Bluely, if you can tell me which version of Ubuntu you're running, I can probably get the release file in place for it in the tinatos PPA. I've also asked you over Discord and I'm much easier to reach there.
You can try:
lsb_release --codename
In a terminal.
If you don't have lsb_release, you can install it via:
sudo apt-get install lsb-release
I'm surprised no-one has mentioned BlueMaxima's Flashpoint. For context, the Flash engine is going to be discontinued this year and web browsers will stop supporting it over the coming years, so some people have formed a conservatory for Flash games. If there are issues with using it, you could ask the people involved with it. I don't have any technical knowledge over how it works, but I'm mentioning this because it seems relevant.
I've gotten sdl-gnash to work (and sync) in libTAS, but it softlocks everytime any sound plays.
Sound works fine on sdl-gnash without libtas, so this seems to be an issue with libTAS.
Here is a video of what I am experiencing
Link to video
The only way around this is to remove all of the sound from the swf. But then, you have no sound at all and watching the tas is less enjoyable.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11495
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
Does that problem happen with other games too? I remember Abobo worked fine for me.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
I just stumbled onto a new Flash emulator written in Rust called Ruffle. Right now, it's a proof-of concept and can run early Flash games. However, it's in active development and they're promising improved ActionScript 1.0/2.0 as well as ActionScript 3.0 support.
GitHub repo
The reason I post this here is because it natively supports Linux, and thus may run in libTAS.
I actually checked ruffle out, and while some messing with it is needed, it was pretty straightforward to set up. Worth mentioning is that libTAS does not properly hook onto it, as when i was testing it didn't allow me the libTAS features such as pausing and frame advancing. however the game launched properly and worked as it did within ruffle. However ruffle is still on the way and at the moment the game i chose was laggy and experiencing input lag, also the mouse doesn't work on most of the buttons? However as it is in active development, I believe that ruffle could be an easy solution to TASing flash games in the future and something to keep an eye on.
I'm surprised no-one has mentioned BlueMaxima's Flashpoint. For context, the Flash engine is going to be discontinued this year and web browsers will stop supporting it over the coming years, so some people have formed a conservatory for Flash games. If there are issues with using it, you could ask the people involved with it. I don't have any technical knowledge over how it works, but I'm mentioning this because it seems relevant.
I've also tried to look on the project, but it seems to be windows only. And when there's wine involved you might just run the windows version of the flash projector thru it? (been trying myself, got it to work once, struggling since)
Flash player is getting discontinued in all popular browsers, yes. We can still run the flash games using the flash projector, or other tools in their own states of usability
I'm surprised no-one has mentioned BlueMaxima's Flashpoint. For context, the Flash engine is going to be discontinued this year and web browsers will stop supporting it over the coming years, so some people have formed a conservatory for Flash games. If there are issues with using it, you could ask the people involved with it. I don't have any technical knowledge over how it works, but I'm mentioning this because it seems relevant.
I've also tried to look on the project, but it seems to be windows only. And when there's wine involved you might just run the windows version of the flash projector thru it? (been trying myself, got it to work once, struggling since)
Flash player is getting discontinued in all popular browsers, yes. We can still run the flash games using the flash projector, or other tools in their own states of usability
BlueMaxima's FlashPoint is largely just a frontend to the standard Flash Player. The one change I do know is that the most recent version has hacked the networking code to prevent it from actually connecting to the internet; previously it used a proxy to redirect all of Flash Player's network traffic locally (in both cases the goal is often to overcome site-locked games by pretending to be the original site the game was hosted on). Aside from that, I'm not sure it's really much different than the standard Flash Player for actually running games.
When I asked in their Discord server about Flash technical details, they directed me to Ruffle, and I think if development continues to proceed smoothly, it will eventually become a viable option for Flash TASing.
Just to update everyone. Right now ruffle is pretty competent in emulating AS1/2 flash games. While there are some graphical inconsistencies the functional side of things appears to be pretty good for AS1/2. AS3 compatibility is as of now not present.
The biggest issue now with using ruffle and libTAS right now is that on linux Ruffle only renders with Vulkan and right now libTAS only supports OpenGL.
