backing up will continue to be endless. One year to go until the sun sets on Flash...but thankfully, we're ready.

That link again is #downloads. We've also recently given http://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/ a small revamp, so if you need a simple link, that works too. And don't forget you can still share around that Medium article and YouTube trailer. But either way, have fun. That's what we're all here for, right?

Hey everyone, we're in the process of transitioning our request system to Google Sheets/Google Forms so we're locking down the channels for Java, Unity, HTML5 and #requested-other-games. We kindly ask that you submit any new requests for these platforms through our Google Form which is located here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdd9ifSu_anYKMKE280c3Y3dkmuEApr5N6gKnAmTvKh0F5txA/viewform

You can also view the Google Sheet in it's entirety here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1t0MbYMGm4dq4d5hA1l6MKuVYGyw9XU8UOPHjy2ceHX8/edit?usp=sharing

The other request channels will remain unlocked so you can continue submitting them through Discord for now until we finish converting them. As such, please do not submit any Flash/Shockwave/Animations through the form until we have finished converting those channels. Ask staff if you have any questions.

Hello again everyone, we've finished converting all the request channels over to the new spreadsheet, so if you want to request a new game, simply hit up #request-a-game for the details. #request-an-animation is also there, although we don't quite have a sheet for it just yet.

@everyone Flashpoint 5.4, "Recombination"...and Flashpoint 5.4.1, "74%", are available now.

The major feature of 5.4 is the return of Flashpoint Theatre, our small side project trying to save a bunch of Flash/other kinds of animations. The Launcher has been updated pretty significantly to reflect this, with an "Arcade" and a "Theatre" tab separating the two kinds. There's also been a few new animations added to celebrate, but we could always use people adding more. (Just because it's in Newgrounds Auditorium doesn't mean it's not allowed here.) A lot of the other tech has been given a tune up as well, hopefully things will be a bit smoother from now on.

Of course we've been adding new games, too, and just over a thousand are included in this new release. We've added some more infamous Flash games, including a particularly controversial one I won't name here, some long requested titles like Mission in Snowdriftland, some outright oddities including the entirety of the WonderFL Archive, a little bit of everything. There's also been plenty of updates to games already in the collection, too. You can always check the changelog if you want to see that stuff in detail.

There is also 5.4.1, which is just a small patch of stuff that either a) I forgot or b) got fixed inbetween wrapping up 5.4 and actually getting it uploaded. It's a small zip located in the downloads, all you need to do is extract it over the top of your Flashpoint install (you'll be overwriting a handful of files). It's not required, but it would be nice if you got it.

#downloads, as always.

@everyone I apologize for the second beep in such a short time but we had some Infinity related server troubles that need a second emergency patch.

This is only for 5.4 Infinity, 5.4 Ultimate is unaffected. You do not need to download Infinity again if you downloaded it after this beep.

You have two options: redownload Infinity 5.4 from the same URL as it's been fixed there, or download the zip file attached to this message and extract it so that you overwrite the one file that it updates. Sorry again for the beep.

@everyone Release 5.5, "Iron & Copper", is available now. (I've been playing too much Deus Ex and I have no other codenames for this release.) 5.5 doesn't change much. 800 new games, some tech updates, a new credits listing in the launcher, and that's about it. As always, the changelog has everything if you want to have a look: http://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/changelog.txt

There's been some major refactoring of Flashpoint we've been wanting to do for maintenance and simplicity's sake, but due to the breakneck schedule of releasing month to month, making it happen while not interrupting the regular process has been difficult, so for a while at least, we're not going to be working on 'the next release', instead just doing the tweaks, polishing and upheavals that we need to do. The next release will be out once we're confident we've got everything up to scratch. 5.5 should still work in the meantime, and we will still be accepting curation submissions, if they're in the queue they get in Flashpoint.

There is a small checklist of things that we do need help with though to get more games supported, so if you have some experience with anything in the following link, we'd appreciate it if you could take a look at this list and send us the right way: http://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/datahub/Help_Wanted_List Some of these will help us get those last few games that we don't support yet into Flashpoint. There's always more to be done though; don't forget that we always need curators and testers.

#downloads, as always.

@everyone

The following is not an April Fools Joke.

Hello. This isn't a release announcement as we're still working on what's going to be Flashpoint 6.0. Unfortunately the server we were running Infinity on has been changed for technical reasons, and we need to patch 5.5 again to compensate for it. If you're running Flashpoint 5.5 Infinity, below you'll find a zipped patch; extract it into the Flashpoint folder (and overwrite router.php when you're prompted to). If you aren't running it yet or don't want to go through that effort, you can redownload 5.5 Infinity from #downloads, it's been updated with the new file that you need. This doesn't affect Flashpoint 5.5 Ultimate (the big pack). This shouldn't happen again. Apologies for the beep.

@everyone It's been a long two months. Flashpoint 6.0, "Alignment", is available now.

This is the biggest Flashpoint update ever, in pretty much every respect. This update contains over 2500 new games across all ten of our supported platforms. Ten? Yup, this update introduces ActiveX support. Yes, the Internet Explorer ActiveX. There's about a dozen games included to start.

We've also got a massive step forward in the form of a tech called AMF; the major benefit this version is that we've managed to crack open the level databases for every game on ArmorGames and added them to Flashpoint in a playable state. This makes Flashpoint arguably the biggest user level database backup for Flash on the planet.

Combine this with a changelog that is a mile long with bugfixes and small additions (http://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/changelog.txt) and this is absolutely the biggest release so far. Alongside this is an update of Flashpoint Core for curators and hopefully even more to come (a little birdy has been whispering in my ear about Linux support...)

The links are in #downloads, but you better be ready; we broke 100GB this time if you want Ultimate. (You'll need 120GB of hard drive space to extract.)

Two other things: while we did include the level databases, their thumbnails are huge; just to cite an example, Crush the Castle 2, the biggest one added this time around, was a 1GB database...and 29GB of thumbnails. For the purpose of keeping this collection not insane on the file count, we're offering three thumbnail set downloads separately from Flashpoint: CTC2, Splitter 2, and every game that uses the ArmorGames UI to generate thumbnails. All those links are also in #downloads.

The last thing is that we gave Flashpoint a bit of a directory restructure for a multitude of reasons that aren't worth getting into here, but we've left a "Start Flashpoint" shortcut in the main Flashpoint folder. If you want to make a shortcut to Flashpoint though, make a shortcut to FlashpointLauncher.exe in the Launcher folder, and not the Start Flashpoint shortcut.

Have fun.

@everyone Hello, Flashpoint 6.1 "Preservationware" is now available.

This isn't the biggest update in Flashpoint history (kinda hard to top 6.0 on that count) but we still have 1,500 new titles and support for yet another plugin, Authorware. There's also, of course, a changelog with about a hundred individual fixes in it, so this is still a pretty sizable update. You'll find the links in #downloads as always, we'll be adding more mirrors as we can make them. There really isn't much else to say about this update, so have at it.

With that said, I understand that downloading 100+GB again is a massive pain in the neck, and we're working on a solution to that. Watch this post if you're interested; I (or someone else) will edit it with more details once we have something more concrete to show.

I just want to take the time to shill another, smaller project I've been working on, just while I'm here: instance_archive, a GameMaker game archival project. I admit I haven't put near as much effort into it as I have Flashpoint, but with Flashpoint being as big a monstrosity as it is to work on, can you blame me? If you want to learn more about that, you can get the freshly minted first release here: http://bluemaxima.org/instance_archive/

Hopefully we're back on the monthly release schedule without much issue. Version 6.2 should be out by the end of June, and considering that DarkMoe uploaded 1200 games to go into it today...well, let's just say it'll be Moe's great escape.

@everyone due to popular demand there is now a torrent magnet link and an archive.org mirror in #downloads and on the website. Carry on.

Hello @everyone. I know I said that we were aiming to get Flashpoint 6.2 out by the end of the month. However, there's been some complications, mainly due to a few staff members having either other obligations or unforseeable circumstances. Due to that, the release of 6.2 is being pushed back by a month. Sorry to disappoint anyone who was waiting eagerly to get their hands on the next release. We have been working pretty hard back here though; 6.2 already has 2,500 new games in it, so when next month rolls around, there will be plenty of new stuff to dig into.

With that said though, the beep for everyone is also important because there's a couple of things that need to be noted. The first is that 6.2 is actually going to have a pretty significant change, and I want people, especially curators, to be aware of it ahead of time. Due to how Flashpoint works it isn't easy for us to redirect HTTPS traffic, and a fair few titles, especially HTML5 ones, are heavily reliant on it. We've made the decision in 6.2 and onward to outright block HTTPS traffic in our browsers, because we've found that we might end up getting non-working games in the future due to it. This will most likely break a lot of games already in Flashpoint, so around the time of 6.2's release, we'll be bringing it up again, because we're going to need people testing HTML5 games as much as possible. However, since it's still a month to release and we've made this change now, people curating HTML5 games for the next release might run into problems, to which there's now a new version of Flashpoint Core in the #downloads channel, version 3.1. This applies the HTML5 blocks and a few other, minor changes, so anyone who plans on curating will need to upgrade their version of Core.

There is one more thing that does concern more than just curators though: we've been working on an updater for Flashpoint Ultimate, so that people don't have to redownload another hundred gigs or so every time we release a new version. It's very much in beta at the moment; while we have tested it successfully, we don't know about any kind of weird edge cases that might pop up. We were planning to release this alongside 6.2 for testing, but since that's not happening, we might as well do it now so that we can optimize it / bugfix it for 6.2. You can upgrade Flashpoint 5.5 and 6.0 to 6.1 using this updater at the moment; obviously if you have 6.1, you can't use this, this is only if you happen to have an old Flashpoint version lying around. It's in #downloads. The instructions are very simple: put the FlashpointUpdater folder next to your Flashpoint golder, go into the FlashpointUpdater folder, run update.bat and follow the prompts. Report back to us if something breaks. Note; since the updater is still in beta, it can probably break your Flashpoint install, so back up your Flashpoint install before you try this.

Hopefully, next time you hear an everyone beep, I'll be back to announce 6.2's release.

Hi @everyone. Flashpoint 6.2, "Moe's Great Escape", and Newgrounds Auditorium 2.0 is now available.

The big change from 6.1 to 6.2 is easily the 6,000 new games...yes, really, we've shot right past 20,000 to about 22,000 in this release? It's kinda silly. Most of that is thanks to our big man DarkMoe who wanted to grab a couple of sites worth of escape the room games on a whim and somehow ended up doing a few thousand himself. There's plenty new outside of that though, alongside a few updates to how things like the launcher and router for Infinity work. You can always check the changelog for more details.

This should appeal to people who like Newgrounds; a few months ago myself and DarkMoe went on a journey to archive all of Newgrounds' flash animations in an automated scrape to database sort of deal. It 99% worked, but thanks to Launchbox being a crippled mess with 131,000 animations, it was never particularly usable. Thanks to the new launcher and a bit of tweaking though, I managed to get it working much better; the new and improved Newgrounds Auditorium 2.0 is almost infinitely better, has a few bugfixes, and even has a playlist (thanks to eientei) of the top viewed 1,200 animations so you don't have to go, for lack of a better term, 'dumpster diving'.

Both Flashpoint 6.2 and Newgrounds Auditorium 2.0 are available now in #downloads. 6.2 Ultimate has a torrent from the word go this time, and we'd prefer it if you used it instead of the direct links, but they're still there if you need them. Newgrounds Auditorium 2.0's Ultimate version is not available at the moment (damn thing's still uploading) but it should be up within a few days, hopefully; thankfully the Infinity version is only 120MB, so you can start watching the animations right away. I'm not even going to try to guarantee a release date for the tenative Flashpoint 6.3, since I've been proven wrong on my release dates one too many times now.

(One other thing; updater isn't working at this time. Still looking into it. Sorry.)

Hi @everyone. There's something I want to talk about now that Tom has opened the floodgates with the announcement on Newgrounds (I only found out about it a couple of days ago). It's named Ruffle - it's an open source Flash emulator coded in the Rust programming language by Mike of The Behemoth. I absolutely support his attempts to get something like that off the ground; honestly we could have used it yonks ago, but better late than never, right?

