Drawing Tablet #3 & Flash Forward

[TomFulp]

Today’s recipient in our Annual Drawing Tablet Giveaway is @MangoVodka505!

MangoVodka505 has been drawing on his phone via Autodesk Sketchbook for the past six years. It’s time to graduate to a full-fledged tablet!

We'll be giving out a lot of tablets this month, check out the giveaway post for more details on how to apply, or to help sponsor the event!

2021 Highlight

At the start of the year we hosted a Flash Forward Jam, tasking devs to make original works in Flash that could play in browsers via Ruffle. One of those games was Spot & Click by @JuicyBeast!

Spot & Click is a charming spot the difference game and takes place on a lively scrolling backdrop. I really enjoyed how it was made with Flash but has a modern aesthetic, hinting at the sort of cool stuff people could be making with Flash if things had worked out differently.

BTW - We will be hosting another Flash Forward jam at the start of 2022, once again inviting Flash devs to make Ruffle-compatible games! You can start making a Flash game right now if you want to participate, just be sure to use AS2 because AS3 support is still in progress.

Tablet Giveaway Sponsors (Join them!)

@olskoo - $300

@ScarecrowArts - $300

@SaucySaucepan - $200

@squidly - $100

@Zachary - $100

@VariantSeven - $100

@Arzonaut - $70

@arkoirisangel - $60

@NamelessNathan - $60

@MSGhero - $60

@53xy83457 - $25

@pixelturkey - $10

@Xorberax - $10

@jeffz4000 - $10

@nek0ai - $5

@Wegra - $5

@Wizardism - $5

@kaeojay - $5

Previous 2021 Tablet Recipients

1 - Copasetic

2 - JRetrioX

Other News

The 2021 Tankmas ADVENTure has launched! Be sure to check it out daily for goodies and medals! You can also check out previous years to collect daily medals you may have missed.

Winners of our Halloween Spooktacular were announced last week!

The Prince of Landis Art Contest deadline is December 8th, with $300 in prizes.

The Streamers Animation War deadline is December 12th, with $3k in prizes.

Don’t miss the conclusion of the 2021 Voice Actors Collab!

@rotcivsette updated Gyro Gear Tournament to include a VS CPU option in VS mode!

@9Hammer is looking for voice actors!

[Dungeonation]

Joining the Graduating Tablet Class of 2021:

@MangoVodka505.

Congrats and I’m likin’ the candle OC!

[Edeshye]

At 12/4/21 10:42 AM, TomFulp wrote: (...)
hinting at the sort of cool stuff people could be making with Flash if things had worked out differently.

I FEEL YA

been struggling with Unity for my upcoming game. I'm not a coder you know?? Flash made it easy for people like me to develop shit on our own. Literally no other software has that.

[Dungeonation]

At 12/4/21 12:09 PM, Edeshye wrote:
I FEEL YA

been struggling with Unity for my upcoming game. I'm not a coder you know?? Flash made it easy for people like me to develop shit on our own. Literally no other software has that.

Well, there’s always Ruffle and the upcoming flash forward 2022 if you can get access to flash. But yeah I agree

[BrandyBuizel]

At 12/4/21 10:42 AM, TomFulp wrote: At the start of the year we hosted a Flash Forward Jam, tasking devs to make original works in Flash that could play in browsers via Ruffle. One of those games was Spot & Click by @JuicyBeast!

https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/781153

Spot & Click is a charming spot the difference game and takes place on a lively scrolling backdrop. I really enjoyed how it was made with Flash but has a modern aesthetic, hinting at the sort of cool stuff people could be making with Flash if things had worked out differently.

BTW - We will be hosting another Flash Forward jam at the start of 2022, once again inviting Flash devs to make Ruffle-compatible games! You can start making a Flash game right now if you want to participate, just be sure to use AS2 because AS3 support is still in progress.

Spot'n'click was my personal favorite entry and a really simple one. Inspired me to make my own entry. Maybe next year I'll spend more than 5 days on a flashforward entry ^.^

[Edeshye]

At 12/4/21 12:57 PM, Dungeonation wrote:

At 12/4/21 12:09 PM, Edeshye wrote:
I FEEL YA

been struggling with Unity for my upcoming game. I'm not a coder you know?? Flash made it easy for people like me to develop shit on our own. Literally no other software has that.

