Flashback

Multiplayer Flash classics, resurrected in the browser.

No game servers exist anymore - so Flashback doesn't need any. The original SWF runs in Ruffle, its socket and HTTP traffic is intercepted in the page, and one player's browser acts as the game server. Everyone else connects to it peer-to-peer via Trystero (WebRTC). If the host closes their tab, the server state migrates to another player and the game keeps going - the SWFs never notice a thing.

Play it: open the gallery, pick a game, share the URL (add ?room=yourcode to play in a private room). Every game has its own page, so deep links work: games/stickarena-dimensions/?room=friday-night.

Games

Game	Players	Notes
Stick Arena: Dimensions	2-6	Accounts, shop, cred tickets, vote-kicks - accounts persist in your browser (localStorage)
BomberPengu	2	Head-to-head bomberman duels
Minigolf: Tropical Island	2-4	18 holes, lobby chat, rematches

Repository layout

index.html               The gallery (game boxes -> per-game pages)
games/<id>/index.html    One real page per game (deep-linkable, fullscreen)
src/flashnet/            The network lib: virtual sockets/HTTP, host election,
                         state migration, Trystero bridge
src/games/<id>/          Per-game server emulation (game.ts) + wiring (main.ts)
src/gallery/             Gallery UI + game registry
public/games/<id>/       Game assets (SWFs, maps, configs)
test/                    Protocol + migration integration tests (Node)
reference/               Reverse-engineering material (decompiled dumps)
.github/workflows/       GitHub Pages deployment

Development

npm install
npm run dev        # gallery at http://localhost:5173, games under /games/<id>/
npm test           # lib smoke tests + per-game protocol/migration tests
npm run build      # typecheck + production build into dist/

Useful query params on game pages: ?room=<code> (private room), &debug (full packet log), &name=<name> where supported.

Deployment

Pushing to main/master builds and deploys to GitHub Pages via .github/workflows/deploy.yml (enable Pages with source "GitHub Actions" in the repository settings once). The base path is derived from the repository name automatically.

Adding a game

1. Reverse-engineer the protocol (Ruffle + &debug logging is your friend; a community private-server implementation is gold).
2. Implement it as a GameServer in src/games/<id>/game.ts - defineGame({ endpoints, statefulMigration, http, createServer }).
3. Add wiring (main.ts), a page (games/<id>/index.html), assets (public/games/<id>/), a registry entry (src/gallery/games.ts), a Vite input (vite.config.ts) and an integration test (test/<id>.test.mjs).

All games belong to their original creators. Flashback exists so they can still be played.