With OpenGL and Ruffle it's somewhere it dependency hell, something to do with gfx-rs and the implementation of OpenGL in gfx-rs.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11495
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
Trying to install gnash on
Language: shell
feos@theos:~$ uname -a && lsb_release -a
Linux theos 5.4.0-65-generic #73-Ubuntu SMP Mon Jan 18 17:25:17 UTC 2021 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS
Release: 20.04
Codename: focal
I get
Language: shell
Hit:1 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal InRelease
Ign:2 http://ppa.launchpad.net/greysondn/tinatos/ubuntu focal InRelease
Get:3 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates InRelease [114 kB]
Get:4 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security InRelease [109 kB]
Get:5 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-backports InRelease [101 kB]
Err:6 http://ppa.launchpad.net/greysondn/tinatos/ubuntu focal Release
404 Not Found [IP: 91.189.95.85 80]
Hit:7 https://packages.microsoft.com/ubuntu/20.04/prod focal InRelease
Get:8 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates/main i386 Packages [428 kB]
Get:9 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security/main amd64 DEP-11 Metadata [24.3 kB]
Get:10 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates/main amd64 Packages [814 kB]
Get:11 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security/universe amd64 DEP-11 Metadata [57.6 kB]
Get:12 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates/main amd64 DEP-11 Metadata [264 kB]
Get:13 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates/universe amd64 Packages [745 kB]
Get:14 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates/universe amd64 DEP-11 Metadata [302 kB]
Get:15 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates/multiverse amd64 DEP-11 Metadata [2,468 B]
Get:16 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-backports/universe amd64 DEP-11 Metadata [1,768 B]
Reading package lists... Done
E: The repository 'http://ppa.launchpad.net/greysondn/tinatos/ubuntu focal Release' does not have a Release file.
N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Joined: 8/13/2018
Posts: 110
Location: United States of America
re feos: Ubuntu versioning is a bit weird. greysondn has published a package for Bionic Beaver (Ubuntu 18.04) but nothing for Focal Fossa (Ubuntu 20.04), thus there is no valid package for apt to install. You could attempt to manually install the deb (i386) (the command, iirc, is sudo dpkg -i XXX.deb), though as it was intended for a different version, it's possible (likely) that it will be unable to find the required dependencies and fail to install, as dependency names can change a lot between Ubuntu updates with some packages being added and others removed. The best fix would be asking them nicely to update it (via the tasvideos discord?)
Also, while I'm here, figure I should mention to forum folks that kilaye has made lots of progress on running the native flash player in libTAS in the past month with some games (afaik!) being TASable! You can check the progress here.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11495
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
Looks like gnash-common is not a thing after bionic.
Language: shell
feos@theos:~/Desktop$ sudo dpkg -i sdl-gnash_0.8.11~git20160608-1.4tinatos3_i386.deb
[sudo] password for feos:
Selecting previously unselected package sdl-gnash:i386.
(Reading database ... 280915 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack sdl-gnash_0.8.11~git20160608-1.4tinatos3_i386.deb ...
Unpacking sdl-gnash:i386 (0.8.11~git20160608-1.4tinatos3) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of sdl-gnash:i386:
sdl-gnash:i386 depends on gnash-common.
sdl-gnash:i386 depends on libboost-program-options1.65.1.
sdl-gnash:i386 depends on libcairo2 (>= 1.2.4).
sdl-gnash:i386 depends on libsdl1.2debian (>= 1.2.11).
dpkg: error processing package sdl-gnash:i386 (--install):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Processing triggers for man-db (2.9.1-1) ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
sdl-gnash:i386
feos@theos:~/Desktop$ sudo dpkg -i sdl-gnash_0.8.11~git20160608-1.4tinatos3_amd64.deb
(Reading database ... 280923 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack sdl-gnash_0.8.11~git20160608-1.4tinatos3_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking sdl-gnash (0.8.11~git20160608-1.4tinatos3) over (0.8.11~git20160608-1.4tinatos3) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of sdl-gnash:
sdl-gnash depends on gnash-common; however:
Package gnash-common is not installed.
sdl-gnash depends on libboost-program-options1.65.1; however:
Package libboost-program-options1.65.1 is not installed.
dpkg: error processing package sdl-gnash (--install):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Processing triggers for man-db (2.9.1-1) ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
sdl-gnash
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
In case this helps with other distros, I was able to build sdl-gnash on Tiny Core Linux 11.1 x64. Initial build with the Cairo renderer seemed successful but only showed black in the game window, so I did it again with Anti-Grain Geometry (AGG). Also had to build AGG first, since it wasn't available. Here's my process:
Building AGG
Source was agg-svn-r138-agg-2.4.zip from here. Dependencies are:
Also had to download libglib-2.0.la and put it in /usr/local/lib. Then the process was straightforward:
./autogen.sh
./configure --enable-shared --disable-examples --disable-ctrl --disable-platform --disable-sdltest
make
sudo make install
Building Gnash
Source was what greysondn linked earlier.