Since Flash itself isn't open source, there's nothing but positives to be gained from a project like this. One of the major benefits is that they'll be able to convert the plugin to work in browsers, so when the official plugin goes, Ruffle can swoop in and take its place...when it's ready. See, the actual plugin is nowhere near complete. It can run earlier animations (it's based off the SWF to MP4 converter that the same guy made for Newgrounds) and some really basic games, but without things like ActionScript support, its uses for things like Flashpoint are limited. We use the official Adobe binaries, which means we more or less have 100% compatibility, something Ruffle won't have for (hopefully not, but let's be realistic) a long time.

See, Ruffle and Flashpoint, while they might be used for the same end goal, exist for different reasons. Ruffle is meant for playing the games. Flashpoint is meant for preserving them. See, just because you can play the games doesn't mean they still can't disappear from the internet. Say, for example, every ArmorGames server and backup is simultaneously hit by a meteor shower. Doesn't matter what Ruffle does, those games aren't coming back. Flashpoint keeps local copies of their games around, so even if there's a worldwide nuclear war that upends the internet, if your computer still works, you can still play Crush the Castle in your copy of Flashpoint Ultimate.

This concept of Flash files being removed from the internet resulting in them being lost is what we're here to stop, and just because Ruffle might let people play Flash games in browsers after 2020 doesn't mean we're going to halt things here. Games are still at risk of going down even with Ruffle around. Hell, we have multiple games that don't exist in a complete form on the internet anymore, which I consider a great success on our part. Not to mention our support for other tech like Shockwave and Unity Web Player and Silverlight and what have you. Not even beginning to think of games that rely on external servers or have sitelocks or...

With that said though, I wish the Ruffle project the best luck possible in making Flash preservation easier, and hopefully better than the official binaries; if they do end up with benefits over the official binaries I'd be happy to include them in Flashpoint as an alternative. I'm going to leave a link to the Ruffle Discord server below; if you have a good knowledge of Flash, Rust or both, please go and help out if you can. The faster a project like this is done, the better for all of Flash as a whole. If there's anyone that can make this happen, it's probably these guys.

https://discord.gg/3rYN56c

(And for those of you who are a little annoyed to be annoyed about a beep like this, well...if you have 300GB of space free, there's a present for you waiting in the bottom of #downloads.)

@everyone Flashpoint 6.3, "We're Talking About Flash Games, Not Abstract Philosophy", is available now. I know the version name is a bit weird, but it's probably one of the best quotes I've heard over the course of Flashpoint's development. There's download links in the usual places. The new game count in this version is around 5700 and there's about 600 new animations. (Side note: due to my idiocy, I forgot to add the new animations to the changelog; the more up to date changelog is at https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/changelog.txt) This version has a ton of individual changes and fixes, alongside a few notable things like a new plugin and an in-the-works but playable archive of Sploder.

There are a couple new things about this release that are worth talking about that aren't directly related to the new version, though. The first is that we're now distributing Infinity nightly builds at the same place as the usual Infinity builds. These will be up to date with the master copy of Flashpoint, although that comes with the chance of things not working right. Note that nightly builds do not update automatically; if you must stay current you'll need to redownload it every day. Also, don't expect the nightly to be significantly different from regular Flashpoint for a while; I take post release breaks from Flashpoint to catch my breath so the master build won't be updated for some time.

The second thing is that the updater for Ultimate has received multiple updates; you should, keyword should, be able to update to 6.3 from any version 5.5 onwards. Of course this comes at your own risk, but if you feel like trying it out, here's a link: https://github.com/FlashpointProject/FlashpointUpdater/releases/tag/0.3b The updater has a decent GUI version now, so there shouldn't be any complicated instructions.

Also, I feel the need to say this due to some recent drama, but there is no need to antagonize other Flash related projects. We don't need to worry about any other projects happening in parallel to us; we're doing our own thing and everyone else is welcome to do their own thing. It would be great if we could work together, but that doesn't mean we need to take an 'holier-than-thou' attitude due to our relative size or progress. What I'm saying is...play nice, people.

One more thing. I've been involved in a new project along the sane lines as Flashpoint for a while now; it's named Kahvibreak, and it's a collection of Java mobile games with the same launcher and general concept of double-click-and-play as Flashpoint. We just put out a first release which you can read about and download at https://bluemaxima.org/kahvibreak/, or you can join our Discord server at https://discord.gg/8TgbHAG if you want to chat or help.

Flashpoint 6.4's ETA is "the end of the year".

Hello @everyone. This beep is important. I'm sure a lot of you here are aware of MOTAS, Mystery of Time and Space, Jan Albartus' magnum opus of adventure games, that disappeared from the internet a while back. Game provider AlbinoBlackSheep did manage to recover some of it, but the game was incomplete, missing levels 14 through 20, and the music didn't work properly, and some languages too.

Why am I bringing this up?

Because I have good news.

WE HAVE THE MISSING LEVELS.

You have user RidgeX to thank for it. He backed it up back in 2008. All of it, including the missing languages. And music. And levels. He just showed up and provided it, and we've integrated it into Flashpoint. MOTAS, as it was before it disappeared off the internet in 2008, is now fully playable again.

And there's one more thing.

If you have Flashpoint 6.3 Infinity, you can play the complete version right now.

We've updated the master server that hosts Flashpoint's files. This includes the missing levels, soundtrack and what have you. All you need to do is find the MOTAS entry in Flashpoint (search for MOTAS or Mystery of Time and Space) and double-click it. It'll boot the refreshed copy with the new levels and you'll be able to play it through. Please note that if you want the music playback, you'll need to download the Other Technologies pack on the Home tab. (Ultimate will have the full game in the next major version.)

MOTAS is one of the holy grails of missing Flash games, and it works, right here, right now. Go have fun.

Here's a screenshot of level 19, running through Flashpoint.

unknown.png ??? kB

@everyone Hello. This isn't a version release beep, but due to the long length of time between releases these days, I've been told that people believe the project is dead in the water due to a lack of communication. The new status update, which hopefully I'll have the time to throw together every month, should help with that.

The status update is an article on Medium with details about how we do things here, some odd additions to the library recently, steps forward on the tech side of things, and another, 200GB sized surprise at the bottom if you're fast enough. There's also two extra articles linked at the bottom, one by me, and one by our Shockwave master Tomy.

Have a read if you're interested: https://medium.com/bluemaximas-flashpoint/flashpoint-status-update-october-2019-efb740ebb825

TL;DR: new neat stuff, still on track for a post-Christmas release of the next version. Let me know what you think in #flashpoint-chat.

Hello everyone! This is not a Flashpoint Infinity or Ultimate release, but Flashpoint Core 4 is now available. If you're interested in curating for Flashpoint, this announcement is for you.
Core 4 features a revamped Curate tab. Now you can use Flashpoint Launcher to make curations - just click the New Curation button on the Curate tab to get started. On the Curate tab, you'll be able to fill out metadata, test games, and export your finished curations for inclusion in Flashpoint. You can even load and edit existing curations. Hopefully this turns out easier. Flashpoint Core 4 also has the new ShiVa3D plugin support, Java games in the browser, and merges all our browser usage into Basilisk. Yes, .
If you have questions about any step of the curation process, you know the usual places to ask, and https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/datahub/Curation_Tutorial is always there. And if you're an experienced curator, we'd really appreciate it if you familiarize yourself with Core 4, so you can help new curators with whatever questions they may have.
Here is the download link: https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/Flashpoint%20Core%204.7z.
We have a newsletter coming soon as well, so stay tuned!

@everyone November status update. It's not massively long, but it still has some neat tidbits. See you in December. https://medium.com/bluemaximas-flashpoint/flashpoint-status-update-november-2019-9c22b9a59868

We're looking for help localizing Flashpoint Launcher into other languages! We've set up a new Crowdin project page so you can contribute.

Head to the project page linked below, right click on the language you wish to translate for and press Translate All. You are encouraged to have an updated Flashpoint Launcher open during translation so that you can make sense of the contexts given for each word/sentence. Links are below:

CrowdIn Project Page: https://fpl-translations.bluemaxima.org/
Extra Translator Info: https://support.crowdin.com/for-volunteer-translators/
Latest Launcher Downloads: https://github.com/FlashpointProject/launcher/releases/tag/latest
Advanced Translation Guide: https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/datahub/Translation_Guide

If you're proficient in your language and would like to approve translations as a proofreader, or don't see your preferred language on the CrowdIn page, just send DM our project manager, @Colin.

@everyone It's been a long, long, long, long three months, and kill me now if this turns out broken, but if it stays in the stable any longer I'm going to lose my mind. Flashpoint 7.0, uncreatively titled "Eight Thousand Hours" (because that's about how long we have until Flash is truly gone) is out now, in #downloads and on the newly refreshed website. The sheer amount of changes and new games in this release (a little over 8,000!) are way too many to list, so as always, there's a changelog at https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/changelog.txt.

Other things that need mentioning on quickfire:

We have a new tool for checking the cache files of old hard drives for games previously thought lost, if you have an old computer try giving this a run on it:
https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/datahub/Recovering_Files_from_Browser_Cache#Flashpoint_Cache_Dumper

We're still looking for translations for the launcher: https://fpl-translations.bluemaxima.org/

I also put out a new version of the Kahvibreak project recently at https://bluemaxima.org/kahvibreak/

We also have a #highscores channel now, if you feel like competing with other Flashpoint users

Keep an eye on this channel for other things I might have forgot if you want to help the project out. (Seriously. This release is huge, and we have more coming in the future. Although I don't think we'll try testing anything until the egg nog is out of everyone's system...)

It's currently 8:30am on Christmas morning and I have my family beating down my door to get me out and socializing, so I'm just going to leave it here. Happy holidays.

Hello @everyone. Flashpoint 7.1, "Stay on Target" is now available at the usual places (#downloads, the website).

First thing is an apology. I originally pushed Flashpoint 7.0 out the door in a state that, looking back at all the problems we've found regarding it over the past month, was not acceptable. I don't really have an excuse; we should have held out for longer. 7.1 is the first in a set of steps to fix up things; 7.1 has been put out relatively quickly to push out multiple fixes and updates that should have gone out with 7.0. This includes fixes for the launcher, a fair few games that found themselves broken in 7.0, and 2000+ games and 100+ new animations on top of that.

There's more coming in 7.2 and onwards, of course, but that'll be for another time. Please enjoy the new release and flood us with bug reports if you find them.

We're always looking for more translators (https://fpl-translations.bluemaxima.org/), curators, and others to help work on the project. If you've got the spare time, please consider helping us out.

Hey @everyone, it's been a month since the release of 7.1. We've been working hard over here since then, and it's about time we talk publicly about a bunch of things that have happened between then and now.

Read the link below for updates on:

* A look at February's popularity spike
* The upcoming removal of Nitrome titles
* Our attempts to circumvent the redirector
* Introducing the new Viscape plugin
* Microscopic preview of the 4,000 new curations since 7.1
* Talking about the new tool for recovering games from older PCs
* Me looking at random games from the Flashpoint library

https://medium.com/bluemaximas-flashpoint/flashpoint-status-update-march-2020-6b1bd57e5df0

@everyone Another month, another delayed release. Sorry about that. You get another status update though! Read on for:

* More details on last month's tease of the Sploder archive
* A new tech that'll make Flashpoint more flexible than ever
* A glance at all the new games that made it in this March
* And a quick update to the Kahvibreak project

https://medium.com/bluemaximas-flashpoint/flashpoint-status-update-april-2020-a5449713843f

@everyone The nightmare ends. Version 8.0, 301, is now available for download. (If you don't understand the meaning of the name, read the second point below, then look up HTTP Code 301.)

The list of changes is, frankly, ridiculous:

* 10,000 new games. Yeah, you read that right. Ten thousand. (And a thousand-ish new animations). Everything from niche Japanese developers to a full archive of Sploder.
* The Redirector is gone, long live the Redirector. Just you and the server, no proxy trickery required. Hopefully this helps Flashpoint usability and stability significantly.
* We've added our own app, the Flashpoint Secure Player, to do a bunch of new things and allow us to support more plugins than ever before. There's three new supported plugins as a result; Viscape, Vitalize and Hypercosm, and more to come.
* A fancy new manual. (I'm quite proud of it myself. Came out better than I expected. If you've used Flashpoint before you know what to expect, but I'd like to see people give their opinions on it anyway https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/Manual.pdf)
* Tons of fixes, alternate versions and plenty of other minor things you can read about in the changelog. https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/changelog.txt

Downloads are available in the usual places; the site, #downloads, etc. Be ready for a big one if you like Ultimate - we added nearly 100GB to this release. I can't guarantee when the next version will be ready, mainly because I'm about to swap out the power supply on my PC and there's always the chance I'll screw it up. Either way, go get downloading, and wish me luck.

