"Vinnie's animations" doesn't work anymore?

[napala]

This is about "Vinnie's animations" https://legendofkrystal.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=3509&cache=1 , an old animation compilation.

I have downloaded many versions of the file when they were released, and now they don't work anymore. I'm not speaking about the death of Flash, I mean I can't get them to work at all, in any way. The file does not load, or it closes itself immediately. I've tried many Adobe Flash projectors from versions 10 to the latest, I've tried Ruffle, and some online Flash emulators, to no result.

What is really odd is that I tried opening the file (many versions of it) on JPEXS Flash Decompiler, and I noticed that it doesn't contain any sprites or animations.
I'm SURE as hell I've watched these animations working correctly in the past, so what gives? Can someone get it working at all?

TY for your patience and help.

[kvier]

I find myself thinking that the last version he uploaded might have been broken...

When you open the file in JPEXS, you'll see that there's a binaryData "__Content__" which is the actual animations. Everything else is part of the preloader for back when download speed was actually a relevant problem. You can tell JPEXS to "Open SWF inside". Then you can browse that and see the animation cels. Unfortunately, even if I extract this sub-SWF by itself and try to load that in the projector, I still get a big pile of errors from missing assets.

[napala]

I find myself thinking that the last version he uploaded might have been broken...

When you open the file in JPEXS, you'll see that there's a binaryData "__Content__" which is the actual animations. Everything else is part of the preloader for back when download speed was actually a relevant problem. You can tell JPEXS to "Open SWF inside". Then you can browse that and see the animation cels. Unfortunately, even if I extract this sub-SWF by itself and try to load that in the projector, I still get a big pile of errors from missing assets.

I've managed to get the sub SWF running in old versions of Flash, but the control flow is all broken; almost all animations play the first frame of each of their phases, other play each phase completely, then immediately starts the next phase, and the control arrows don't work. In fact, none of the buttons work.
Do you have any ideas? Would it help if i shared my old versions of Flash projector and the SWF files?

[kvier]

I'm afraid I'm now out of my depth. I'm surprised the old projectors with older version of the swf are giving you problems, however.

[napala]

I'm tempted to intall windows xp on a VM and see what happens from there.

I can confirm, by having fiddled with the decompiler for long enough, that all the animations still exist in the swf files, but how to extract them or make them work is still a mystery to me.

Still, thank you. I hadn't noticed the "play swf inside" option by myself.

[napala]

I did find out how to extract the animations after all, and convert them to .gif or other formats. I have no idea to make them to actually work in the original .swf, but at least now I know how to extract animations from most swf files for posterity, so this was a nice and fun lil' project after all.

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