Newgrounds just hosted a "Flash Forward Jam" recently where people did just that!

https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1517301

Results are here: https://www.newgrounds.com/collection/flashforward2023

Ruffle[0] can be embedded in your website to make flash work in modern browsers. Neopets actually did just this a few days ago[1] to bring back their catalog of old flash games.

So if you can find a way to write Flash (the old tools should still be fine, but I haven't looked too deep) you can leverage it and let folks play today.

[0]: https://ruffle.rs/

[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/17/23798368/neopets-relaunch...

Edited for citations

I don't see why not :-)

I think Actionscript was incredible and comparing it to how JavaScript (and Typescript) evolved is fascinating.

The developer experience of working with RTMP is something we are only now just replicating with solutions like tRPC (or my own Conduit library)

Take a look at https://haxe.org/

>Lots of people purport to miss developing in ActionScript, so why isn't this path more popular?

Every popular game engine will export to HTML5/Webassembly now, there's really no need to keep Flash alive just for the sake of nostalgia.

Let me take a Polaroid real quick.

I think you may underestimate how approachable flash was to non devs. There is something about an animation engine that triggers code on a given frame that upends how most devs think about code. The main reason to keep it around is I’m not sure there’s anything else like it. Hypercard I understand was close.

That said, part of what made flash approachable was also the ecosystem and the world in general. I don’t expect to see another cambrian explosion that was flash again in my lifetime, and it’s probably ok to let it die, given how tied it was to the zeitgeist of the early 2000s. Still, working for a replacment platform rather than just exporting from existing platforms is probably something the world will likely always need every generation. It’s all about what catches the interest of kids, and there is a known dichotomy between building for experienced users and building for beginners. And platforms will tend toward experienced users over time (mosty because repeat customers are much more profitable than new customers).

Ya, it's not that we want to keep flash alive, it's that we want a similar approach to building web content. Unity has some similarities, but it's much more complex to do basic things.

There's a reason you don't see too many HTML gaming websites, it itsn't that great for games, as much as they would like it to be.

Absolutely. Get the authoring software, (I hear a certain animate archive has them) and post to NG like all the Flash forward jammers have Ruffle works wonders