How to control flash games?

October 12, 2006 11:15 AM

I'm playing a certain flash game. I'd like to be able to pause when I like, repeat levels at will, and so on (the game does not normally allow this). What's my best bet? Any cool standalone flash players that will let me do this?
posted by shivohum to computers & internet (8 comments total)

Pausing might be possible, maybe, but repeating levels would require that the game be written to allow it. A Flash game is a little application, not a movie you can rewind and fast-forward.
posted by jjg at 11:26 AM on October 12, 2006

JJG: actually, if it saved its state every now and then, you certainly could rewind a flash game. It's a common feature in emulators.
posted by spaceman_spiff at 11:34 AM on October 12, 2006

But that's my point: the game would have to be coded to save state. You can't impose that functionality if it was never built into the program.
posted by jjg at 12:41 PM on October 12, 2006

Nope, the game doesn't have to do anything; the player (interpreter) can save its state any time it wants to.

I don't know of any that will let you do this, but if you've got a lot of time on your hands, there's always this open-source one you can modify.
posted by equalpants at 1:00 PM on October 12, 2006

What's the game?
posted by spork at 1:18 PM on October 12, 2006

You could try running it in a virtual machine like VMware. This would certainly let you pause the game at arbitrary points and save/load the game state at those points. But the real question is what will happen when you resume the virtual machine after it has been paused for some time. To the app it will appear that suddenly n hours have passed (where n is potentially very large) instantaneously. This may or may not wreck havoc with its internal logic.
posted by Rhomboid at 3:35 PM on October 12, 2006

Yeah, I thought about VMWare but I felt like that would also slow the game down a lot, no?

What's the game? Stagknight 2. Beware, it's addictive.
posted by shivohum at 4:16 PM on October 12, 2006 [1 favorite]

You'd be surprised how fast VMware runs. It gets pretty close to full native speed, and uses dynamic recompilation for those few privileged instructions that it must emulate. Don't dismiss it without trying it.
posted by Rhomboid at 4:31 PM on October 12, 2006