A relay of the torch between players
It's been two and a half years since Adobe completely ended support for Flash Player. Flash gradually faded from view, and a generation of legendary software entered the cybergrave.
But few people know that Flash is dead, but its story doesn't end.
In October 2022, the King of Fighters wing, a game made with Flash, released the EX1.2 preview.
Maybe the new generation doesn't know much about this game and its predecessors, but many post-80s and 90s should be familiar with it.
The King of Fighters wing series is not an official title like The King of Fighters 97, it is a fan-created fanwork. Originally created by Dream Traveler, it has since been mainly co-produced by players.
The gameplay is similar to other fighting games, but it has some special systems, such as a simple operation mode, which makes it easy to play with the handicapped party.
Although the work belongs to the second creation, the quality of the game is extremely high.
At its peak traffic peak, with up to 4 million daily visits and 600 million annual visits, it is a true hegemonic flash game and a childhood memory for a generation of players.
However, players know very little about the production behind the scenes of the game and the years after the game was uninformed after the glory days of Flash.
We caught up with the founders of the King of Fighters Wing series, as well as the Tambo Wing group, which is currently mainly responsible for updates, and chatted with them.
The story begins more than 20 years ago. Around the turn of the millennium, many people's first contact with the King of Fighters may not be the King of Fighters 98 in the arcade hall, but playing the King of Fighters Wing on the computer.
At that time, the King of Fighters wing was a fighting work for many players. Even now, King of Fighters Wing is the darling of the student community.
The reason why the King of Fighters Wing is popular throughout the country is simple, on the one hand, it has a lower download cost than traditional fighting games, such as The King of Fighters 97 also needs to download huge game files, while The King of Fighters Wing only needs to click on the web page, or download a few MB of files directly to the local to play.
On the other hand, the King of Fighters Wing's simple operation mode allows many complex skills to be cast with one or two keys, which is very suitable for handicapped parties.
At the same time, although the King of Fighters wing uses Flash production, the special effects are gorgeous and the graphics are smooth, which is very striking, and it is a good work in similar games.
Of course, the high quality of the King of Fighters wing series has also undergone a long period of development, and since 2001, the game has been showing its seeds.
In 2001, the domestic production of microelectronic computers was only 7.58 million, and home computers were still affordable equipment for a few people. The current King of Fighters Wing series father Dream Traveler, who was a freshman majoring in computer science at that time.
The King of Fighters 97 and 98 in the arcade hall in middle school, and the days of playing The King of Fighters in an Internet café in college had a deep influence on him, and although he had also been exposed to other fighting games, the first thing that came to his mind when he came up with the idea of making a fighting game was The King of Fighters.
After several years of precipitation and thinking, in 2004, he finally made up his mind and began to make a King of Fighters game in Flash.
Choosing Flash wasn't his sudden hothead.
In those years, Flash wasn't quite on its feet. For a long time, flash creators flash creators have used Flash to produce a large number of song MVs, which have been repeatedly played on TVs in every household and KTV in large and small cities. Simple low-frame animation is also the impression that many people have of Flash.
In 2000, Flash Lao Jiang made a music video for "Rock on the New Long March Road"
Flash games are a field that only a few people can touch, and Dream Traveler is the first batch of explorers.
In his freshman year, he discovered a Flash game in which the player controls the goalkeeper to anticipate penalties in three directions: left, center, and right, preventing computer shots. This football mini-game has brought a huge impact to dream travelers.
In his opinion, at that time, to make games to use professional languages such as C++, the threshold is high, and the workload is still very large.
Flash can not only easily make animation, but also combine animation to write programs, and fighting games need to accurately edit attack judgments and various parameters, which is Flash's strength. In the minds of Dream Travelers, who don't know much about other game engines, it's better suited to making games than pure programming languages.
In the second half of his senior year, Dream Traveler, who had only done some Flash web pages and animations, nestled in the dormitory, pulled out every frame of the King of Fighters character Kusanagi Kyo from the simulator, and then used ps to pick it again, and finally imported it into Flash for editing.
Almost learning and doing, Dream Traveler threw himself into the game.
In July 2005, after completing the design, Dream Traveler optimized the operation control, attack judgment, added 2-player battles, PVC, continuous skills and other functions, and launched a version with more complete functions, which he named "The King of Fighters".
After graduating from college, Dream Traveler had not yet arrived in Flash games, and he could not see the future path.
After a few months of balancing work and making games, Dream Traveler decided to give it a go and quit his job to focus on making games.
Taking advantage of the introduction of AS2.0 object-oriented programming by Flash at the time, he reprogrammed the game.