Well, there’s always Ruffle and the upcoming flash forward 2022 if you can get access to flash. But yeah I agree

I can only hope Ruffle emulates as3 nicely in the future. I'm still using Animate to animate, but then i have to do all the work to export it and make it work in another platform. I experimented with as2 in my Tom Fulp Sim Date Hentai, which i did as a meme for Pico Day, but the most recent versions of Animate don't have the as2 option, so i have to use an older version, downgrading the animation quality, which is not something i want...

[Dungeonation]

AS3 support is probably gonna start picking up speed soon hopefully!

[Dungeonation]

At 12/4/21 01:19 PM, BrandyBuizel wrote: Spot'n'click was my personal favorite entry and a really simple one. Inspired me to make my own entry. Maybe next year I'll spend more than 5 days on a flashforward entry ^.^

Hell yeah Brandy!!

[Nabella]

Where does one go to learn a little AS2 in 2021? Learning resources from 2005-2008 seem deprecated and the most useful ones I could find were ancient YouTube tutorials from 10-12 years ago.

Something I wanted to try and do was decompile very simple Flash games like

or

or even

and recreate different elements in separate files to 'get' how they did it and apply that knowledge to my own projects but most decompilers have a paywall or no longer function as smoothly as they used to.

I get that the Flash Forward Jam was/is mostly for veterans and enthusiasts, but if a newcomers (like myself) would like to participate, they're a bit hard-pressed for finding small examples to learn from. Maybe someone could provide example SWFs for basic things? Like really basic collision between two circles? Or duplicating movieclips on screen and conditions for removing them? What depth does?? I just want to put one or two Flash games out there just to try it.

[Dungeonation]

@Nabella Documentation is pretty scarce yeah, but newcomers I’m sure are certainly welcome! Last year I made a post detailing some VERY SIMPLE AS2.

[Nabella]

At 12/4/21 02:53 PM, Dungeonation wrote: @Nabella Documentation is pretty scarce yeah, but newcomers I’m sure are certainly welcome! Last year I made a post detailing some VERY SIMPLE AS2.

Thank you, Dungeonfriend. I need everything I can get my hands on.

[DoctorStrongbad]

Congrats on winning the third tablet.

[MangoVodka505]

Thank you! I'm so jumpy honestly, never thought that would happen

[MangoVodka505]

You guys are literally too fuckin cool, I could never thank you enough fr fr

[Dungeonation]

At 12/4/21 04:38 PM, MangoVodka505 wrote: You guys are literally too fuckin cool, I could never thank you enough fr fr

No YOU'RE breathtaking!

[DoctorStrongbad]

At 12/4/21 04:38 PM, MangoVodka505 wrote: You guys are literally too fuckin cool, I could never thank you enough fr fr

Well, of course. This is NewGrounds. I am the Living Legend of course.

[MangoVodka505]

Oh cmon please I already cried like three times today ur bein too nice-

[D-SuN]

Can't wait for another Flash Forward Jam!

[LazarheaD]

Thank you, generous Tom! Hope we get some fun content from the winners.

[Guy-Unger]

the tablet giveaway is nice, but if you really care so much about your creators, why aren't you fighting targeted harassments and removing the 0, 1 and 2 star ratings? at least youtube is finally taking action

[TomFulp]

At 12/5/21 09:02 AM, Guy-Unger wrote: the tablet giveaway is nice, but if you really care so much about your creators, why aren't you fighting targeted harassments and removing the 0, 1 and 2 star ratings? at least youtube is finally taking action

Funny thing about the ratings system is that from the very beginning in 2000, we were debating whether to go with a 0-5 star rating or a thumbs up / thumbs down system. For the past two decades I've often wondered how things would have gone with thumbs up / thumbs down since that became the prevalent system, with things like Facebook Likes and YouTube... Now with all the backlash over dislikes on YouTube, I'm starting to think maybe the star ratings have been the best after all.

I also think about no ratings at all sometimes but the audience voting actually does do a pretty good job surfacing stuff, despite being on the low end for new submissions coming out of judgment.

[DamnedByFate]

At 12/5/21 09:31 AM, TomFulp wrote: I also think about no ratings at all sometimes

Hell no, quality control is what makes NG better than all other sites.

[DoctorStrongbad]

At 12/4/21 07:04 PM, Dungeonation wrote: No YOU'RE breathtaking!

That is such a nice complement. Keep up the good work.

