User:Revac

This page is a basic tutorial on how Flashpoint works and how to curate games for addition to Flashpoint.

Why Curate?

Curation is the process of finding a game, getting it working in Flashpoint, adding metadata to it, and submitting. It is the most accessible method of contributing to the project. All it requires is a modern web browser and a copy of Flashpoint.

As we are an entirely volunteer-driven project, the more help we can get, the better. This tutorial is made so that anyone can learn to curate.

Curation is a far more simpler process than this wall of text may suggest. Here is the TL;DR:

• Get the files of the game.
• Put them into a new curation.
• Fill out Metadata.
• Export and Submit.

It is best if this page is read first before attempting curation, to get an idea of what the process and outcome looks like. It is also beneficial to read the specific curation guide of the Platform you are curating for, like the Flash Curation or the HTML5 Curation pages. Before we can jump into curation, it is best if you understand how Flashpoint works first.

How Flashpoint Works

Flashpoint is more than just a program to play files; rather, it's a combination of two programs working in parallel:

• a web server, which hosts game files from an internal or external drive and pretends to be the original Internet source the games ran off of,
• and a launcher, the user interface to select and play games from.

Flashpoint itself also comes in two primary versions:

• Infinity, the version that downloads games and animations from a server as you play or view them,
• and Ultimate, the gigantic version with every game and animation included and ready for offline play and viewing.

Infinity will download files as you play games that request them, while Ultimate knows the files are already there. Both make the files believe they're being ran on their original source. This has numerous benefits, the two most important being bypassing sitelocks and supporting multi-asset games. The How Flashpoint Works article provides more detail on this topic.

Setting Up Our Software

Curation only requires:

• Flashpoint Infinity, version 12 or later; curating in previous versions, as well using Flashpoint Core (built for curating but now deprecated) or Ultimate may run into compatibility problems,
• and a modern web browser such as Chrome or Firefox, which have tools that we can use to find and grab game files like SWFs, and sometimes multi-asset titles with low amounts of resources.

Additionally,

• cURLsDownloader is usually very beneficial in curation. It is found as a component in the Extras section of the Flashpoint Infinity Installer. This isn't strictly necessary, but it helps immensely; you'll see why later on. There are also other helpful utilities available in this section, like fpcurator.

To enable the Curate menu, where all curation takes place, open the config tab of Flashpoint and select Enable Editing. Please make sure your installation of Flashpoint is working normally first, if not, join our Discord server and post in #help.

Finding A Title to Curate, perhaps merge into Why Curate?

If you are looking at this page, this hopefully means you have a game or animation you want to curate.

Before attempting to curate it, please verify it is not in Flashpoint first. Use our search tool, search Flashpoint itself, or even search the Discord server for if a game has been recently curated, just not added yet.

If you want to curate, but do not have a specific title you are looking to curate, consider checking out the Game Requests spreadsheet or the Curation Sitemap.