Requested feature overview description.
Ruffle is a flash emulator with a web library that helps to build it directly into websites. It is under active development, but already provides plenty of features. A disclaimer that posts maybe displayed inaccurately might be useful to use along with it. Ruffle can be found at https://ruffle.rs/.

Why would it be useful?
There are roughly 8k flash posts. Since the discontinuation of flash player, these posts have become unavailable. While ruffle might not be able to accurately display all of them, it would still help to breathe new life into the majority of this practically lost content. Using ruffle directly on site should be a lot easier and more user friendly than current methods of viewing these files, like messing around with the discontinued flash player extension, or downloading the file to play in a seperate program.

What part(s) of the site page(s) are affected?
posts with the flash file type

Someone should select a handful of e621 Flash posts representing the best of animation, video, games, etc. If they all work, Ruffle should be integrated.

lance_armstrong said:
Someone should select a handful of e621 Flash posts representing the best of animation, video, games, etc. If they all work, Ruffle should be integrated.

I would also argue it would be worthwhile to test the worst. Emulators have to deal with shoddy code and crappy hacks, too.

lance_armstrong said:
Someone should select a handful of e621 Flash posts representing the best of animation, video, games, etc. If they all work, Ruffle should be integrated.

Well, flash order:favcount is probably a good way to start

peacethroughpower said:
I would also argue it would be worthwhile to test the worst. Emulators have to deal with shoddy code and crappy hacks, too.

While the featureset doesn't necessarily correlate to quality, Ruffle has implemented more of ActionScript 1 and ActionScript 2 than ActionScript 3. So the older stuff might be more likely to work.

https://ruffle.rs/#compatibility

I think it's almost guaranteed that e621 integrates Ruffle at some point, following in the footsteps of such greats as Neopets.

lance_armstrong said:
Someone should select a handful of e621 Flash posts representing the best of animation, video, games, etc. If they all work, Ruffle should be integrated.

As of writing, the site claims that most AS1 and AS2 content will work with some graphical inaccuracies and small bugs here and there. 95% language and 75% API completed.

AS3, which the site stated was a requirement to use Flash post-2013, has 70% language and 65% API completed.

Here's the results of some flash files I tried on Ruffle so far. I'm using the web demo on the browser.

Myrtle - Long as hell loading screen, and I'm pretty sure the frame-rate is in the single-digits, but it seems to function almost perfectly if you have the patience to wait for it to finish.

Monster Minds - Game runs well, but the loading seems to be a little slower.

Banned From Equestria - Loading seems slower, but not running into any issues on my end, minor or major.

This Zonkpunch Animation - Has a bug where the game fast-forwards for a second or two whenever you hit the button to progress or rewind, and some parts of the animation stops for a split second.

This H0rs3 Animation - If there's issues, I ain't seeing it.

Rack 1 - While it functions, there are some pretty big issues with it, like the frame-rate drops if you use some of the tools. Also is it just me, or does the game really not like you tabbing out?

If we do this, it would be nice to have a way to mark the ones that work perfectly. Though with Ruffle in a permanent beta state, you can never be sure if working perfectly now means it always will; I watched a cartoon recently that I'm pretty sure used to work fine but now has a hiccup at the beginning that causes an audio desync.

Ruffle works pretty well for https://homestarrunner.com/

errorist said:
If we do this, it would be nice to have a way to mark the ones that work perfectly. Though with Ruffle in a permanent beta state, you can never be sure if working perfectly now means it always will; I watched a cartoon recently that I'm pretty sure used to work fine but now has a hiccup at the beginning that causes an audio desync.

Sounds like a job for a meta tag. If it stops working perfectly, the tag can always be removed again, right?

I mean, in the end of the day, I'd rather have any sort of access to flash stuff then none at all, yknow?

somerandomvoir said:
I mean, in the end of the day, I'd rather have any sort of access to flash stuff then none at all, yknow?

Technically there's a way to get the latest version of flash without the built in time bomb from the internet archive and install it, preferably on a vm due to safety reasons, or to install ruffle or another flash emulator on your machine and then download the files to view them in there, but neither are the clean, safe browsing experience you'd wish for.

For mobile, you have obscure Browsers with dodgy names that still support Flash , or you could use the Lemur Browser which supports plug-ins like Ruffle (and tampermonkey btw), but I still think a direct integration would be far more elegant.

Judging from what little knowledge I have about web development, this change to the site's code shouldn't be too major.

If one argues that the users should still have access to these ruffle alternatives, since they could solve some ruffle compatability and performance issues, creating a user setting to display all flash directly without ruffle might be a viable, albeit more complicated compromise.

This is a must, there is no running from flash, it is just too big of a part of internet history to ignore. This should be one of e621 top priorities.

mucous_lucas said:
For mobile, you have obscure Browsers with dodgy names that still support Flash , or you could use the Lemur Browser which supports plug-ins like Ruffle (and tampermonkey btw), but I still think a direct integration would be far more elegant.

For mobile plugins, I use Firefox Nightly. AdNauseam normally won't work on mobile but with the Nightly version, It works really well.

waller said:
This is a must, there is no running from flash, it is just too big of a part of internet history to ignore. This should be one of e621 top priorities.

For mobile plugins, I use Firefox Nightly. AdNauseam normally won't work on mobile but with the Nightly version, It works really well.

From what I can tell, the list of plug-ins that Firefox for Android allows is very limited and does not include flash compatability plug-ins like ruffle or its alternatives.

I've tried the ruffle browser addon, but so far every flash file here on e6 has just come up with an error message. Though it might have to be the website integrated version in order to work, as over on FA where ruffle has been implemented for years, most/all flash files work but some take pretty much forever to load.

lazyoldmutt said:
I've tried the ruffle browser addon, but so far every flash file here on e6 has just come up with an error message. Though it might have to be the website integrated version in order to work, as over on FA where ruffle has been implemented for years, most/all flash files work but some take pretty much forever to load.

From what I can tell, ruffle might have some safety concerns about running together with some other scripts on here. I'm not sure if this really is the case, but if it is, that's a massive shame.

lazyoldmutt said:
I've tried the ruffle browser addon, but so far every flash file here on e6 has just come up with an error message. Though it might have to be the website integrated version in order to work, as over on FA where ruffle has been implemented for years, most/all flash files work but some take pretty much forever to load.

mucous_lucas said:
From what I can tell, ruffle might have some safety concerns about running together with some other scripts on here. I'm not sure if this really is the case, but if it is, that's a massive shame.

ruffle not working on e621 has been posted on their GitHub and the reason it doesn't work is on e621 end of things.
https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle/issues/2201#issuecomment-754751614

waller said:
ruffle not working on e621 has been posted on their GitHub and the reason it doesn't work is on e621 end of things.
https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle/issues/2201#issuecomment-754751614

I see. Seems like an official imbed would fix the issue. Kinda understandable e6 wouldn't want users to just run whatever dubious script a modded browser may offer.
I still low key hope that someone more skilled than me finds this thread and makes a pull request on the e6 github page, if that's even how one would go about this.