The goal of Dream Traveler is to achieve fantastic smash bros. with multiple characters, hence the name of the game "The King of Fighters Fantasy Battle". In the following versions, characters such as Takashi, Yagami-an, and K' have been added to it, and the game content has become richer and richer, and the prototype of the expandable and updated fighting engine has basically taken shape.
"The King of Fighters Fantasy Battle" is not only about the name, but also about the data.
After The King of Fighters Dream Battle was published on Dream Traveler's blog, it received close to 700,000 visitors. In the era when Flash mini game websites were just a few years old, many mini game websites also reprinted games, and many people started from here to learn about Dream Traveler and his King of Fighters fangames.
The King of Fighters Fantasy Battle changed the fate of the game itself and the producer Dream Traveler. The huge traffic has laid a solid reputation for Dream Traveler and his games, sending him to the top of the tide of the times.
In the same year that Dream War was released, Dream Traveler, who had run out of savings, entered FreeWorldGroup, a foreign Flash company, becoming the first Chinese employee in the company and learning a lot of professional game development knowledge.
In this new stage of life, Dream Traveler recognizes several of his school's apprentices and begins to continue perfecting his game.
The new members make up for some of the shortcomings of Dream Traveler, and almost most of the game's art, from the interface to special effects, has a new packaging. At the same time, new characters, skills, scenes, music, super killing close-ups, vibration splash screen and other effects have been added, and the entire game has completed a large-scale version upgrade.
This brand new version, known as The King of Fighters Wing by several Dream Travelers, has also been updated to Shining Wing Studio. The name contains their dream - hoping that Flash, the platform that gives them a starting point for their dreams, can become wings to realize their dreams.
The high-quality "King of Fighters Wing", combined with the previous word-of-mouth, made Shining Wing Studio quickly known to players.
According to the statistics of the official website of Shining Wing Studio at that time, there were nearly 100,000 games a day, and most of them came from a small game website called 7K7K, and this website had almost divided up most of the traffic of the Flash game circle with 4399. In the hearts of many users of early mini game websites, "King of Fighters Wing" has an epoch-making status.
With the soaring fame, Shining Wing Studio officially began to compete with many boutique mini-games in this era of flash games, and Dream Traveler also met many game producers in many circles, such as Sword Jian of "Death VS Hokage", Andy Law of the "Flash Kombat" series, and half a bottle of fairy vinegar of "The Legend of Jin Yongqun".
The variety of mini-games is a proof of the era of Flash's blooming flowers
Of course, at this stage, they have distress. When making a character's super special move, you have to constantly design, produce, and debug, and time is always in short supply.
Therefore, Shining Wing Studios has also relaxed restrictions and invited fans to participate in the creation. For example, the opening animation added by the King of Fighters Wing version 1.0 comes from player Ye Qianbin.
In the years since Shining Wings Studios flapped its wings into the sky, The King of Fighters Wing underwent several major updates with far-reaching impact. For example, the simple mode mentioned earlier is a product of this stage. The excellent result of 600 million annual visits was also born at this time.
In those years, many schools had "The King of Fighters Wing" installed on their computers, and many students had rubbed two handfuls. Others choose to play at home and compete passionately with their friends.
But the brilliant "King of Fighters Wing" has a fatal problem, that is, copyright.
With the maturity of the domestic game market, foreign game companies are also eyeing this blue ocean. The King of Fighters IP owner SNK also began to enter the Chinese market, and mini game websites gradually dropped "The King of Fighters Wing".
Flash Wing Studio, which does not make a profit from "The King of Fighters Wing", faces huge economic pressure, and Flash, which is famous for itself, is difficult to adapt to this era of smartphones.
In order to survive, Shining Wing Studio also had to follow the tide of hand-to-hand games and plunge into the mobile game market.
Hardcore game developers finally plunged into mobile games, which seemed like a sad ending.
But the story doesn't end here.
In 2013, Shining Wing Studio handed over the source code of the King of Fighters Wing to the players who had worked with it. Ah Jun, a secondary school student from Hong Kong, took over from Dream Traveler and led the production of versions 1.9 and 1.91 of The King of Fighters Wing.
A year later, the Knights of Shining Wings led the EX version of the wing series, introducing a new opening animation and voice for the game's opening and UI interface.
The King of Fighters wing, still alive.
Several passes of the source code are like a flame relay. Dream Traveler sowed the spark of this Flash game, and groups of players alternately held up torches to pass the torch on.
However, in 2014, the King of Fighters wingEX was released with version 1.02. The game came to an abrupt end, and the story behind it once became an unsolved mystery on the Internet.