[MMFan2004]

It's good to see another Flash Forward Jam especially since soon it will be 1st anniversary Flash discontinuation on web browsers. It's really good to see the spirit still alive and well.

[Cyberdevil]

Congrats @MangoVodka505!

[Cyberdevil]

At 12/4/21 02:29 PM, Nabella wrote: Where does one go to learn a little AS2 in 2021? Learning resources from 2005-2008 seem deprecated and the most useful ones I could find were ancient YouTube tutorials from 10-12 years ago.

I guess you've tried looking around FlashKit and Kirupa? The programming forum here at NG might have some tidsbits of old AS2 know-how too, and there are some tutorials... indeed though, it's mostly just the basics, not the richest of programming lore.

[Cyberdevil]

At 12/5/21 09:31 AM, TomFulp wrote: I'm starting to think maybe the star ratings have been the best after all.

I definitely feel that way. The like/dislike method may be easier, but also pretty superficial in comparison. In the long run I like to think more thought-out things will stand the test of time better. Maybe it's somewhat proven at this point.

I also think about no ratings at all sometimes but the audience voting actually does do a pretty good job surfacing stuff, despite being on the low end for new submissions coming out of judgment.

Wouldn't feel as fun or purposeful without ratings either IMO. Making everyone a potential critic and jury; gamifying the whole system at the same time seems like a nice way to reward engagement.

[Guidodinho]

At 12/4/21 03:05 PM, Nabella wrote:

At 12/4/21 02:53 PM, Dungeonation wrote: @Nabella Documentation is pretty scarce yeah, but newcomers I’m sure are certainly welcome! Last year I made a post detailing some VERY SIMPLE AS2.

Thank you, Dungeonfriend. I need everything I can get my hands on.

In case you haven't been on this old thread yet. Has lots of handy stuff in it for AS2.

https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/638183

Also, I quite liked this one. Goes over some basic movement for a character and floor collision, wich if you mastered it, you can already do quite a lot with, by copy-pasting and editing that stuff.

[Nabella]

At 12/6/21 08:49 AM, Guidodinho wrote:
In case you haven't been on this old thread yet. Has lots of handy stuff in it for AS2.
https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/638183

Also, I quite liked this one. Goes over some basic movement for a character and floor collision, wich if you mastered it, you can already do quite a lot with, by copy-pasting and editing that stuff.

Ah, yeah, I've seen that thread. I still get a little confused sometimes, but that's probably because I'm more of a visual learner, hehe. I was trying to figure out how basic ball physics worked and it didn't click until I saw an ancient tutorial from a channel called 'radtuts'. Going through the programming steps and then being able to play with it myself afterwards really helps.

At 12/6/21 05:51 AM, Cyberdevil wrote:
I guess you've tried looking around FlashKit and Kirupa? The programming forum here at NG might have some tidsbits of old AS2 know-how too, and there are some tutorials... indeed though, it's mostly just the basics, not the richest of programming lore.

I think I need to start visiting the frontpages of these tutorial websites instead of looking for a quick-fix through Google search results.

(LOL)

Also, what a coincidence, I actually found Flashkit almost a day after my original post ITT. I haven't dug through it's entirety yet, I'm barely scratching the surface, but I'm going to try and pick up what I can through these tutorials despite the broken HTML in some of them.

[Cyberdevil]

At 12/6/21 02:29 PM, Nabella wrote: I think I need to start visiting the frontpages of these tutorial websites instead of looking for a quick-fix through Google search results.

(LOL)

Wait is that a real search result image somewhat?! Maybe some other search engine not affiliated with those-which-attempt-to-quell-the-greatness-of-Flash might give better results too. :) Like say DuckDuckGo. Haven't tried, though...

Searching via particular time periods might help too. That way you wouldn't have to explicitly type out 'AS2'... as before AS3 you probably didn't usually use that term it regard to it. It was just AS or actionscript.

Also, what a coincidence, I actually found Flashkit almost a day after my original post ITT. I haven't dug through it's entirety yet, I'm barely scratching the surface, but I'm going to try and pick up what I can through these tutorials despite the broken HTML in some of them.

Nice. Flashkit in particular's a real treasure trove, though indeed a lot of areas there are broken, unfortunately a lot of missing downloads in particular, the most useful bits. But the forum still works. Lots of info there.

Might be able to dig up some of those files via archive.org too.

Complicated his stuff...