Flash Archival Efforts
Oct. 30th, 2020 06:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lin_netAnd here's some cool stuff! Flash is dead at the end of this year, which I could spend a lot of words on getting upset about here- nothing quite fills the same niche Flash held, and that's a lot of information that's going to lapse into being less available. People are making some strong efforts at preservation, though. Here's a couple.
The Unofficial Homestuck Collection
Homestuck's archives have been lapsing into disrepair over the last couple years, and as with other webcomics that mix media formats or rely heavily on specific browser functionality / plugins, it's likely to decay further over time without intervention. Twitter user @bamboshu has compiled a really impressive offline Homestuck archive, complete with customized browser for viewing.
I'm excited about this one because they've really gone the extra mile on it. A stable archive of Homestuck itself with the flashes all intact would be useful enough, but this archive collection has hauled in a lot of the outlying content that provided context for Homestuck. Some if it was ephemeral even at the time of release (the goddamn Snapchats, Namco High which vanished like faerie gold, etc). I've been thinking of Homestuck as an archival nightmare for years at this point, because so much of it required being there as it happened. This archive takes steps to present it in a format closer to how it actually played out, vs the raw archives.
BlueMaxima's Flashpoint
Flashpoint focuses on the preservation of Flash games and animations, and offers both an archival "download the whole huge thing" option and a more accessibly-sized download that will dynamically load in games as you browse them. They've got platforms other than Flash, too: they even have those PopCap freeware games that had a bespoke plugin.
The Unofficial Homestuck Collection
Homestuck's archives have been lapsing into disrepair over the last couple years, and as with other webcomics that mix media formats or rely heavily on specific browser functionality / plugins, it's likely to decay further over time without intervention. Twitter user @bamboshu has compiled a really impressive offline Homestuck archive, complete with customized browser for viewing.
I'm excited about this one because they've really gone the extra mile on it. A stable archive of Homestuck itself with the flashes all intact would be useful enough, but this archive collection has hauled in a lot of the outlying content that provided context for Homestuck. Some if it was ephemeral even at the time of release (the goddamn Snapchats, Namco High which vanished like faerie gold, etc). I've been thinking of Homestuck as an archival nightmare for years at this point, because so much of it required being there as it happened. This archive takes steps to present it in a format closer to how it actually played out, vs the raw archives.
BlueMaxima's Flashpoint
Flashpoint focuses on the preservation of Flash games and animations, and offers both an archival "download the whole huge thing" option and a more accessibly-sized download that will dynamically load in games as you browse them. They've got platforms other than Flash, too: they even have those PopCap freeware games that had a bespoke plugin.
