Extracting Flash Games

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Revision as of 08:42, 10 May 2018 by BlueMaxima (talk | contribs)
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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: (TODO)
  • 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.
  • [1] can download swf files already loaded into browser memory.

Some websites require specific methods:

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
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