Extracting Flash Games

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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 movie. Can run in the Flash plugin or projector. At the end of 2020, Adobe will no longer support Flash Player.
  • EXE: Projector executables packaged with an SWF. A convenient way to run Flash games on Windows, but only works for simple games.
  • 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 language for Flash applications.


Extracting

  • Use a dedicated browser extension. Some recommendations:
  • Use the Developer Tools in either Firefox or Chrome to find the SWFs.
    • Right-click the page and click "View Page Source." Press Ctrl-F and search for ".swf"
    • Right-click the page and click "Inspect Element." Click the element picker on the top-left of the developer tools and select the Flash game. This may bring up an embed code which includes a .swf link.
    • Right-click the page and click "Inspect Element." Click the Network tab and reload the page. Use the search bar to find the SWF files that are loaded. If the game loads additional resources, they should be visible here too.
  • JPEXS Free Flash Decompiler can extract SWF files already loaded into browser memory. See the #SWF_Decompiling Decompiling section.
  • 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.

For some websites, a custom solution can be easier:

SWF Decompiling

Many SWF files will run immediately in a projector, but some have sitelocks, require an internet connection, and/or need external files. The latter types of Flash games need Flashpoint's technology. It is also possible to decompile SWFs to modify them or understand how they work.

JPEXS Free Flash Decompiler can:

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

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

Some games rely on compression to extract a fuller SWF, which you can grab from your RAM using JPEXS's "Search SWFs in memory" function, or using the standalone SWF Memory Dumper tool.

SWF Playback

Use the official Adobe Flash Player Projector, available here: https://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/debug_downloads.html. This is the method that Flashpoint uses, along with the rest of our technology stack.

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 standalone executables. However, this will only work for simpler Flash games that are not sitelocked. We recommend that you add games to Flashpoint instead.

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