In fact, after 2014, Shen Tu, who was the owner of the King of Fighters wing bar at the time, complained that there was no new progress in the game, so he and the production team asked for the source code and planned to make it themselves, but for special reasons, he withdrew from the network for several years.
Shen Tu complained that in 2016, he released the King of Fighters wing post a New Year greeting video
After 6 years, even Flash was going to cease operating, and everyone was thinking: Ah, maybe it's really time to say goodbye.
Unexpectedly, during that time, the 1.02 [49 Restoration Version] of "The King of Fighters wingEX" suddenly appeared on the Internet (hereinafter referred to as the 1.0249 version). Many people suddenly realized that it turned out that the King of Fighters wing was still alive?
Version 1.0249 comes from a new production team, the Tambo wing group. However, at that time, the Tambo group did not have the source code of the game, nor did they have the contact information of Dream Traveler, and they decompiled the game file of 1.02 to make version 1.0249.
This is equivalent to taking a mobile phone apart without a design drawing and modifying it with existing parts and new parts, which is extremely difficult.
That's exactly why some players find that the content isn't much newer than 1.02 after downloading.
But version 1.0249 is not without effect.
It was not long after seeing the 1.0249 version that Shen Tuan, the original King of Fighters wing bar, remembered that he still had the source code of the game on hand, and contacted the Tambo Wing Group. The Tambo wing group became the main force of development after obtaining the source code.
In 2020, when Flash died, version 1.0249 was like the ashes left by the King of Fighters wing, rekindling the flame after adding new firewood.
After that, Shen Tu and two other members, Chris Sheep and Butt, joined the team, and the members of the Tambo wing group grew again.
The team is screwed together by love. Someone is a company employee; Some people have just graduated and are about to enter the workplace; Someone's children are already in elementary school ... However, in reality, everyone still does not even know their respective appearances.
There is also no particularly clear division of labor in the team, and the amount of work is already so large that there is no need to refine the division of labor. For example, programmer Chris Sheep, who was originally responsible for doing AI, then modified the main program, and is now learning to make characters to make his own namesake character Chris.
Chris in the King of Fighters original
Perhaps more unexpectedly, the Tambo wing group has a lot of resentment about Flash. Because there are countless times, files in editing disappear due to software crash. At the same time, the old Flash is also difficult to achieve functions such as killing and accumulating.
The main problem at the moment is that the change of versions over the years has piled up the art resources and code of the King of Fighters wing series, the volume of the game has reached the upper limit of Flash, and newly made characters cannot be added to the game.
It is also not practical to port the game to other platforms to continue development, and the workload is no less than remaking a game.
So to scold, scold, the Tambo wing group has to continue to use Flash. The whole team is burying their heads in solving problems and taking King of Fighters Wing further.
Before joining the Tambo wing group, no one in the team had learned Flash, and the actionscript language was an antique. Everyone is self-taught after joining the group, and they can't ask group friends. Some enthusiastic players will also join the test group, help run programs, and even work part-time as artists, and this is how the game is made bit by bit.
It is still unknown how long it will take for the official version of 1.2 to be released. The chestnut of the Tambo wing group joked: "After the chicken eats the rice, the dog licks the noodles, and the lamp is baked and the lock is broken, it should be fine (doge). ”
For them, the launch of the official version of the King of Fighters wingEX1.2 is only a matter of time. The King of Fighters wing and Flash pinned on their youth and love, and giving up was never their choice.
In order to pull people into the pit, they even wrote a game manual themselves.
Sometimes, group friends will pay for a fighting match. Although there is no professional online platform support, players can play matches with high latency through remote control software.
Including the now 41-year-old Dream Traveler, who is still connected to the Tambo Wing Group, he is also obsessed with the King of Fighters, and then plans to find an opportunity to talk to SNK about the King of Fighters IP.
What seems to be forgotten has always been well protected.
The protectors of the King of Fighters wing series, which have changed several times in more than two decades, always shout when people ignore it:
Flash is dead, Flash games are still alive!
Written by: Zhang Dadong Editor: Mangshan Soldering Iron Head & Face Line Cover: Huan Yan
Images and sources:
Dream Traveler, Tambo Wing group provided
http://www.vgtime.com/topic/1121540.jhtml
https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1vF411Y7xd/?share_source=copy_web&vd_source=a05997b65d21e9308fc301202138c035
http://www.scio.gov.cn/xwFbh/xwbfbh/wqfbh/2002/0228/Document/327588/327588.htm
This article is from the WeChat public account "bad review" (ID: chaping321), author: bad commentary