|
SWF - it's not just for the web anymore!
Quite some time ago I wrote a little SWF displayer in VB6, but that was I don't know how long ago - dinosaurs.
However, more recently digging through Fallout 4 (released in 2015 or so) I noticed that it has SWF files in its game files for doing small animations.
It's actually a pretty great little format for that, as long as you don't use the gold-plated features adobe put in it.
Has anyone else seen SWF files in the wild in the last decade or so?
I'm kind of wondering if it might be worth it to make a viewer for IoT to run simple animations.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
|
|
|
|
|
|
I never studied the file format, and can't tell how well (or bad) designed it was.
Independent of its technical merits, it did spur a great wave of animation art in a style of its own, one which I enjoyed a lot. Too late did I realize that the format was dying, so I managed to save only a small handful of them.
There were some instruction/pedagogical ones, too, and I was lucky to save a couple of the best ones. Like this interactive historical map of the Middle East, showing how various powers have washed back and forth over that region, effectively nulling any claim of 'Historically, this is our land!' (any such claim serves only to show that you do not know history).
Another interactive one shows takes you through the full range of dimensions, starting with the entire observable universe at one end of the scale, strings at the other end. I never realized how immensely small strings are until 'universe.swf' showed me the vast void ranging from quarks to strings!
Having seen so much funny, grotesque, and great instructional .swf movies, I think it is a pity that it has disappeared more or less completely. I have seen a few of the products ported to other technologies - but usually as a pure playback, without the interactive functionality. Often the port is done in very low quality.
Maybe we have equally good replacement technologies today. Apparently, they are far less accessible to the creative minds that made all those great swfs. We certainly do not have a flow of new productions comparable to what we had when swf was at its peak. I sort of miss it.
|
|
|
|
|
I wasn't thinking anything so ambitious as an interactive implementation. I was thinking just enough to do some basic animation. This is IoT after all that I'm targeting. But that *would* be cool. It's just probably not feasible on these devices. Then again, they can sort of run python so who knows?
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
|
|
|
|
|
SVG animations seem to be very popular nowadays ...
|
|
|
|
|
SVG is super complicated though. I was going to make a code generator to convert SVG paths into something my GFX library could use, but the spec is ridiculous.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
|
|
|
|
|
When I looked at SVG, it reminded me of the old exercise of copying a map over the telephone.
True story: One of my firefighting comms colleagues got everybody's tits in a tangle doing that exercise.
We eventually figured out that he was East-West dyslexic.
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
|
|
|
|
|
I once made a huge East-West mixup because my frame of reference was heading South.
Heading South… right turn will take you … east! East is always right!
I realized the mistake way too late!
|
|
|
|
|
Decades ago, on my first couple of trips to the US, I used to regularly get lost driving back to my motel, but only in the daytime.
Finally twigged it was because I unconsciously navigated by the sun, and it went round the sky the wrong way.
Go somewhere, following a map or street signs ... 3 hours later go to drive back. The sun is now 90deg clockwise from where it should be.
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
|
|
|
|
|
To go even more off topic…
Do Australian maps typical orient with North as up, or does it make more sense with South as up?
|
|
|
|
|
On serious maps, North is always up. There are some exceptions for small areas (e.g. building/lot plans) and joke maps.
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
|
|
|
|
|
I haven't read any of the other replies but ... it's certainly still quite alive as an extention if Adobe products, namely "Animate", are (the qualified is) accommodating of .swf imports. At least to me anyway, having struggled for years using PremierePro, AfterEffects, FlashPro, and any number of other 32-bit platforms while under stand-alone license perpetuity.
I learned much about controlling my temper after installing cheesey converters that contained malware also. So if someone wants to continue writing little apps to get around dead platforms and wants to dissemble themselves by sequestering stuff my anti-virus is incapable of detecting ... I say ... bring it on!
|
|
|
|
|
why not use gif or some existing library rather ...............................
Caveat Emptor.
"Progress doesn't come from early risers – progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things." Lazarus Long
|
|
|
|
|
SWFs can actually be smaller than gifs depending on what you're doing.