(One more thing, there's a new version of the Flashpoint Cache Dumper that supports Windows 9x era machines. See #web-cache for more details on that, if you have an old PC that might have games for us on it.)

(Also please don't forget that Nitrome games have been removed from this release at their request. Read slightly more here: https://medium.com/bluemaximas-flashpoint/flashpoint-status-update-march-2020-6b1bd57e5df0)

We understand there's problems with Windows 7 users unable to play Flash games in Flashpoint. We're aware of the problem and will provide a patch ASAP.

The problem for Windows 7 users has been resolved with a small patch. This also resolves issues with 3DVIA Player and PopCap Plugin that we didn't identify during testing.

Here's a link to the patch: https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/Flashpoint_Proxy_Patch.zip

Here's instructions:

Haven't downloaded Infinity yet: Download Infinity normally. The patch has been applied to the version we're distributing now.
Have already downloaded Infinity: Download the patch, extract the zip, move the folder so that the folders match up, overwrite all existing files, or redownload Infinity.
Have downloaded Ultimate: See above instructions, minus the re-download bit - we can't update Ultimate in the same way.

Sorry for the trouble.

Hey folks. This month has been a bit of a slow one, but there's still been plenty of curations that have been made, and progress towards the future of Flashpoint is always going on, so I've whipped up a mini status update to let you know what we're working on. Not big enough for an everyone beep in my opinion, but just enough to let you know we aren't dead over here. Enjoy.

https://medium.com/bluemaximas-flashpoint/flashpoint-mini-status-update-june-2020-f0cd9c51186d

We're hoping to have 8.1 out by July, probably.

LOOK SKYWARD AND REMEMBER,
YOUR SPIRIT OF ADVENTURE CARRIES ON!

Hello @everyone, Flashpoint 8.1, "Spirit of Adventure" is now available! The last two months have brought plenty of updates to the table, and I want to take some time to talk about them in depth, because there's a few things you might want to know...

First thing is new content count. Not as big as 8.0 by a long shot, but we still have 4,100 new games and 1,200 new animations. It's still a lot! Even with this being one of the smaller updates in the past few months, we still added a full Blu-Ray worth of size to Ultimate...and that's compressed.

Second is that the launcher has received some massive updates. We've migrated to an SQLite database, for multiple reasons, mainly performance - the launcher should now be faster than ever, with limits imposed by those pesky XMLs gone. However, for the purpose of stress-testing, Infinity in particular has a new, somewhat exclusive feature...

For those of you in the know, you'll know a while back that I and DarkMoe did a full scrape of Newgrounds, publishing it under the name Newgrounds Auditorium - it contained over 131,000 Flash animations from the site. Due to its overall size, however, it was impossible to integrate into Flashpoint proper, both filesize wise and with the ridiculous amount of entries it has. With Infinity and the new launcher version though, both problems are more or less solved, so for Infinity users only, we've integrated Auditorium into the launcher - you will find a new, third tab next to Games and Animations called NG Auditorium, that contains all 131,000 of these animations, ready to stream from the internet. (This can be duplicated in Ultimate; just ask if you want more details)

There's also another new feature - download on demand logos and screenshots! This is enabled in Infinity by default; basically, when you're in Grid view, or you click a game and the right sidebar is open, the logos and screenshots will download automagically to your PC and be displayed in the launcher. No more stages! No more needing to grab separate zips! It's all there, when you need it. Don't want it? There's a new config option to turn it off. (We're hoping to augment this with an ability to download the database itself on demand, but that's for another time...) (Also note that Auditorium doesn't have logos or screenshots; this is to be expected)

This isn't getting into plenty of other things new in this version (the usual new extras, a few bugfixes related to certain plugins, a new plugin named Pulse, a big update to Tags, and the usual ridiculous amount of metadata fixes). As always, the changelog is available with both versions if you wanna see that. https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/changelog.txt (There's more indepth launcher changelogs at https://github.com/FlashpointProject/launcher/releases/)

Two more things I feel the need to talk about:

* There's been news recently that Adobe has added a 'killswitch' into the latest versions of the Adobe Flash Player, which means they can stop Flash working in browsers and on PCs at will. We can't be sure if this has made its way into other Flash-related things on the web (think Newgrounds Player, or Supernova, etc.), but what we can guarantee is that Flashpoint is not and will not be affected by this killswitch. We're using versions older than the killswitch, and we won't be updating until we're sure we can either disable said killswitch, or if our methods don't contain the killswitch. Be calm and carry on.

* In relation to that, our logo, while a lovely beast of combining old and new Flash logos is great, considering the expanded scope of the project and the potential of someone breathing down our necks, we're open to suggestions for new Flashpoint logos. If you have an artistic drive and feel like you can come up with something that'll pass my ridiculously high barrier, please, feel free to send off a message on #logo-discussions.

8.1 is available from #downloads now, with more mirrors coming as we can make them. Enjoy.

Time for the monthly update!

Read on for:

* A peek at the next version's changelog
* Two new web plugins
* Some really poorly done graffiti
* A project big enough that we couldn't fit it into Flashpoint proper

https://medium.com/bluemaximas-flashpoint/flashpoint-status-update-august-2020-6d94fec13dbf

.- .--. .--. .-. --- .- -.-. .... .. -. --. / .--. .-.. .- -. . - / -. .. -. .

@everyone Flashpoint 8.2, Approaching Planet Nine, is now available! The new features in this version include three new technologies, seven thousand new entries overall and the usual set of general polish that you can find in the changelog once you've downloaded the new version. Which, of course, is available at the usual #downloads. We've also updated Flashpoint Core, now Flashpoint Core 8.2, to follow up with the new techs and changes. All curators, please update ASAP.

With that said, if you pay attention, you might note that we're...behind. Due to ongoing technical issues with the ridiculous amount of files in Flashpoint (we're looking at over 1.2 million in this version), our backup system to preserve day-over-day work broke so badly that we needed to spend time testing and looking for new backup solutions...which we couldn't find, because nothing is truly suited to this kind of project. We've been working on new tech to bring the file count down ASAP. Curations have been behind while we try and find something new as a result. So, to stave off the potential disaster of losing work that we've done, I made the decision to release this version so there's a fallback. The next version of Flashpoint is hopefully going to have ways of slimming down the file count as much as we can, and it will probably need a overhaul of underlying tech in the process. Don't worry, we've got this under control. Too many smart people are working on this to screw it up. The new version will be out as soon as we can figure out the kinks. Hopefully before Flash is gone.

Two more things: @nosamu wrote an article about how he (and others) managed to add the ShiVa technology into Flashpoint. Have a look: https://medium.com/bluemaximas-flashpoint/shiva3d-web-games-what-they-are-and-how-we-saved-them-20c2a2f486ec

We also have some server restructures going on, because of course we do. Hopefully they'll be self-explanatory once they're done.

And as always, please learn how to curate if you have the time. There's still a ton of work to do before Flash is gone.

.-.. --- -. --. / .-.. .. ...- . / ..-. .-.. .- ... ....

Hey folks. Just a quick announcement that we've updated our rules. Go look in #rules-and-faq.

Hey folks. We've been raided twice today by bots that send DMs to people, telling them they've won some kind of cryptocurrency. As true now as always, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is; ignore, delete, block and report these bots as you see them. We'll be trying to keep up with the waves of them if they continue. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Hi folks. We've uploaded a slightly modified build of Infinity that has a networking issue fixed up; if you've been having trouble with Infinity recently, try redownloading this new build. If you're not having problems, don't panic, you don't need to redownload anything.

Sorry for a lack of monthly update for October; there honestly hasn't been much happening that is noteworthy or that we can realistically show off. Do know that big features planned for Version 9 are coming along, and there's currently over 6,000 new games in the current master build with 2,000 more still to be processed.

Hi folks. Yet another slightly modified build of Infinity that should fix that networking problem...again, and also remembers to fix Auditorium, is up. Again, if you've been having problems, grab the new build.

Hi @everyone, sorry for the radio silence for the past two months, but we've been hard at work making 9.0's biggest feature, the game zip system - compressing games comprised of hundreds or thousands of files into one - and it's finally ready to show off in some fashion, so instead of having a long, somewhat unengaging article about the system, how about I just show you?

https://youtu.be/bNyPGi8CI4o

This'll hopefully whet your appetite for the next version, which will hopefully be out by the end of the year in order to give Flash a proper send off.

There's something else I'd like to mention, too, since it's related to this project and its goals. Ruffle, the HTML5-based Flash emulator, has recently found its way onto the Internet Archive in a playable form, and we've had a request for help from archivist extraordinare Jason Scott to get as many games and animations that are working on Ruffle onto the Archive as possible. I've already contributed a couple of dozen; here's one, just as a demonstration that the tech works. A Flash game working on the archive, no Flash required.

https://archive.org/details/helicoptergame_flash

If you want to help, pop over to the Ruffle server's #ruffle-showcase server and read the wiki link in the channel's topic for detailed information. The more we get working there, the more attention we get for Ruffle, and the more likely Ruffle becomes more complete and compatible as a result.

Here's an invite link:

https://discord.gg/ESxjxMgeMD

We've heard that there are ongoing server issues with Infinity at this point. We're aware of the problem and are working on it. Stay tuned.

The issue with the Infinity server should be resolved now, thanks for your patience!

@everyone

Well, this was a little sooner than expected.

Flashpoint 9.0 is now available from the usual places. There's multiple reasons we moved the release schedule up, but I won't bore you with those. Here's the summary:

* Ultimate now has support for gamezips - single file distributions of multi-file games, for the purpose of cutting down the filesize on Flashpoint. As a result, the way Ultimate works has changed completely. We need people testing this if available; this is a brand new system that hasn't seen much in the way of widespread trials.

* Over 12,000 new entries across games and animations.

* Tons of launcher updates - Flashpoint'll work offline with On Demand Images, no more duplicated games in playlists, lots of new things you can see in the changelog.

* While we haven't included these in the default Flashpoint installs, if you want Discord rich presence or support for Ruffle, you can install one of our new launcher extensions. https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/datahub/Launcher_Extensions

* The usual bugfixes, additions and thousands of metadata updates.

* Our new logo! This has been in the works for some time. It's now applied across the site, Flashpoint itself, and this Discord server. Also, a new trailer to go along with it. https://youtu.be/rUatW8cXl-s

We've named this version "Glorious Sunset" as because, barring some freak accident in which we need to release 9.1, this will be the last new version before Adobe pulls the plug on Flash, assuming it happens this year. Hopefully this is as good a showing of Flash's legacy as anything could be.

@everyone

This is not a content release, but there are a lot of things that I'd like to talk about now. I apologize if you were expecting an update. With that said, hope you've had a Merry Christmas, or other holidays you celebrate around this time.

There's a new Flashpoint Twitter account that we made recently that we'll be posting fun factoids, bios and random games on from time to time, also including things like new releases. If you feel like following that, head over to https://twitter.com/fp_archive. It just posted a tweet celebrating the third anniversary project of Flashpoint, which just so happened to be yesterday!

There was a video released by Nick Robinson recently about Mission in Snowdriftland, and ow it may be "lost", and for one of a few potential reasons, there was some misinformation shared about Flashpoint. These issues include some kind of odd software he uses that makes Flashpoint look like we don't actually save the games we archive, which is not true. I've gone over the issues in my own video on the subject to correct them and dig into how he may have fumbled this particular ball, which you can view here: https://youtu.be/POHBOjgOqRE Please share this video around to places the original video was shared, as I'm worried that misinformation about Flashpoint and its capabilities could spread far enough to be harmful to our efforts as a team. Please don't harass Nick over this video. There's no point. No one benefits. Don't be one of those people.

As for the upcoming death of Flash in a little under 3 weeks, while there hasn't been any major updates as to what might happen when the clock strikes midnight on the 12th, we're watching everything very closely and will update you if anything changes.

Enjoy the rest of your holidays, and stay safe.

https://tenor.com/view/mirakurun-yuru-yuri-cute-smile-pose-gif-14465080

Haaaai! Flashpoint Status Update is starting!

