Extracting Flash Games

This page is intended as reference for anyone who wants to extract Flash games on their own. Things to know:

• SWF: The compiled Flash application. Can only run on browsers or Macromedia's Flash Player. Browser support is set to end soon.
• EXE: Projector executables that have the Flash application working without needing a browser.
• FLA: The project file of the Flash application. The source file the author used to generate the SWF, can be freely edited with Flash.
• ActionScript: Programming scripting language for Flash applications.

Extracting

• Use a dedicated browser extension. Some recommendations:
  • Flash Video Downloader - Firefox/Chrome [1] [2]
• Use the Developer Tools in either Firefox or Chrome to find the swfs. Sometimes it's as simple as copy pasting a direct link to a file with the swf extension from the page's source. But sometimes the search will be more involved and require combing through the browser cache for files with content type /x.shockwave.
• [3] can download swf files already loaded into browser memory.
• A solid method to access the main .swf file for a game, is to save the entire webpage where the game resides using your browser.

 Select "File > Save Page As..." then, under the "save as type" section, choose "Web Page, complete".
 Search the newly saved website directory (and sub directories if required), and you should find the game's main .swf loader.

^ This method will save .swf files that won't show up in a network inspector. ^

Some websites require specific methods:

• ArmorGamesSwfFinder.py - Python script for ArmorGames

SWF Modding

Many SWF files will run once extracted, however some have DRM to run always online, from specific sites, and/or making use of external files. Those won't work directly or will only extract partially. Those will need modding to extract in full and to be made to work offline.

JPEXS-Decompiler can:

• Convert SWF to FLA
• Decompile ActionScript
• Extract sound/image/misc assets from the SWF

This isn't always straightforward because of some obfusciation methods used.

Some games rely on compression to extract a fuller SWF, which you can grab from your RAM using SWF Memory Dumper: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1uVZDTznTB6m-NiEo5sYhveyXa217UsPb

SWF Playback

Use the official Adobe Flash Player Projector, available here: https://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/debug_downloads.html

Some fixes for browsers (TBA):

• Firefox: Type about:config and change plugins.http_https_only to false

Convert SWF to EXE

Flash swf files can be converted to autonomous executables that will always work.

• Macromedia's Flash Player 8 can do that from File/Create Projector.
• BlueMaxima can confirm that this tool works as expected, although you'll want to replace the included projector with the newest version: http://swftools.sourceforge.net/swf-to-exe.html