Not a lot of libraries for this on IoT. Probably somewhere around zero.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
|
|
|
|
|
i guess it depends on what hardware you program against Spine: Runtimes ... i'm seeing [Castle Game Engine](https://castle-engine.io etc for arm...
Caveat Emptor.
"Progress doesn't come from early risers – progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things." Lazarus Long
|
|
|
|
|
Yes. I have a bunch of games from back in the day ported to be played on computer (again back in the day). They are all swf.
"It is easy to decipher extraterrestrial signals after deciphering Javascript and VB6 themselves.", ISanti[ ^]
|
|
|
|
|
A bit of an aside because I've been watching you with your IoT threads: how/when did you get into IoT, and where would be a good place to start if I want to learn more?
Thanks for being you
|
|
|
|
|
D'awwww. 
Well, what I would do is purchase an ESP32 off of Amazon or something.
Also get one of the Arduino starter kits (about $50-$70 for a decent one)
I like the Espressif reference boards. They are the makers of the ESP32 and they use better components in their reference boards than other manufacturers sometimes do in their boards. The model I'm pointing you to is a WROVER. The more typical one is the WROOM. They are the same chip, except the WROVER has an additional 4MB of PSRAM (basically slightly slowish RAM) in addition to the 512kB (300kB usable) of SRAM.
Once you have one of the those, Download VS Code if you haven't already and install the platformIO extension. Add a project (click the alien head on the left navbar, then click Open or get to it from the page that PIO welcome page that comes up), selecting node32s as the board type (it's a genericish ESP32 board that seems to work with all ESP32 boards). Select Arduino as the framework. It will take awhile the first time while it fetches everything, including the toolchain. be patient. it's not like that every time.
Also connect your ESP32 to a USB port.
Find a sensor in the starter kit you want to play with - like the ultrasonic distance finder or if you want to start small, an LED. I wouldn't use something complicated like the RF reader or accelerometer/gyro chip yet.
Anyway, once you find something you want to tinker with, google the part number (it's on the enclosed paper in the kit) along with ESP32 and you'll get a wiring guide and some sample code. =)
By the way, the ESP32 uses the concept of GPIOs. This # is the number you want to reference the pin by. Different boards may place them in slightly different places, but GPIO32 is *always* GPIO32 regardless of its location. Keep that in mind.
Edit: The kit will come with an Arduino board. I recommend throwing them in the trash but YMMV.
Here are some links to get you started.
ESP32 Pinout Reference: Which GPIO pins should you use? | Random Nerd Tutorials[^]
Arduino Starter Kit @ Amazon[^]
Espressif Devkit VE @ Amazon[^]
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
|
|
|
|
|
Wow! Thank you so much! 
|
|
|
|
|
You're welcome. If you get stuck on something or otherwise have questions feel free to ping me. 
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
|
|
|
|
|
Unfortunately, I can't remember the site, but I was somewhere recently where the site notified me my flash player wasn't up to date. I use Chrome, so yeah.
|
|
|
|
|
I am converting a huge VB6 project to VB.net, VS2019.
I'm doing this mostly to learn VB.net. However, I don't want to refactor hundreds of thousands of lines of code. I have two questions.
First, have you ever done anything like this?
Second, do you know if anything that can do this? (Hopefully free).
ed
|
|
|
|
|
0: Find a download for VB 2008. It is the last version that has the VB6 migration tool.
1: Before migration, strip all the code except the event signatures from your forms/modules.
2: Paste back in the code, one event/proc at a time fixing things as you go.
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
"Hope is contagious"
|
|
|
|
|
I gave up on the migration tool and went to steps 1 and 2, which works even for VS 2022. The biggest differences are in error handling and file i/o.
Error handling - leave any On Error Resume Next statements alone. Convert all On Error Goto statements to Try Catch Finally blocks.
Learn the new File Handling system. If you ever wrote file IO in VBScript you're ahead of the game on this as it's very similar.
|
|
|
|
|
General 
News 
Suggestion 
Question 
Bug 
Answer 
Joke 
Praise 
Rant 
Admin 
Submit an article or tip
