hi all - here is a long overdue update on plans for the upcoming Death of Flash:

Flash based Charts

I am migrating all of these pages to a native version of FusionCharts that doesn't require Flash. ETA for completion this week. The affected pages are:

Ranking history (http://www.wargear.net/rankings/show/History)
Luck stats (e.g. http://www.wargear.net/games/luck/756879/luckchart)
Board Rating distribution (player) (e.g. http://www.wargear.net/players/info/tom/Board%20Ratings)
Board Rating distribution (board) (e.g. http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Capital+Crusade/Ratings)
Board charts (e.g. http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Capital+Crusade/Charts)
Board ranking history (e.g. http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Capital+Crusade/Ranking%20History)
Charts (http://www.wargear.net/charts)
Home page (http://www.wargear.net when not logged in) -

Flash Player

As you know, some boards are unplayable without Flash. The reason is (I think exclusively) due to a difference between the native player Fill function and the Flash Fill function. For now I don't have a fix for this and I don't see a way that we can continue to use the Flash Player for games so I will disable all boards that have been configured by their Designer to use Flash only on Monday 21st December to give sufficient time for games to be completed. As a result, the following boards will be disabled:

Capitalism
Go-Geared
Random Mazes
Risk vs Reward
The Mediterranean

If there are any other boards which are unplayable in the Native Player please let me know and I will add them to the list. I am also working on updating the Native Player to use modern browser native tooling which will hopefully resolve the problems with these boards so they can be re-enabled.

Flash Designer
It would be prohibitively challenging and time consuming to migrate the Designer away from the Flash platform so I am reviewing two options here:

1. The Flash Player Projector Content Debugger (https://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/debug_downloads.html) which is a native Mac / Windows / Linux Flash player that doesn't depend on the browser to run. As a result it will continue working after Flash in the browser is killed off. I need to do further testing to confirm if this approach will work.

2. The current best of breed open source Flash player which is LightSpark (https://github.com/lightspark/lightspark). There may be a few week period when the Designer is not available as a result although I will of course try to avoid that scenario.

Please let me know if you think I have missed anything!

tom wrote:

hi all - here is a long overdue update on plans for the upcoming Death of Flash:

Thanks for the update Tom, much appreciated. I'll try to make a cross linked thread to the Site Annoucements page as that might get more site-wide notice than one that's embedded here

Flash based Charts

I am migrating all of these pages to a native version of FusionCharts that doesn't require Flash. ETA for completion this week. The affected pages are:

Ranking history (http://www.wargear.net/rankings/show/History)
Luck stats (e.g. http://www.wargear.net/games/luck/756879/luckchart)
Board Rating distribution (player) (e.g. http://www.wargear.net/players/info/tom/Board%20Ratings) 
Board Rating distribution (board) (e.g. http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Capital+Crusade/Ratings) 
Board charts (e.g. http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Capital+Crusade/Charts) 
Board ranking history (e.g. http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Capital+Crusade/Ranking%20History) 
Charts (http://www.wargear.net/charts) 
Home page (http://www.wargear.net when not logged in) -

looking forward to seeing how these work!

Flash Player

As you know, some boards are unplayable without Flash. The reason is (I think exclusively) due to a difference between the native player Fill function and the Flash Fill function. For now I don't have a fix for this and I don't see a way that we can continue to use the Flash Player for games so I will disable all boards that have been configured by their Designer to use Flash only on Monday 21st December to give sufficient time for games to be completed. As a result, the following boards will be disabled:

Capitalism
Go-Geared 
Random Mazes
Risk vs Reward
The Mediterranean

If there are any other boards which are unplayable in the Native Player please let me know and I will add them to the list. I am also working on updating the Native Player to use modern browser native tooling which will hopefully resolve the problems with these boards so they can be re-enabled.

I can't remember if we ever really diagnosed the 'why' of the fill not working. Did we? I'm wondering if we were to simply redraw those boards (when i redrew Antastic for an update there, i found that the fill lines were not complete, and were broken all over the place). I'll try my hand at redrawing Risk vs Reward. Who has the power to upload it to see if it works? 