BlueMaxima cost too much, so we fired him!

He left this behind before we kicked him out, though!

https://youtu.be/sC3Vbd7_WxI

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.

newspread.PNG 97 kB

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:

1. Open the preferences.json file with a text editor like Notepad, find the line that says "x": (number), and change the number to 0, save the file and open Flashpoint and the problem should be solved
2. Redownload Flashpoint, it's been fixed there

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.

@everyone Hello again. It's been almost a month since we started the fundraiser, so there should probably be an update.

First off; we've raised over 3,000 euro from the fundraiser! (Technically it's a bit more than that, but PayPal is being a bit stingy, so it doesn't actually show on the page itself right now.) This is enough to backpay our man Dri0m for all the money he spent keeping the lights on around here over the past three years. With that said, the more we raise, the longer we can go on into the future. If you're unfamiliar with our fundraiser, here's a link to it again, or you can read above this message: https://gogetfunding.com/help-us-secure-funding-for-the-hosting-of-bluemaximas-flashpoint/

And secondly, we've fixed the problems with the new build and replaced the old version of Infinity again - when you download Infinity from the site now, you'll get version 10.1.0.5. Just to go over the basics once more: you don't have to upgrade if you don't want to, 10.1.0.3 still works. Test as many games as you can in 10.1.0.5, and if any don't work, #bug-reports will always be your friend. We haven't made any other changes to .5 other than adding more zipped games, so games that were previously broken may still be broken - that's for bigger updates, sorry.

That's it for now. See you next month.

...I wasn't kidding when I said "technically it's a bit more than that".

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@everyone Hello, quick update for you which is a little weirdly timed, but when is anything not weirdly timed around here...

The fundraiser for server hosting is about to end, you've got a little over a day left to contribute. Here's the link again in case you don't see it two posts up: https://gogetfunding.com/help-us-secure-funding-for-the-hosting-of-bluemaximas-flashpoint/ We have managed to shoot past the original target, but more funds means more months of Flashpoint we can afford without slaying our wallets. Don't forget, you get a special role and a mention in the credits of Flashpoint 11 if you donate enough.

The next Flashpoint update is coming along, to the point where we can now start sharing the list of games coming to the next version: https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/datahub/Upcoming There's a fair few thousand in there, with a couple thousand more being ready to add at this point. However, we're still working on some behind the scenes stuff that we need to get done before we commit to the next release proper, stay tuned for info on that.

And the book is still coming along, all the interviewees have been interviewed and their contributions have made their way into the book, meaning a major step of what I was hoping to accomplish is complete, meaning we just need more spreads. I have also closed the form for submitting your own quotes; it's been long enough and I have plenty to go through. With that said, I am looking for an artist to do a cover for the book. Nothing fancy, just a collection of characters from Flash's glory years in a neat group shot, or at least that's what I'm thinking. If you're a capable artist, or you have a better cover idea, feel free to submit an example cover (unfinished, watermarked, whatever you feel is needed) to #book and we can talk more if I'm impressed (including compensation).

With that all said, I'll leave you with a spread that wasn't in the book preview. See you next month.

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🎉

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We aren't dead. Just taking it slow. Sorry for the lack of updates.

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We're aware of a server issue causing some games to fail to download in Infinity, showing a "No working sources are available for this GameData" error. We've found the cause and will post an update when the problem is fixed.

The problem should be fixed now.

Hello, @everyone. We're about three weeks later than we hoped, but here we are: Flashpoint 11.

Here's what's new:

What do I do with all these plugins?!: We've added thirty-six new plugins. Yes, really. Hence 11's codename: Oops, All Plugins!
What do I do with this better launcher?!: The newest version of the launcher has improved speed in searching and loading games, the manual as a tab in the launcher itself, and some very important bugfixes (we're hoping we got the preferences bug this time).
What do I do with Mac/Linux support?!: We have official support for Mac and Linux now. The M/L versions support the biggest five platforms in FP - Flash, Shockwave, Unity, Java and HTML5 - which makes 98% of Flashpoint's library playable (with some exceptions).
What do I do with all these entries?!: 40,000 new entries are in 11 - over 30,000 games and nearly 10,000 animations.

There's also been a bunch of minor new additions: Updated languages, updated underlying software (enjoy a smaller Infinity, less RAM usage, and a rebranded browser), less duplicates, thousands of fixes, a new Animation Hall of Fame playlist...

While all of these improvements and additions are available in Infinity right now, Ultimate is going to need a post-launch patch we'll be providing ASAP. Ultimate has approximately doubled in size this version, which has made it tricky to work with.

Hopefully this will keep all of you satisfied while we work on the next release; we're going to be taking the time to change the way Flashpoint is worked on and it may take some time. We thank you for your patience.

As always, downloads are available at the usual places - the website and #downloads.

With that said, there's plenty more for us to announce as well:

Our analytics have been - so far - for our eyes only, but we've finally made them public facing; you can see them by visiting this address: https://flashpoint-analytics.unstable.life/

We want to help Ruffle develop as fast as we can, so we've set up a test page that plays a random Flashpoint entry via Ruffle for the purposes of quick fire testing: https://ooooooooo.ooo/

We're also looking for help in many Flashpoint related ventures; if you have the time, please take a look at our Help Wanted List: https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/datahub/Help_Wanted_List

#get-roles now exists for people who want to stay up to date with the Mac & Linux versions, and the Notification Squad.

There's probably more we'll need to bring up, so watch this post!

Hi folks, the website is down for a little bit as the web hoster is doing planned maintenance. We're hoping to be back up in five and a half hours.

Site's up, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

We are aware of an issue with the servers for Flashpoint Infinity. We're working on diagnosing the problem and finding a fix. Some games may not start/download correctly in the meantime.

Should be fixed now!

hello yes we have TikTok now https://www.tiktok.com/@bluemaxima.flashpoint make us go viral pls

We are aware of an(other) issue with the servers for Flashpoint Infinity. We're working on fixing the problem. Some games may not start/download correctly in the meantime.
UPDATE: the problem may have disappeared on its own.

@everyone

Hello. We've got a new version of Infinity for you today. The main (and only) change is a new build of our Launcher, which fixes a handful of bugs and changes some behind-the-scenes stuff, that we need some help testing, so if you have time, please download this new version and give it a shot. (It's the same URL as always, #downloads website etc.) You'll know you're running it as the titlebar will say "11.0.1" as the version number. Report any problems in #launcher.

There is a benefit on your end too - we have a new Game of the Day system on the home tab with personalized recommendations from staff members every day. The entire month of December will have a bunch of new games for you to try, and hopefully further beyond once we know it's working as intended.

One more thing: we're hoping to have the next major version out by mid-late January. We all know how those sorts of deadlines work out around here though...

That's it for now. See you in two months (tm).

I hope you don't mind if I take some time to soapbox here. I'm not running this by any of the team as I want this to be from the heart as much as possible.

I never thought Flashpoint was going to be this big five years ago. I remember sitting in a room, thinking about how Flash was going down and nobody was doing anything at the time to help it; I remember sitting on the Pleasuredome forums asking what should be done - man, Pleasuredome is actually gone now - I remember running into eXo of eXoDOS fame and taking inspiration from him, and yet, I still can't trace a proper path from there to here. It's insane the amount of attention this has gotten. The amount of people who've downloaded Flashpoint is in the millions. We've been all over the place. I think my personal favorite times I've been mentioned is hearing Linus speak my real name, and being in a physical magazine here in Australia I was able to walk into a shop and buy...see the image below.

But I tell you one thing that we got done though, outside of getting attention. Flash as an internet concept has been saved. Work isn't done - there's still portals that I never got around to finishing completely waiting to hit Flashpoint, there's hundreds of thousands of games still out there, and we've lost stuff we'll never see again, but it's impossible to argue that the culture and games I and many others grew up with stand no chance of being lost now. It's an unbelievable accomplishment and it's made the last five years worth it, and I'm looking forward to being able to sit back and enjoy it.

I still do a lot of other things. At the moment, the Flash book is gonna go back on the work queue, I'm working on an official expansion for a board game called Warfighter: Shadow War, my other projects still exist at https://bluemaxima.org, and whatever else ends up happening in my life, it'll be on my Twitter @BlueMaxima.

You're probably wondering why this post is here. Read on.

@everyone ...we're actually on time. For once. Go figure.

So. As promised in December, Flashpoint 11.1, "Operation Cherry Blossom", is now available. I wanted to try and have this out at this time, because we're just about to hit two years since Flash was forcibly executed at the hands of Adobe, not to mention the end of last year being the five year anniversary of me starting the project on a random Boxing Day by downloading a bunch of SWFs. It felt appropriate.

Operation Cherry Blossom is an interim update. The goal was to fix as many broken things as possible; over 600 bigger fixes (alongside thousands of smaller ones) have been rolled out as part of this new version. Doesn't mean we didn't take time to add new stuff; 15,000 new entries join the database, bringing us to over 150,000 games.

But after this, at least for me, it'll be the end. Operation Cherry Blossom (and its post-release patch) is the last time I'll be at the head of the Flashpoint project. It's been a ride, but it's time for me to step down and move onto other things. As a result, this may be the last major Flashpoint release for a while. I'll be hanging around the general chat channels for the next few days while we sort everything out. There's also some notes that I have here:

* Flashpoint as a project is not dead; the rest of the team is making the attempt to take over my role. I'm not promising any timetables or what not, this will be a generally difficult process.
* A second general chat channel has been opened temporarily as I imagine this news is quite a big deal and people may want more room to talk.
* We noticed a few extra problems while we were uploading 11.1, there will be a post release patch once we've sorted them out.
* The Mac and Linux versions have not been updated at this time due to a lack of maintainers.
* The project is always looking for help - ask for more info.

#downloads and the site are updated. With all of that said...goodbye, and good luck in 2023.

(by the way, first person to get the new version name's reference gets a cookie)

(someone got it fast, go play Muv-Luv https://store.steampowered.com/app/802880/MuvLuv/)

We are aware that https://flashpoint-analytics.unstable.life/ has been reset - don't worry, the data aren't lost, just a small problem with a docker volume and now we have two databases with data 😄 I'll merge them back together to get our cool statistics back eventually.

The post-launch patch promised last week has been released. Redownload Infinity if any of the below affect you, Ultimate can be downloaded at the URL below (extract to Ultimate's folder and overwrite files when prompted). You can check the "And everyone else" in the credits; it now mentions "five years" in its text as part of this patch.

Ultimate link: https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/FP-PLP.zip

And have a changelog:

@everyone

Hi. I finished the book on web games. It's up at the URL below. Enjoy.

https://archive.org/details/flashpoint-a-tribute-to-web-games/mode/2up

Hi,

Development of Flashpoint 12 keeps steady, with an experimental launcher available in #notification-squad's pinned posts. This is a major step as submissions will be available in the application as soon they are verified by staff, and metadata/content edits become integrated into the launcher. No expected release date as of now. Life gets in the way and stuff. But we're working hard on improving the gigantic complex machinery that is powering the development of Flashpoint in the background, whenever we have the time and energy to do so. Remember that our developers and game curators (and everyone else) are all doing this as a hobby and completely for free ❤️

In other news, you may have noticed that r/FlashpointArchive has been recently gone private; this is due to a global protest prompted by changes in Reddit's API pricings. We do not have current plans to reactivate the subreddit, but general help can be still provided here.

We also invite you to check our new social media presence at Lemmy and Fosstodon:
https://lemmy.ml/c/flashpointarchive
https://fosstodon.org/@flashpointarchive

Until next time.

Hey folks,

remember that little experiment of mine that allows you to play "any" game from infinity in browser via ruffle?

Initially i envisioned this as a "play a random mystery game" type of site, but something something Vox Populi Vox Dei.

https://ooooooooo.ooo got a pretty big update, now you can browse games in a web-based Flashpoint Launcher right on the site, thanks to @Colin 's fantastic work.

https://ooooooooo.ooo/static/browse/

Just FYI:

• 9o3o only works with flash games at this time. Non-flash games are completely filtered out from 9o3o.
• Not all games work, you might get hit with an error that ruffle can't find/start the game. The site is using a very simple JS-based redirector and it does not bypass all sitelocks. It also does not work with gamezips, but we have a workaround for that so most games should work. It also does not run games that don't have a .swf file as their launch command, there is a couple of flash games like that in Flashpoint, these are filtered out completely from 9o3o.
• Ruffle is not finished and cannot run all games at the moment.
• this is not a replacement of Flashpoint, download infinity or ultimate for the full experience

You can always vote if the game works at the bottom of the main page.