Apply the sensible, boost, and agg patches from debian/patches. I think the download already has the tinatos1 patches applied (if not, oops).
Edit libmedia/ffmpeg/MediaHandlerFfmpeg.cpp and libmedia/ffmpeg/MediaParserFfmpeg.cpp in order to update some variable names due to changes in FFmpeg: Replace FF_INPUT_BUFFER_PADDING_SIZE with AV_INPUT_BUFFER_PADDING_SIZE (1 occurrence in Handler and 3 in Parser).
Dependencies are:
automake.tcz
compiletc.tcz
squashfs-tools.tcz (only needed for packaging)
boost-1.74-dev.tcz
curl-dev.tcz
ffmpeg4-dev.tcz
sdl-dev.tcz
libagg (built above)
libglib-2.0.la (download and place as above)
Run autogen.sh. Then edit lines 52231 and 52250 in configure to remove an extra double quote in each error message about SSH and SSL. Then
./configure --enable-gui=sdl --enable-sound=sdl --enable-media=ffmpeg --enable-renderer=agg --without-gconf --disable-jemalloc
make
sudo make install
Only did a few tests so far, but both sound and graphics work. There seems to be some sound lag, however, and the console shows some message about ALSA pcm underrun. Also, there are a bunch of messages about unimplemented things.
Notes
I used FFmpeg for media handling rather than GStreamer because libTAS also depends on FFmpeg. "Two birds with one stone" and all that.
I decided against using gconf and jemalloc because Gnash allowed me to build without those. Someone more knowledgeable can comment if those might be preferred.
EDIT:
Oh, the dependencies for actually running Gnash in TCL are:
Hey ruffle got OpenGL back!
I tried it out (ruffle -g gl on the latest nightly should work). I tried quickly messing around in a flash game and i am glad to report only positive findings from my account! (as compared to the previous trying to hotfix ruffle on vulkan with uncontrolled time)
Savestates actually work, the OSD is back and at least from a quick ~15s test movie it doesn't desync horribly!
some people have reported something wrong with the OSD and keybaord inputs, however as for me this is still a huge step forwards (i tried getting sdl-gnash like three seperate times this year and was successful on none of them)
libTAS 1.4.3 has been released! The major bugs involving Ruffle are now fixed and you should be able to TAS anything that Ruffle can run. Some people have already made some full TASes and have reported no desync issues, so this is extremely encouraging. I've made an emulator resource page on Ruffle with some instructions on how to use it. It can't run every game, but it's easily the best hope we have for Flash TASing right now.
Joined: 10/6/2011
Posts: 1697
Location: RU · ID · AM
It’s nice that TASing flash games is now finally possible.
I remember a game called Ultimate Flash Sonic, hope someday it gets some attention ^^
(if not, I’ll probably try it myself)
S3&A [Amy amy%] improvement (with Evil_3D & kaan55) — currently in SPZ2
my TAS channel · If I ever come into your dream, I’ll be riding an eggship :)
Are unofficial/patched versions of Ruffle allowed?
https://github.com/PandaSRC/ruffle/releases/tag/nightly-2022-04-03-ab
This version of ruffle fixes a particular issue in the Club Penguin minigame Astro Barrier, where level 38 is impossible to beat.
For some reason this fix was never merged into official builds.
Are unofficial/patched versions of Ruffle allowed?
https://anonfiles.com/hfi5DdW0xa/ruffle_ab
This version of ruffle fixes a particular issue in the Club Penguin minigame Astro Barrier, where level 38 is impossible to beat.
For some reason this fix was never merged into official builds.
1. It must be official.
2. Ruffle is nightly build, It update everyday.
3. You had to fork and pull request on Ruffle Github.
4. If tas desync on the official version, the whole tas project must redone.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11495
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
Beanda wrote:
If anyone could help get the fix merged into upstream ruffle, it would be greatly appreciated.
Agreed, that would be ideal!
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