By "The Mediterranean"; which do you mean? 

which versions of Random Mazes doesn't load without Flash? i just went a looked at its game list and they all loaded with Native?

Flash Desinger

It would be prohibitively challenging and time consuming to migrate the Designer away from the Flash platform so I am reviewing two options here:

1. The Flash Player Projector Content Debugger (https://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/debug_downloads.html) which is a native Mac / Windows / Linux Flash player that doesn't depend on the browser to run. As a result it will continue working after Flash in the browser is killed off. I need to do further testing to confirm if this approach will work.

2. The current best of breed open source Flash player which is LightSpark (https://github.com/lightspark/lightspark). There may be a few week period when the Designer is not available as a result although I will of course try to avoid that scenario.

Please let me know if you think I have missed anything!

Figured this would be the most tricky, good luck!

Update: I've made a quick job of a dual layer version of Risk v Reward (boarders were already thick enough). I didn't change/update anything about the image other than to make it dual layer. Maybe something with all the extra stuff on a single layer had it confused (doubt it, but worth a try with dual layers). I can email the images to whomever can update the board and see if it works on native (tom?).

weathertop wrote:

I can email the images to whomever can update the board and see if it works on native (tom?).

I can do this. Send me the image [email protected]

Also -

There is also a couple of boards where the fill (or something) makes the background "missing"/"static-y". I am thinking of Across the Great Divide and Tree of Life. Maybe it's the same issue but not so dramatic as to break the board?

> which versions of Random Mazes doesn't load without Flash? i just went a looked at its game list and they all loaded with Native?

I'm not sure where Tom got that list from, but I had an older version of Random Mazes that was broken on native.  I updated Random Mazes a few years ago, and as far as I know it now works fine on Native.

Thanks tom. 

I will miss Go-Geared but I trust Random Mazes can be saved. 

Litotes wrote:

Thanks tom. 

I will miss Go-Geared but I trust Random Mazes can be saved. 

If I remember correctly, While designing it I was attempting to be clever and used the neutral color for fog in order to mask the squares that are not occupied.  It never worked right in the Native Player.  I'll be sorry to see it go because it was not just a unique dueling board, but I thought it looked pretty good.

I wonder if Tom will just blow them away.  Maybe I should just make a copy and try and fix it.  Come to think of it.. What's going to happen to the board Designer.. That's all Flash, right?

Amidon37 wrote:

I can do this. Send me the image 

Should be in your inbox.

M57 wrote:

If I remember correctly, While designing it I was attempting to be clever and used the neutral color for fog in order to mask the squares that are not occupied.  It never worked right in the Native Player.  I'll be sorry to see it go because it was not just a unique dueling board, but I thought it looked pretty good.

so did you do a whole separate neutral layer? i don't think it did. I think you should rework the smallest variant and see if you can figure it out. can you dig up old threads talking about the issues you were seeing? i don't recall what the specifics were, nor what was tried (eg. did you try to put a different color on the board image - different from neutral - to see if that corrected it?).

I wonder if Tom will just blow them away.  Maybe I should just make a copy and try and fix it.  Come to think of it.. What's going to happen to the board Designer.. That's all Flash, right?

That was answered in Tom's post

Thank you Tom for all your work on this!

Thanks tom!

Thank you, Tom. 

tom wrote:

As you know, some boards are unplayable without Flash. The reason is (I think exclusively) due to a difference between the native player Fill function and the Flash Fill function. For now I don't have a fix for this and I don't see a way that we can continue to use the Flash Player for games so I will disable all boards that have been configured by their Designer to use Flash only on Monday 21st December to give sufficient time for games to be completed. As a result, the following boards will be disabled:

Capitalism
Go-Geared
Random Mazes
Risk vs Reward
The Mediterranean

If there are any other boards which are unplayable in the Native Player please let me know and I will add them to the list. I am also working on updating the Native Player to use modern browser native tooling which will hopefully resolve the problems with these boards so they can be re-enabled.

weathertop sent me some images for Risk vs Reward and I played around and believe I figured out the problem - at least I was able to fix some of the boards listed.  I believe the problem is having transparent pixels in your fill-map. 