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@everyone read ⬆️ and have fun https://ooooooooo.ooo/static/browse/

@everyone

It's been a hot minute since FP 11.1 released, but we're closing in on FP 12 pretty fast. There's a lot of changes so I'm going to keep them brief. If you want to take a look at FP 12 (and the ~5,000 newly added games and animations) you can find the preview release at the bottom of this post but be aware you may still come across some bugs!

👥 Community

• After a lot of discussion we're changing our name to Flashpoint Archive. It's been a while since BlueMaxima stepped down from an active role and we want to let the project stand proud on its own two feet. Long live BlueMaxima!
• The help channels have been replaced with the Discord forum system. (#help) Individual posts should now make it easier for your questions to be answered as well as help people address the specifics of your problems.
• The archived channels at the bottom of the server list have been reorganized and categorized for more convenient viewing and access. Historical notes are also in the process of being added to the archived channel descriptions. Feel free to browse through them if you're curious about the history of the project or just want to learn more trivia about the Flashpoint Discord server.

📁 Content

• We have an installer now. With the new Flashpoint Manager, you can pick and choose components you want and update FP and its components. No more downloading a whole new copy of Infinity, it's all done in the Manager now.
• On-demand updates are finally live. Going forward you'll receive updates with new games and animations, fixes for existing games, and updates to game metadata all without having to wait for another release.
• Core is deprecated, and curating is now all done in the new launcher. Content Patches are also done in the new launcher now, enable Editing in the Config menu to access the Curate menu and more. Core's utilities are included in the Manager in the "Extras" category.
• The launcher now tracks your game playtime. This feature is not used for analytics and can be disabled and cleared on the Config page. You're able to sort by Last Played and Playtime statistics and can use has:played and not:played in the Search bar to filter some out entirely.
• Ultimate releases will take a short break and won't be available in FP 12 upon release. These releases have become quite large, around 2TB, and it takes weeks to prepare them. We're taking this time to reconsider how we'll handle them in the future, possibly moving to a twice-yearly release schedule in summer and winter.
• We have slowly reduced the number of Legacy games to around 23,000. If you want to help us bring the rest to the new format, you can either zip them yourself following: https://flashpointarchive.org/datahub/Content_Patches or you can turn on the Analytics to provide us extra info to assist us in repacking them.

FP 12 Installer (Preview)

https://github.com/FlashpointProject/FlashpointComponentTools/releases/download/1.0-rc8/FlashpointInstaller.exe

https://tenor.com/view/gandalf-things-are-in-motion-gif-20102320

Flashpoint 12 Infinity - Axolotl

Back for another post @everyone. As usual this release is much bigger and took much longer than we originally hoped for. Whilst a little lighter on games, this has arguably had the most complex technical changes to date. Whilst a lot of these changes are for curators, there's always a few new things for regular users to enjoy.

You can find downloads on the main website here per usual, but please do read more below if you can: https://flashpointarchive.org/downloads

If you have issues please use our new #help forum.

P.S. We'll have something a little later today we want to announce as well, hope you don't mind another ping later. 😉

I just want to play games, what's changed for me?

1. Live Updates. Flashpoint now serves updates for both the software it uses and the games you play straight out of the launcher. Whenever we add new games or update existing games you'll be able to get these immediately by pressing the big Update button in the top left. No waiting on a new release!

2. Playtime and Last Played dates are now kept for games you play. These are only kept locally and inside the database. You can view this in the right sidebar when they're selected as well as order by either of them when using the search bar.

3. Saving Space. This is in 2 parts:

• Pick and choose software: The installer (and manager openable in the bottom left of the launcher) lets you choose which software you want installed. Don't play Java / Unity / Shockwave games? Just turn off their support packs! Even if you don't install a support pack these games will still show in results and the launcher will make sure to download them if you try to launch any of the games from which you're missing any.
• Logos and Screenshots. On-demand images now download compressed copies by default. This uses roughly 80% less space for no noticeable reduction in quality. If you still want uncompressed images you can disable compression on the Config page then use the clear images button to make sure they download in full resolution the next time they're required.

📝 I'm still reading by this point, what else changed?

• For Curators. Flashpoint 12 comes with a lot of improvements to the old curate tab. I'm not going to go into detail here but there's lots of new things to play with to curate new games, submit changes for existing games and edit live metadata from games from inside the launcher itself. Extensions also have new ways to interact with curations so if you want to add something please take a look, and don't be afraid to ask for new endpoints if you can't achieve your goal with the existing ones.

• FPFSS. People that pay attention will know that our Flashpoint Fantastic Submission System has been an integral part of people submitting their curations and having them quality checked before inclusion in the archive. FPFSS has grown to be the backbone of most of the new changes in version 12. It is now responsible for serving all live information about the entire archive; Most changes to games and tags are submitted through this system in one way of another.

• Discord Changes. You may have noticed the server has been looking a little differently lately, our Administrator @Rain has been making a few changes! Channels have been moved, renamed, and added. There are too many changes to list here, but the key changes are #help is now a forum and Not Safe For Work content now has its work category (only available to Trial Curator and above.)

(Roles also have snazzy icons now!)

Say thanks to the Discord message limit

Donations

(@everyone) Flashpoint has and continues to operate as a non-profit. After consideration of our budget we’ve decided to open up ongoing donations with the aim of making sure Flashpoint remains sustainable. We know this is a big change so we’ve prepared a mini FAQ to explain why we’re encouraging you to donate and why this is a little different to what other sites might be doing.

Donate Here (Open Collective): https://opencollective.com/flashpointarchive

(Note: Tips go to Open Collective, not us)

Why should I trust you?

Our finances are handled by Open Collective Europe, a registered non-profit based in Belgium who act as a fiscal host for charitable causes and open source communities. By terms of our agreement we must spend funds solely on the goal of furthering efforts in archival and accessibility of games, animations and digital interactive experiences on the web. All income and expenditure is transparent and available on our Open Collective page. Labour remains unpaid volunteer work.

Why donate, where do donations go?

The various services and monstrous amount of storage and bandwidth that make Flashpoint Archive able to work is quite expensive. Everything we use to make live updates possible for this recent update has just pushed us closer to the edge of what we can do with the budget we have. Any donation helps and no special treatment will be given to large donations. (Send proof of donation to a staff member to get a snazzy little Donator role badge. €2 minimum).

What if I can’t / don’t want to donate?

Monetary donations are only one way of contributing to Flashpoint Archive and you should only donate what you’re comfortably able to. We wouldn’t be here without the efforts from our curators, hackers, developers, mechanics, moderators etc so there’s plenty of other ways you can contribute in those areas if you’d like!

I have another question!

Feel free to ask in #flashpoint-chat and we'll answer you best we can.

Bit of a follow up with a few technical issues we've been having with FP 12's release:

Windows Defender - If the manager or installer is being flagged as a trojan, please make sure your Windows Defender virus definitions are up to date. They should be 1.393.34.0 if you're up to date as of writing. You can check this via Windows Security -> Virus & threat protection -> Virus & threat protection updates

Download Issues - The installer now available through the site should allow you to retry downloads of individual components. We're still not sure why some people are struggling so much, but we'll keep looking at ways to ease people with poor connections especially. We're also having some server issues that might be contributing so just be patient. If you've been having issues please try now - If it still isn't working, please use this https://download.unstable.life/static/fp1211072023.7z

HTML5 Games - If you're struggling to get HTML5 games to run with a prompt to install the support pack, please do a software update via the bottom left button in the launcher then try again. If you used the default install options you will not have to download the HTML5 support pack again even though it says it will, it will just mark it as installed next time it tries, but you will still need to follow these steps. If you're still struggling please ping me.

I'll be editing this post as necessary rather than posting a new one.

Yes, the server is struggling. If you keep dropping connection please try the alternate download link on the site, or in the paragraph above

(It's not faster, but you might not disconnect as often as the installer at the moment)

Hey, we got featured in a Linus Tech Tips video

https://youtu.be/8N3sFRR9-OE?t=930

If you're having issues with the Launcher not working after the last update, please go into the Manager folder to update manually.

Hey hi hello,

As you may have noticed, some mysterious changes are being rolled into flashpoint over the last couple of days, such as that some games now redirect you to their original website instead of being playable in Flashpoint.

We're changing our internal rules - content that's younger than 3 years (limit not final, exceptions apply) will now not be accessible through Flashpoint. That's all that changes for you as a user. You will still see the games and content in Flashpoint, but it will either direct you to the original page where you can play the game, or simply state that it's archived.

This new rule is still a work in progress and the specific rules and exceptions are not finalized, so I can't answer your questions on what does this exactly apply to, but we're aiming to be reasonable about it.

Submissions (curations) of such games are still accepted and will be stored until they fulfil the criteria to be released via Flashpoint.

We're an archive first and foremost, and distributing a living, fresh content when it's still accessible by the original creators is not our goal (but archiving it is!). While we already respect all takedown requests, we're still implementing this rule mainly to minimize the risk of legal issues with the IP owners of all the content that we're distributing.

I'm going to clarify that this will only impact at worst, 2.7% of the games we currently have.

People still make a living off web games. People still have actively developed games with communities behind them. It would be inappropriate of us to block out their income and make their communities difficult to reach. This would only be worsened by how quick it is to get content included into Flashpoint now. These changes help us ensure that we aren't acting against the development of new web games and can signpost people to them directly.

Once a game has been safely archived (Uploaded, tested, verified and imported) the metadata will remain visible but playing a game will open it in your browser instead. When a game goes down, passes the threshold or is otherwise exempt, we can toggle the switch and it'll start using the archived copy.

As always, if you have more questions the general chat is open.

After the LTT video, we gained 1500 additional daily users

For those who don't know, these dashboards are public and available here: https://flashpoint-analytics.unstable.life/ and this is what you contribute to when you enable analytics in Flashpoint (also, you help us collect what files games request to catch missing files and to help with packing legacy non-zipped games)

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Also, we did an interview for @Super Snooper about Flashpoint, you can read it on their cool retro site

https://webweekly.neocities.org/Flashpoint%20Interview

Which side are you on?

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#off-topic has now been executed archived.
Please use the new channels in the off topic category for further off topic discussion:

• #games
• #tv-and-movies
• #tech-and-science
• #music
• #art-and-photography
• #animals

If you do not have access or cannot see the new channels use #Channels & Roles to enable them.

I know there's still some people waiting on an Ultimate release, just wanted to let you know we haven't forgotten about you.

We still plan on an Ultimate release later this month. For now, have a little preview of what I'm working on as a ground up replacement for the Ultimate updater.

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@Flashpoint Ultimate Flashpoint 11.1 Ultimate will stop being downloadable via the current updater application at some point after the 22nd August. Please consider using the torrent if you're early in your download, or waiting for Flashpoint 12 Ultimate which will be available before it's taken down.

P.S. Any guinea pigs for 12 Ultimate, give me a DM, I'll have something for you to try tomorrow.

If you were a member of the server before the #Server Guide was enabled, please answer the customization questions in #Channels & Roles as it can help fix any glitches involving your channel list.

#translation is now open as a separate area to discuss translating Flashpoint.

Flashpoint Ultimate 12 is now available for download via the Updater application. This can download a fresh copy or upgrade one in place.
Torrent and Direct Download links will come soon™️.

Current plans remain to be bi-annual releases in the Summer and Winter.

You can find a link here for Windows: https://github.com/FlashpointProject/FlashpointUltimateUpdater/releases/latest
Mac and Linux users will have to build from source currently. (Version is still Windows, but the updater is multi-platform)

There's been limited opportunity for testing so make sure to report any bugs you find.

Most of the features should be self explanatory:

• Resumable install state
• Speed limiter
• Pause and start downloader
• Scan and repair existing files
• Resume partial file downloads
• Install information fetched from remote server
• Upgrade existing install to new version
• Forced upgrade when version no longer available on remote server

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@Flashpoint Ultimate woops, please read post above

A new international channel for our Hungarian users is now open:#magyar-nyelv

Thank you to @Renegát for volunteering to help manage it.

Rule 6 has been added to #rules:

6. Do not DM or mention staff for troubleshooting issues with Flashpoint. Please read #faq if you have questions, use #help, or contact a member with the @Helper role.

