Legacy Flash experiments

Posted on by edvardtoth

If you are a long-time / returning visitor, you may remember that between 2007 and 2011 or so (when I was most actively involved with development within the Flash ecosystem) I used to have a number of experiments and Actionscript sample-code posted here.

These experiments typically tried to stay near the “cutting edge”, and push the envelope in terms of exploring the capabilities and boundaries of the Flash platform at the time. Most of them centered around tackling various visual issues: bitmap distortion and UV mapping, early 3D (does anybody still remember Papervision3D?), procedural animation, particle systems, bitmap-data manipulation, Pixel Bender shaders, and so on.

As interest in and support (especially browser support) for all things Flash gradually declined, these pages became a collection of ugly broken links and failing embeds, particularly on mobile. (This long and steady decline reached a decisive milestone recently with Adobe announcing that they are turning Flash into something very different at last).

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The latest rework of this site seemed to provide the right opportunity to comb through the archives, salvage the most viable experiments, and consolidate them into a dedicated Github repository (and the associated comments on this single page).

This way they remain easily accessible – and hopefully useful – for anybody who’s still interested in the fascinating, ground-breaking Flash platform, which brought together art and technology in the same tool-set, and ultimately even paved the way for next-generation solutions like Unity.

35 thoughts on “Legacy Flash experiments”

  4. Very very great job man !!
    it would be cool to share a little bit more your work by putting some codes.
    but anyway… I like it a lot.

  9. Hi Edvard. Thanks for this rather awesome code snippet. I too am particularly keen on the use of the glow filter for the outline.

    I ended up here because I couldn’t figure out why my tweens weren’t working, but then I realised that it was because I’m and idiot and I wasn’t re-rendering the scene. Thanks!

  17. Awesome! I thought about doing this in the “olden days” of Flash 8 using displacement map. Big up for bringing the spirit of those days!

  20. Thanks heaps for this. Great little class, helped my understanding of the matrix distortion action thats going on

  22. looks very professional. code too. exactly what i was looking for. big thanks!

  25. I’m just starting to learn AS after animating time line in Flash for years.Thanks for all the cool stuff you are posting

  30. You’ve get a really cool and retro effect! 80’s TRON like, don’t u think so!
    Maybe would help for more comments if you publish the source code, like Aurora membrane sound visualizer” article.

  32. Lol, well done! Really brings back that late ’80s feeling of demos from the days of Bamiga Sector One, Defjam, Red Sector Inc and Vision. Oh the megademo scrollers I must have read… 🙂

  35. Do you mind if I quote a couple of your posts as long as I provide credit
    and sources back to your weblog? My blog is in the
    exact same niche as yours and my users would definitely benefit from some of the information
    you present here. Please let me know if this alright with you.
    Thanks!

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