DirPlayer

DirPlayer: A Shockwave emulator for modern browsers

Oliver Brown
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I recently posted about Flashpoint Archive, a way to play old Shockwave (and other) content. I have just discovered another option DirPlayer.

What is DirPlayer?

DirPlayer is written in Rust and compiled to WebAssembly and is available two different ways:

  • As an extension from the Chrome Web Store. This is useful for visiting any old or archived sites and just automatically loading the Shockwave content.

  • As a single JS polyfill. This allows people hosting the content on pages they can still edit to make their Shockwave content available to any modern browser.

Current status

At time of writing, version 0.3, has just been released. I’ve tried Supremacy in it. There is good news, and bad news.

The good news is the game launches. The fonts don’t work properly, and some buttons do not have colours making them hard to read, but you can actually start a game. Sadly, there is then a runtime error.

But I’ve decided to add Supremacy back on to the site in its original location and included the DirPlayer polyfill, which I hope to keep updated as development continues.