Happy 20th Birthday to Badgers. If you're running into issues with the server migration happening, maybe take a 1 hour time out?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzagBTcYsYQ

FP Ultimate downloads will be down for a short while ™️

FP Ultimate updater should be live again - There's a new revision for 12, you should be prompted to upgrade. It'll re-validate any existing files, it won't redownload them all. Includes a few extra additions and the Extras folder which was missing last time.

Flashpoint Ultimate 12 now has direct download and torrent links available via the website.

https://flashpointarchive.org/downloads

We've moved to zstd compression which should (fingies crossed) support significantly faster decompression times, at the cost of the overall compression ratio being a little worse. If you're on Windows, you'll also need a program capable of extracting this new format. You can find a link to one below:

https://github.com/mcmilk/7-Zip-zstd/releases/latest

NOTE: We're having issues getting seeding to behave, you'll see another update once it's resolved

I wonder what people think about these non-project related posts?

Apparently jtmb02 is still alive and well, and has released a brand new Elephant game today. It's free and relatively short, so if you remember their work, why not give it a go? Always nice to see old webgame developers still releasing new content.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/950230/Elephant_Rave_2/

Daily reminder that we love the modern social media dystopia and that you should give us your zoomer love on pikpok

https://www.tiktok.com/@flashpointarchive

9o3o's browse menu now works again. We apologize for the wait.

9o3o also now has a role in our Channels & Roles section, grab it to be notified of any issues or updates in the future.

@Flashpoint Ultimate Some of you have issues with extracting ultimate, let me clarify how to do it and why did we change the format from 7z:

.tar.zst is a tar stream compressed with zstd. This is similar to tar.gz or tar.xz that you might have seen around. If you don't know zstd, it's a fairly new compression algorithm from facebook, it's comparable in strength to zip/gzip but bajillion times faster.

We switched to this format because of two reasons:

1. it's ultra fast, you're bottlenecked by disk speed pretty much, both on compression and decompression, before compression with 7z took a week and decompression maybe days.
2. it's streamable, you can decompress-as-you-download if you know how (wget URL > pipe to tar > output is decompressed, for example)

Now how to extract it:

Colin suggested this 7z fork because it has graphical user interface, so we expected it's user-friendly enough for people to use. But if you have issues, this is how you can do it (this command works both on windows and linux). Command line is not scary, especially here where it is only one command.

1. open powerhsell/terminal
2. navigate to the directory where your ultimate.tar.zst is
3. run this command: tar --zstd -xvf .\ultimate-file.tar.zst

This will extract the ultimate to the current directory. Yes, it will decompress the tar and unpack the tar in one step, that's the magic of streamable files for you.

If you want to extract it to another location, specify with tar --zstd -xvf .\ultimate-file.tar.zst -C D:\path\to\destination\

If your windows doesn't have tar, then that's weird because it's included with Windows since Windows 10. But let us know if you have any issues in #Major issues getting a hold of Ultimate

This command will print the name of every single extracted file into the terminal, which serves as an indicator that it's running. remove the v (as in verbose) from the -xvf part of the command to disable the printing.

^ just found out this works only on windows 11, because windows 10 does not have the zstd binary included by default, whoops

On windows 10, you would have to download the windows release of zstd (zstd-v1.5.5-win64.zip) and add the zstd.exe file to your PATH or move it to a directory that's in your PATH already

https://github.com/facebook/zstd/releases/tag/v1.5.5

... or use the ultimate updater, that saves you the hassle with extracting the archive completely

@Flashpoint Ultimate hey folks, there is an issue with the ultimate archive, if you launch any game, you will most likely be prompted to install the required components to run it, even though the components are present.

You need to update the file Manager/fpm.cfg

The first line it this file says C:\Flashpoint which breaks things if your ultimate is not on this path. You need to change the line to ..\ to make it work on any path.

I'll make personally sure to triple-check the next release of Ultimate, but we have some issues in this one (to be honest, historically we have some small issues with almost every ultimate release lol)

We'll also most likely switch back to 7z with the next one, the world is not ready for zstd yet 💀

It's been a while since we've had a progress focused post, got a technical things for you today.

Flashpoint Game Server

The QEMU GameZIP server has given us a lot of hassle since it was introduced. It was bulky, overengineered and generally refused to work for arbitrary reasons. Flashpoint Game Server is our home-grown replacement that's getting closer to stable release. It’s written in Go, should be pretty fast, less error prone and much easier to maintain. Reducing the server components file size from 220mb to 10mb is a nice bonus. Even if you don't know why this is a good thing, just believe me, anybody who has provided support in the help channels does! @Krum110487 put a lot of effort into getting this all to work.

Ruffle

Most of you will be aware of Ruffle already. It’s an open source Flash Player emulator that in the past few years especially has made enormous strides in game compatibility. We’ve had a Ruffle extension available for a while but it was pretty basic. We’re going to be supporting Ruffle in a more complete fashion going forward, and in the future we'll likely be changing some games to use Ruffle by default.

You’ll be able to deeply configure and use Ruffle on a per-game basis without your settings being overridden by a metadata update. Extensions will be able to benefit from all the changes made for this too. There’s a lot of technical details for how this works, but this post would be 4x as long if I kept going.

Testing

We’d appreciate more testing and feedback on these changes especially. If you want to help, then please create a new Flashpoint install first. To get development changes - Open the Flashpoint Manager, go to settings, swap to the development channel then press save and restart. Finally, go to the Update Components tab and let everything update.

Details for how to use Ruffle on the development release channel will be posted later on.

@Flashpoint Ultimate the ultimate torrent will soon be seeded from 10gbit, so if you are considering a download, then the torrent should be alive.

https://download.unstable.life/static/FlashpointUltimate12.tar.zst.torrent

@everyone

Flashpoint Infinity 12.1 - Salamander

Total Games Count (2023-10-27): 191,150

It's been a few months since we have launched 12, the first version to have deep FPFSS integration with the launcher. Since then, we have imported thousands of games, patches, and metadata edits, allowing for an everchanging database.

Today, we are focusing less on launcher updates and more on our network stack. Flashpoint Game Server has been written from scratch to give us more control over how GameZIPs are served. It provides faster game loading on most titles, better reliability, less confusing errors and a whole lot of flexibility we've been missing. In the future this should completely remove the Apache and PHP servers that we rely on for legacy games and certain zipped games. Credit to @Krum110487 for bringing this to life.

We've tested as much as we can, but if you run into any issues please first make sure you're up to date, and if the issue persists then use #help. Be sure to include the name and platform of the game, any logs and a brief description of how to get the problem to occur where possible.

Notable changes:

• QEMU has been replaced with Flashpoint Game Server. Faster game loading, more reliable.
• 'Uninstall Game Data' now works without having to restart the Flashpoint Launcher
• Playlists can now be ordered (drag and drop in list view)
• Preview of the Game Configuration system
  • Game Configurations will not be served by the update system yet. You will need to create your own to use them.
  • Currently supports using Ruffle Web and Ruffle Standalone with existing Flash titles.
• You can override files inside zips by placing them at their full path in ./Legacy/middleware_overrides/. This system is also used by Game Configurations.

Notable fixes:

• Background processes should now close more reliably when the Flashpoint Launcher exits
• Selecting a playlist will now properly behave when switching between the Games and Animations view

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.

image.png 15.2 kB

Launcher Update:
For those of you with slower drives, you can now enable database precaching to speed up searches significantly. This comes at the cost of adding around 400mb of extra memory usage and a few extra seconds to the launch time. (This also works on faster drives, but improvements will be much less noticeable)

This is off by default on new installs but that behaviour may change in the future.

Find it on the Config Page at the bottom of the Preferences section. Remember to restart the launcher to apply the change:

image.png 11.9 kB

Minor Launcher Update:

• Usernames are now removed from Log Uploads. (@oblivioncth)
• Game Data can now have application path and launch command changed via the Game Data Browser
• Updated to use FPFSS scoped permissions. (If you have an app that could make use of FPFSS auth, you can now request to register your application for this. Ask staff)
• Make protocol registration a user preference. (@oblivioncth)

We are aware of all Flashpoint related servers failing right now. This will be taken care of when a server maintainer is awake to fix it, no ETA currently, so please hold tight. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Fixed. (Crossing fingies)

Oh hey Flashpoint got mentioned by LGR https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9_uRLlnXSY

Love me watching numbers go up after we get mentioned by a popular youtuber (+yearly reminder that analytics exist: https://flashpoint-analytics.unstable.life/)

image.png 133 kB

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.

FPA Rust 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.

Search Queries

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:

• Exact matches - series="Sonic RPG" - An equals sign can be used in place of the semi-colon to exactly match instead of fuzzy matching.
• Numerical comparisons - 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.
• Date comparisons - 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, 2021-02-12
• New Ordering Options - Platform returns, and Release Date joins as a new one.

I'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.

Game Duplicates

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.

image.png 863 kB

@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

🛠️ Flashpoint 13 Infinity - Patch Notes

• Significantly faster search times
• Ordering by Last Played or Playtime now behaves like a history page by excluding games with no playtime from the search results.
• Improved search capabilities
  • Date comparisons for dateAdded, dateModified, releaseDate and lastPlayed (e.g releaseDate=2009)
  • Numerical comparisons for tags, platforms, addApps, gameData, playCount and playtime (e.g tags>3)
    • Date and Numerical comparisons support >, < and = comparators (: is equal to =)
  • Numerical values support time values, e.g playtime>1h30m for secs, mins, hours, days, weeks, Months and years.
• Search results can now also be ordered by Release Date and Platform
• Improved log page visuals (Theme authors will need to update)
• More information about the boot sequence is included in the logs page
• Verbose logging (enabled via Config page) to display detailed database queries and launcher event execution time.
• Game context menu buttons to:
  • Show Logos / Screenshots in Explorer
  • Delete individual game playtime tracking data
• 3 new platforms since FP 12:
  • WildTangent, Alice and Babyz Player
• 3 new playlists:
  • GOTD 2023, Kongregate Kongs and Gamehouse Games
• Playlists now respect active Tag Filter Groups
• Playtime tracking no longer modifies Date Modified
• Grid view is now the default, you can change back to List with the bottom right dropdown
• Simplified extension API interactions with tags and platforms (Extension authors may need to update, consider using the @fparchive/flashpoint-archive npm package)
• Game configurations (middleware) are no longer supported. The functionality will be reintroduced at a later date.
• Fixed tags / tag categories not being editable via their respective pages.

Flashpoint Infinity 13 - Dart Frog

Total 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.

Notable Changes

• Significantly faster search times
• Ordering by Last Played or Playtime now behaves like a history page by excluding games with no playtime from the search results.
• Improved search capabilities
  • Date comparisons for dateAdded, dateModified, releaseDate and lastPlayed (e.g releaseDate=2009)
  • Numerical comparisons for tags, platforms, addApps, gameData, playCount and playtime (e.g tags>3)
    • Date and Numerical comparisons support >, < and = comparators (: is equal to =)
  • Numerical values support time values, e.g playtime>1h30m for secs, mins, hours, days, weeks, Months and years.
• 3 new playlists:
  • GOTD 2023, Kongregate Kongs and Gamehouse Games
• Grid view is now the default, you can change back to List with the bottom right dropdown
  Full patch notes available in post above

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.

• Update is live, should allow Windows 7 to behave again

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:

• Primary platform not causing a meta.yaml update
• Starting a search by clicking on a right sidebar field incorrectly retains the search result count of the previous query
• Race condition causing service info to not be synced correctly introduced in the last update
• Tags / platforms not being added to a curation when entering their alias
• Platforms not being added to a curation where the platform exists but has zero associated game entries

Changed:

• Tags and Platforms blacklists are treated as an OR despite the rest of the query being treated as an AND. This should make it easier to exclude several tags at once

Flashpoint Ultimate 13

Total 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:

• GameData - Data for GameZipped games - 1.26 TB
• Htdocs - Data for Legacy games - 290 GB
• Images - All game logos and screenshots - 91 GB
• Extras - Unrelated game extras - 23 GB
• Base - Everything else (Launcher + Software) - 4 GB

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:

• Torrent - https://download.unstable.life/FlashpointUltimate13.torrent
• Direct Download - https://download.unstable.life/ultimate-direct/
• We highly recommend to use a download manager like Motrix or FDM. Browser downloads are likely to corrupt.
• Please read the README.txt for better instructions on how to install Ultimate via Direct 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

New

• AVG and Avast Antivirus users will see a one-time warning asking them to add a folder exception, with links to the wiki page and discord server.

