[ciroduran]

Notice that it's still very much possible to produce SWF files with languages like Haxe http://haxe.org/, and there are frameworks that mimic the Flash drawing API like OpenFL https://www.openfl.org/, there is (or was) a lot of interesting stuff like that happening around.

[g0ld3nrati0]

Flash editor was the magic

[ciroduran]

Indeed, Flash UI is really its strenght, the way to draw and manipulate curves, I don't think I've seen anything like it after that, although illustrating is not my trade. However, it is possible to do cool procedurally generated stuff with the drawing API, or use plain normal bitmap graphics to do things.

[xvilka]

And, of course, Ruffle[1][2] to play them.

[1] https://ruffle.rs/

[2] https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle/

[ciroduran]

I am using Ruffle to keep my games playable, but AS3 support is still getting there. AS2 support is awesome.

[koolala]

Can't modern Flash compile to HTML5? Can the open alternatives also do that?

I wish SWF became a common HTML5 transpile format.

[lukan]

No, it cannot. It can sort of compile some animations (with the libary EaselJS), but you have to use javascript instead of actionscript - but it is really not the same like it was in flash. Basically it does not work for me and I abandoned Adobe Animate and still looking for replacement of the lost Garden of Flash Utopia.

[rchaud]

Flash required a browser plugin to work. It was handling video and 3D animation a decade before the <video> and <canvas> elements were added to the HTML5 spec.

[troupo]

HTML 5 offers nothing to match Flash capabilities.

Perhaps you could render to Canvas/WebGL/WebGPU, but you still need to reproduce the entire engine there.