I made new images for Capitalism and Risk Vs Reward and also for Across the Great Divide and Tree of Life. (Both of those seemed to work in the Native player but looked terrible.)

I made them all dual-layered boards where the fill image had no transparent pixels and the board image was transparent where the territories are. I tested each board and they were working in the native for me.

I checked out "Mediterranean Mayhem" and that I don't think had any issues - so I am not sure what board tom was referring to with "The Mediterranean". I know there was at least one other board that had some issues besides what we have listed. I can't remember what it was though.

I downloaded a fill image for Go-Geared and did see transparent pixels - so that may be the issue. I can't fix that though because the scenarios complicate the images and my access to boars with scenarios is wonky. Did not look at Random Mazes because it also has scenarios.

tl;dr tom - Risk vs Reward and Capitalism are fixed. I think The Mediterranean was listed incorrectly.

Amidon; it's great you found a work around. Although I don't think that's the root cause.

Most of my boards have transparent fill - only the territories themselves are colored (at least that's the case for some of my dual layer boards like Kensington & Bowling - for you).

It could be that there were bad pixels in the territory areas, or by recreating the image we corrected some corruption. I'll be curious what M57 sees in Go-Geared. I don't think Random Mazes has a problem; at least not in the first few pages of it's his games list history.

Thanks Tom! 

I have played Random Mazes on Native without any problem. Will also be sad to lose Go-Geared, but maybe a solution can be found

Chele Nica wrote:

Thanks Tom! 

 

I have played Random Mazes on Native without any problem. Will also be sad to lose Go-Geared, but maybe a solution can be found

I thought last night laying in bed also - I play a lot of Random Mazes with Native with no problem.

I wouldn't call myself any sort of expert, but since I was the one who reported the Random Mazes problem and 2 of the other people on this little argument here both reported seeing the same thing.........
I'mma just gonna slide this little link through the transom window and let you pitbulls fight over it:

http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/3380/Displaying_Maze_games_in_Native_Player

BorisTheFrugal wrote:

I wouldn't call myself any sort of expert, but since I was the one who reported the Random Mazes problem and 2 of the other people on this little argument here both reported seeing the same thing.........
I'mma just gonna slide this little link through the transom window and let you pitbulls fight over it:

http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/3380/Displaying_Maze_games_in_Native_Player

 

That's a good link BtF. Random Mazes seems to be fixed - both by Ozy's admission (post above) and via recent games (http://www.wargear.net/games/player/728276?player=flash & http://www.wargear.net/games/player/728276?player=native). Maybe Ozy can weigh in on what specifically he fixed on Mazes?

I'll take a look thru this and try to see if there's any correlation with Amidon's new intel. 

Capitalism doesn't seem to be loading in the Flash player at all, even when i try to force it (http://www.wargear.net/games/player/717860?player=flash vs http://www.wargear.net/games/player/717860?player=native)

and Risk v Reward doesn't seem to have the same misplaced territories like the original Mazes did. TBH, i'm not sure that it couldn't be played in Native, as it seems to show fine in Native unlike other truly broken boards ... i'm confused. (http://www.wargear.net/games/player/717547?player=native v http://www.wargear.net/games/player/717547?player=flash)

note all these games are from prior to our mucking around; so shouldn't be looking at Amidon's edits (if he actually made them to the Live boards).

RE: Random Mazes

It was always generated via a python script, and a few years ago, I basically rewrote most of the script and regenerated all the boards.  I had changed a couple of things graphically - adding highlights and shadows to the walls to add depth & visual cues and generating perlin noise for the fog.  The new versions never seemed to have the same problem, and I assume when I rewrote the code I must have fixed a bug along the way.

I noticed in the thread BtF links, Tom said:

>This has been fixed - the generated fillmap was missing parts.