Fixed

• Search values containing special characters like : are correctly handled
• Tag suggestion results on the Search bar and Curate page will only display the most recently requested suggestions
• Tag suggestions will now be returned for tag= as well as tag:
• Logs page Copy Text no longer returns a single monstrous line of text
• Play counter is properly incremented (Fixes sort by playtime / last played)
  • Existing games with playtime but no counter will have their counter set to 1
• Updated tags will wipe all attached aliases before applying their changes
• Curation imports via the Curate page are working again

Changed

• Clicking a field in the sidebar will now search with = instead of :
• Selected tag suggestions will now use = instead of :
• Logs page 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 2024

The 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)

Search

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.

• New and easy to use search filters, there's a example attached but expect these to undergo changes before release.
• Ctrl + F will focus the Search Bar
• Config option - Restore Search Results (default: on) - Automatically saves and restores your search settings on each Search Page to persist between launches.
• Config option - Use Custom Views (default: off) - You can replace the Library search pages (Games + Animations) with Custom Views. These will appear in the Header in the same way, but can have their own names and settings. You can also rename them and drag & drop to re-order them on the Header. Really useful in combination with Restore Search Results.
• Config option - Default Opening Page (default: Home Page) - You can choose between the Home Page, or any existing Search Page to open when Flashpoint starts.

Part two below

Playlists

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.

• All search functionality now works within Playlists
• Playlist Ordering can be disabled to allow you to use the traditional order options
• Drag & Drop re-ordering now also works in Grid view
• You can now create a playlist from the current search results
• Playlists are be downloadable via flashpoint://playlist/add?url=https://path/to/playlist.json links

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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 2024

We'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!

Why won't games close properly anymore?

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.

Game Data Index (Curators + Developers)

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.

Flashpoint Survey Update

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.

FPFSS will be going down for maintenance and upgrades around February 15, 2025 8:00 AM, expect at least a couple hours of downtime. This will prevent metadata updates but not game downloads.

This is in preparation for Flashpoint 14 which should go live shortly after.

In the meantime check out the ongoing kickstarter for a Newgrounds documentary, being made in cooperation with a whole host of influential Newgrounds creators. They're currently at $67,000 towards their $80k goal with 4 days left.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/connernyberg/newgrounds-documentary/

🗒️ Flashpoint Infinity 14 Changelog

New

• Games:
  • When launching a game, if there is existing game data and there has been new game data added via a metadata update, then the user is asked whether it should update to the new game data or stay on the existing one
    • If the launch command has changed in the new game data, the user is warned that updating could cause existing save data to break
  • Play / Download button now additional dropdown options for Flash games which will override Ruffle settings:
    • Run with Flash Player - Force the game to use the default launch command
    • Run with Ruffle - Force the game to use Ruffle. This will change to tell you if the game is not marked as Supported by Flashpoint.
• Playlists:
  • Playlists can now utilize all search features
  • Playlist ordering can disabled to use the traditional ordering dropdowns inside them
  • You can now create Playlists from the current Search Results. (Very large results views will cause significant lag when being created or viewed)
• Search:
  • Checkbox selections for - Installed, Legacy Game, Use Playlist Order
  • Dropdowns selections for - Library, Developer, Publisher, Series, Play Mode, Platform and Tags
    • Dropdown selections can include or exclude individual items, as well as toggle between AND / OR search operations
  • New keybinds:
    • Ctrl+F - Focus the search bar
    • Ctrl+D - Clear the search text
    • Ctrl+Shift+D - Clear the search text and filters
• Extensions:
  • getAccessToken() - Returns the FPFSS access token for the logged in user to allow extensions to perform actions on their behalf. User will be prompted to allow or deny when called. (@dot-mike)
  • DialogState now contains an mdx boolean field and textAlign string field. Setting this to true will compile and run the message as MDX. (Markdown + JSX)

• Misc:
  • About Page now has viewable launcher changelogs
  • DNS over HTTPS via Cloudflare is now supported for all Launcher web requests. This should fix some connectivity issues in countries with overly aggressive censorship such as the Philippines.
• Config Options:
  • Restore Search Results - (default: on) - Saves and restore a copy of each search page (text, filters, selected game and playlist) whenever you open the application.
  • Restore Search View Text - (default: on) - Restores the text field of a search view when restarting the launcher.
  • Enable Custom Search Views - (default: off) - Replaces the Library search tabs with custom named search tabs and adds a Library option to the advanced filters.
  • Default Opening Page - (default: Home) - Default page to open to, either the Home Page or a chosen Search Page
  • Hide New View Button - (default: off) - When using custom views, hide the new view (+) button in the header. You can instead press 'Create New Search View' under the context menu for tabs.
  • Auto-Clear WinINet Cache - (default: off) - Automatically clear the Windows web cache when running a curation from the Curate tab.
  • Clear WinINet Cache - (button) - Clears Windows web cache, which may help resolve loading issues in curations and other rare cases.
  • Ruffle - Enable (Supported Games) - (default: off) - Enable Ruffle for games that have been marked as properly supported.
  • Ruffle - Enable (Unsupported Games) - (default: off) - Enable Ruffle Standalone for all games regardless of whether they have been checked as supported. Results my vary.

Changed

• Search Bar has been moved from the Header to the Browse page (Search Views)
• Clear Search Button can now clear both text and filters if Shift is held while clicking it.
• Ctrl+Shift+R to reload the window will now also reload all extensions (@dot-mike)
• Linux:
  • Wine installations bundled inside FPSoftware are now automatically added to PATH for launched games (@Maoijoon)
• Importing games in the Curate tab now uses 7zip instead of Bluezip
• Tags page now follows a custom sort order, starting with default.
• All web request from the launcher use a consistent user agent (@dot-mike)

Fixed

• Non-unicode characters inside preferences no longer prevent the Preferences file from saving
• Search results are now correctly ordered with case insensitivity
• Existing path values are no longer wiped from existing Game Data when a Game has a metadata update
• Launching a game can now recover the path value when it is missing, preventing a launch error
• 401 errors from Fpfss functions should now properly get the user to re-authenticate instead of throwing an error
• Closing processes will work on new Windows distributions without WMIC installed
• New platforms now correctly sort alphabetically on the Extras box of the Home page
• Multiple blacklist conditions now properly use AND comparisons
• Additional Apps now use the same proc launch function as Game with a randomized ID instead
• Joint clauses (Application Path + Launch Command) now properly use inner ORs for blacklist conditions
• Open Flashpoint Manager will now wait 2.5 seconds to fully open FPM before exiting the main process. Cheap, but effective.

Removed

• Search bar no longer has tag: autocomplete. This may return in the future, the tags filter dropdown should be a reasonable replacement.
• Playlists can no longer have multiple copies of the same game.
• Bluezip is no longer included as an external tool

Flashpoint Infinity 14 - Kingfisher

Total Games Count (2025-02-15) - 207,077

Flashpoint Infinity 14 had a heavy focus on searches and discoverability of content in the archive and fixing up some long term issues we've had. Playlist filtering and the Search interface are two things that have been a bit neglected over time and hopefully Flashpoint 14's improvements make them feel a lot more up to date. We'll let the notable changes below cover it, but please do check the big changelog posted above this for some more detail.

Flashpoint Ultimate as usual will come at a slightly later date. We don't want to commit to timeframe just yet.

Notable Changes:

• Playlists now work with search options
• Search bar overhauled with easy to use filters
• Ability to create your own search tabs that show up in the header
• Search state is now saved when restarting the launcher
• Basic Ruffle support via the Play button dropdown or enabling it for supported games in Config.

Note for themes: Flashpoint 14 made significant changes that will require themes to be updated. Please revert to Flat Metal (the default theme) is you're having issues.

Update:
Use the button in the bottom left of the launcher. If this doesn't work, try running it manually from the Manager folder or reinstalling. This is a known issue that has been fixed in 14. (Backup your favorites playlist if you reinstall!)

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

Known Issues

• Launcher fails to open on Windows 7 machines - unknown whether this can be fixed currently

Flashpoint Infinity 13 with the most recent database and software updates at the time of 14s release can be found here. Whilst you won't receive metadata updates, game downloads will continue to work for the forseeable future. Deleting the Manager folder should prevent the update prompts from showing: https://download.flashpointarchive.org/archive/infinity/

🛠️ Hotfix 14.0.1

This should address most of the issues we've seen. Unfortunately Windows 7 support is still proving to be an ongoing issue, so it's recommended that any user still running it use Flashpoint Infinity 13 instead from https://download.flashpointarchive.org/archive/. You can delete the Manager folder to prevent the bottom left update prompt. You won't receive metadata updates but game downloads will continue to work. Windows 8.1 is now our minimum supported version unless something changes in the future.

New

• Search Dropdown Filter - Ruffle Support - Filter whether games are ruffled supported.
• Ruffle Config Options - Graphics Mode - Swap between different graphics modes for use running content in Ruffle.

Fixed

• Flash content should work in FPNavigator
• Games can be removed from playlists
• Playlist notes show and can be edited
• Disabled DNS over HTTPS because of difficult to solve issues with some users
• Prevent the dropdowns failing to load before the database is ready in rare circumstances
• Legacy Game Dropdowns now show for Ruffle possible games
• Ruffle properly executes on Linux machines

Will figure out what it is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Everything should be up again. 👍

Server's not happy, waiting on support to take a peek.

e83ddf4f8ae571a0a74ed20f6c917d85.png 355 kB

Server has been given a space to verbalize and vent its negative thoughts and is feeling much better now.

Introducing Squeakpoint Archive

Flashpoint has now accrued over 161 thousand Flash games, a fantastic amount of games. But we've left the other platforms in the dust. VRML only has 550. Atmosphere, 141. And of course, Squeak has a mere 85 games in Flashpoint. So to recognize that underloved plug-in, we in the Flashpoint team have decided that it's time we rebrand. From now on, the project will be known as Squeakpoint Archive. More information will come at a later day. We Squeakers in the Squeakpoint team hope you'll adjust easily!

Information For Squeakers

For those who want to contribute to the Squeakpoint archive, we have a guide to curating this cutting-edge technology: https://flashpointarchive.org/datahub/Squeak_Curation. And we really do need more Squeak games! Of the 595 games on Squeakland alone, we only have 83 of them. If you want to check out what Squeak is like, then we recommend you download the Squeakland Featured playlist, a collection curated by Squeakland themselves to showcase what the technology can do.

listened to too much chappell roan last night and blacked out from wine and four lokos, must have caused a Squeak themed blackout. my bad everyone

🛠️ Hotfix 14.0.2

New

• All games in a playlist can be downloaded at once via the right click menu. (Legacy games excluded)
• The verification uri is copied to the clipboard when authenticating with FPFSS, useful in case automatic opening in the browser fails

Fixed

• Fix wrong tag being removed when selected in the meta editor
• Prevent inconsistent scroll behaviour for Dropdowns on screens with different sizes
• Make button placement of Ok and Cancel consistent in dialogs
• Game data zips should be manually importable
• Fix an issue where file permissions for the ruffle executable failed to change on Linux (@Maoijoon)

Newgrounds Auditorium 2025 (Preview Download)

We've got something a little different to show off today, a preview build for an extensive update to an existing project tailored to a massive collection of animation on Newgrounds. This is primarily for feedback and bug reports, so make sure you're comfortable with some rough edges.

Newgrounds Auditorium was a collection of 130k animations from Newgrounds as of July 2018. This was put together with a very old version of the Flashpoint Launcher compared to Flashpoint Archive and lacked a lot of the searchability and detailed metadata that we can now support.

This new version has roughly 135k animations with complete sets of metadata with things like detailed developer credits, view counts, user scores and frontpage / daily / weekly trophies, even some premade playlists based on the official Newgrounds collections, along with some very fancy new functionality to make the UI specially tailored to Newgrounds content. Hopefully the screenshot speaks for itself.

The build available right now functions the same as Infinity, although there will be an Ultimate style when we've got something stable too. Please make sure to extract it to its own folder.

