When Adobe killed Flash Player in 2020, I didn’t want my Flash games to disappear forever.
I’ve been making games on and off my whole life, but people seemed to like the Hapland ones in particular, so I thought it might be nice to fix them up for a Steam release. I could draw some better graphics, improve the frame rate and resolution, and maybe add some extra secrets and such.
The problem is, the Hapland games are very much Flash games. The graphics are drawn in Flash, the code was written in Flash, all the animations are done in the Flash timeline. These games have Flash in their bones.
How was I going to do this?
.fla files are just XML. I just had to parse this, export the relevant data to a simple custom format and write a player to read it, draw the scene, handle input, and run the animations. I’d also have to do something about the ActionScript.
Hapland would stay a Flash project, written and maintained in the Flash editor; only Flash Player would be replaced.
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