Search Tips:

• You cannot search by the individual role (Artist, Executive Producer, Animator etc) of a developer. This may or may not be possible, leaning towards no for technical reasons.
• score, trophies, views, faves, width, height are numerical comparators. (e.g score>4 in the search bar)
• frontpage, daily, monthly and reviewCrew are string comparators for the date they were awarded each trophy in the form Jan 1, 2000. (e.g frontpage:2005) Filtering by year is easy, but month and day is not yet.
• Ratings are also available as tags, a default Adult tag filter is included in the preferences

Known issues:

• Author Comments sometimes fail to render, this isn't always consistent
• Very long initial load times from tag fetching on slower drives
• Sorting by extension data can result in slow search times (This may not be fixable)
• The search headers, categories and ordering may visually change in front of you if you swap to the Games tab too early
• Entries use the 'arcade' library instead of 'auditorium', hence why it says Games

Ask for help in: #help (Make sure to add the NG Auditorium tag)

Post feedback to: #nga-2025-feedback

Download link: https://download.flashpointarchive.org/NGA_wip.7z
224mb download, 1.1gb install

image.png 286 kB

Server tags are now live if you would like to represent yourself on Discord as a member of the Flashpoint Archive server (or just think having .swf next to your name is cool)

image.png 30.8 kB

@Flashpoint Ultimate
Flashpoint Ultimate 14 should (fingers crossed) be ready in the next couple of weeks. It will follow the same style of 13's release with a collection of 50GB zips.

In the meantime, we'd like feedback on 2 things we're looking into:

• Would you use an optional update package for 13 -> 14? This would require manually running a script included, not just copying the contents.
• Would you prefer incremental updates for future releases, or keep with the full repack for every release? These updates would apply automatically via the launcher after they're unpacked.
  E.G Ultimate 16 = Ultimate 14 Base + Ultimate 15 Update + Ultimate 16 Update, vs a full set of zips for Ultimate 15 onwards?

Please respond in the channel below. You can also use this for general feedback.
#ultimate-feedback

Incremental vs Full Repack Release
Incremental (16 = 14 + 15U + 16U) - 91 votes (67%)
Full Repack - 45 votes (33%)

Please do not respond to the poll unless you're an Ultimate user.

@Flashpoint Ultimate

Flashpoint Ultimate 14 Status Update

Flashpoint Ultimate 14 is still planned to release by the end of the month. If you'd like to opt into testing, please see the pinned message in the #ultimate-feedback . Only a few GB may need to be redownloaded on release if we make any changes, the rest of the data will be identical from testing to release.

14 is currently standing at 2.3 TB, a 600 GB increase from 13's 1.7 TB.

14 will ship with an experimental launcher (optional). This will allow you to load Images and Game Data directly from the Ultimate packaged zips without having to extract them, meaning only the Base, Extras and Htdocs packages (around 300 GB) will need to be extracted.

Whilst we may release an update package the size would be enormous, so we're still debating whether that's worth it right now. Doing so takes a few days just to generate in any case, so if we do, it may come after releasing the full package.

@Colin's poll Incremental vs Full Repack Release has closed.
Incremental (16 = 14 + 15U + 16U) - Winning answer (67%)

Thank you Discord for giving everyone a notification for that.

Flashpoint Ultimate 14 - Kingfisher

Total Size - 2.28 TB

Flashpoint Ultimate 14 is now available for download. Aside from bringing up to date with Infinity, we're including an experimental launcher (detailed below) to drastically reduce installation time at the cost of boot time and memory usage.

As with 13, it is separated into a collection of roughly 50GB zips. These can be downloaded and unpacked in any order, though Base should be applied last.

• GameData - Data for GameZipped games - 1.88 TB
• Htdocs - Data for Legacy games - 290 GB
• Images - All game logos and screenshots - 96 GB
• Extras - Unrelated game extras - 23 GB
• Base - Everything else (Launcher + Software) - 3.8 GB

Experimental Launcher (Optional)
Separately we are including an experimental launcher which allows loading of images and gamezips directly out of Ultimate packaged zips. Do not extract your GameData and Images zips, and instead copy / symlink them into Flashpoint Ultimate/Data/ArchiveData/ (e.g Flashpoint Ultimate/Data/ArchiveData/GameData_1.zip). This is available in ExperimentalLauncher.7z and must be extracted last. It requires Win 10 x64 or above. This will not load Ultimate 13 zips.

Download:

• Torrent - https://download.unstable.life/FlashpointUltimate14.torrent
• Direct Download - https://download.unstable.life/ultimate-direct/
• We highly recommend to use a download manager like Motrix or FDM. Browser downloads are likely to corrupt.
• Please read the README.txt for better instructions on how to install Ultimate Direct

Update:
We're skipping an update for 14. Future Ultimate releases will build incrementally on existing GameData and Image zips, meaning you'll be able to reuse old content when grabbing any future Ultimate releases.

@Flashpoint Ultimate

Flashpoint Infinity 14.0.3

Small release to support updating Logos and Screenshots in the future. Metadata updates will continue to work on 14.0.2 until the necessary server side changes are complete.

Changed

• Logo and Screenshots now store their relative path inside the metadata

Fixed

• Games imported via the Curate tab are no longer missing tags
• Prevent rare cases where write operations can collide causing SQLITE_BUSY crashes

As usual, if you spot any issues please open a help thread.

Status Update - November 2025

It's been almost a year since I last wrote a status update. The need for them has slowed over time, but we've got quite a bit in the works and I figured now felt about right for another.

With 14.0.3 we already shipped the functionality for updates for Logos and Screenshots. By the end of the year the server side work will be done and you'll start seeing improved images for some games. (I'm aware the text still says 14.0.2, that'll get fixed later!)

Looking forward to 14.1.0 (version name pending) there's a lot to look at.

Flashpoint Launcher

I'm breaking this up into 3 sections

• Performance and Maintainability - Changes to make the launcher faster and easier to maintain
• Usability - Changes shipping with the launcher that most users should notice and benefit from
• Extensions - A fairly comprehensive look at what's changing with extensions and why it'll benefit most users

🛠️ Performance and Maintainability

This has been a huge and frankly time consuming part of development for the past 6+ months. Whilst this matters much more if you're a developer, this all has a knock on effect to making everything else easier to work on.

• Stripped out almost all manual memoization so we can use the new React Compiler for easier to read code and performance improvements
• Added support for running in a browser during development for hot reloading of components and more modern dev tools without being restricted to an ancient version of Electron
• Added context isolation and removed node integration from the renderer, which has been an ongoing job for years
• Restructured most components to use the application store where possible instead of passing down props and avoid hard to diagnose re-renders
• Rewrote most of the remaining class components into more friendly functional components
• Shrunk the launcher by around 20% by bundling the backend, main and preload sections ahead of packaging

⌨️ Usability

Most of the usability changes in the launcher itself are coming for the Curate page, but we've got bits and pieces elsewhere too.

• Most pages now stay hidden instead of unmounting, retaining their state which makes swapping between tabs without losing what you were doing much better. (Editing games, browsing the manual, etc)
  • This also makes it marginally faster to switch between most pages
• Logs page no longer tanks performance when there's lots of logs
• The zoom slider now works on both the Logs and Browse pages, with unique preferences for each
• 404's in the logs page now have their own class name, allowing themes to color them differently
• Curation loading no longer blocks startup, massively improving load times for people with lots of curations
• Curation content is only fetched when you've first selected a curation on the Curate page
• Curation content trees will no longer tank performance
• Most time consuming actions now use a nice toast notification instead of tasks or nothing at all
• FPFSS edits will now only sync tags once per launcher run

We're also including a bespoke context menu component to standardize the behaviour across operating systems. This replaces the existing context menus and can be changed with themes. Quite happy with how this one turned out.

image.png 19.9 kB

🏗️ Extensions

Extensions are getting some enormous improvements, primarily in the frontend. Previously they've been limiting to things like context buttons and dialogs, both of which couldn't be influenced past the arguments they took. We're expanding this to let them to define entirely new components themselves.

Backend

For extensions running in the backend they're mostly unchanged. They however are now given the Database object to perform complex searches rather than being restricted by the launcher api.

Frontend Components

Through module federation, extensions can now define their own React components which the launcher will have available to use. The places they can appear are limited to pre-defined areas, but they can render exactly what they want, how they want.

Extension components have a wide array of tools to let them do almost anything a component native the launcher can do via easy to use (runtime fulfilled) imports. This includes things like:

• Registering their own page routes
• Reading the application's state and modifying it via dispatched actions and a selection of hooks
  • e.g. Executing searches, changing preferences, navigating pages, modifying curations
• Using common launcher components like SimpleButton, CheckBox and HomePageBox
• Opening their own context menus
• Using backend functions via runCommand and their backend registered commands
• Providing their own stylesheets
• Adding and removing sidebar components, home page boxes, search bar options and search result columns

For a practical example, here's a peek of an in-progress extension.
This registers a new Manager page which will likely ship by default in the next release. You can turn extensions on/off, delete them, and install new ones from online repositories. It uses the LeftSidebar, SimpleButton and CheckBox components that already exist in the launcher and reads the loaded extensions from the application state.

image.png 66.4 kB

We're aware of download issues at the moment, Cloudflare is having a wobble.

🛠️ Downtime

FPFSS will be taking some downtime while we upgrade it for Logo and Screenshot update support.

This is a breaking change, so if you aren't already up to date you'll need to update the launcher to 14.0.3 to continue receiving updates. (Some existing users may still see 14.0.2 despite being on 14.0.3)

The database component and zipped copy will be updated shortly as well.

UPDATE: Downtime is over, if you have issues please say in #help per usual.

⚠️ Anti-Virus Announcement

There's been several reports of services.swf which is commonly used by Flash games using Mochiads being flagged by Windows Defender as Trojan:JS/Redirector.ATKB!MTB

This is being flagged because of a use of the window.location.replace() Javascript function. The way it's used is not malicious, and is also never run in a context which can access the live internet. The full file contents has been listed below.

Whilst we had submitted this as a false positive, Microsoft's security team (or the AI they've likely been replaced by these days) has upheld it. Since these detections hit the Windows network cache, there's not a realistic way for you to allow it through Defender.

We'll post another update once we've figured out what we're doing to address this. This shouldn't prevent games from running, but if you spot one, please make a #help post.

services.swf:

🛠️ Hotfix (Game Server Component)

You can update this component via the bottom left button as you would the launcher.

This should prevent the false positives from Windows Defender in the previous post when a game accesses http://www.mochiads.com/static/lib/services/services.swf.

If the file is smaller than 10kb, then it will assume it's the redirect html and return an intentionally empty file instead. This should not affect any games that intentionally zip the proper services.swf file.

I normally wouldn't ping for a hotfix, but hopefully it stops a trickle of reports from outdated components for the next month. As usual, if you have issues then use #help

@everyone

Hi everyone,

If you've used 9o3o at all over the past couple weeks, you may have noticed that it has received a significant update. Here are the big changes:

• Shockwave support via DirPlayer, bringing the total number of supported platforms to 4. But before anyone gets their hopes up, let me be clear that the vast majority of Shockwave content does not work yet. This is fine - DirPlayer is very early in development, and our hope is that adding support for it will bring in more testers and help it improve faster. You can find DirPlayer on GitHub here: https://github.com/igorlira/dirplayer-rs
• The built-in entry browser is back, so you no longer have to rely on an out-of-sync external search tool. It features a similar interface to the launcher and supports all of the same advanced search parameters (ie. ⁨developer:"Tom Fulp"⁩). Unsupported entries are hidden by default, but can be unhidden by adding ⁨?everything=true⁩ to the URL.
• An info panel and file browser has been added to the entry player, containing the entry's full metadata and zipped file contents. You can even use the file browser to emulate other supported files belonging to the entry, if they exist inside the zip.
• The database now auto-updates every 24 hours, which means that 9o3o and its entry browser will always be in sync with the launcher. You can see the time of the last update in the newly-added footer bar.
• Compatibility ratings have been removed. This was a very old system that was not very future-proof and has long passed the point where it was most useful. If you find an entry that is not being emulated correctly, I highly suggest opening an issue in the respective emulator's issue tracker.
• A whole lot of other small improvements that are too long to fit in one message.

Enjoy: https://ooooooooo.ooo/browse

@9o3o @Notification Squad

Hi, doing some work on our submission system, this system is also used by FP Launcher for some things (e.g. metadata updates) so you might see some temporary update failures.

All done.