I used to make animations with https://pivotanimator.net/ a lot as a kid, trying to make fight scenes like these. A sort of related thing is ToriBash, which is kind of a multiplayer 3D animation game where you fight each other by making decisions on which muscles to contract at each time interval.
Loved this stuff so much. I miss my summers off from school, where I would never think of a day gone as time "spent".
Ah, XiaoXiao. Under the amazingly named `E:\Storage\Old\Fun\old\XiaoXiao` I have
fight (xiaoxiao1).avi, XiaoXiao_City_Plaza.swf, and xiaoxiao2.swf - xiaoxiao9.swf
This unlocked memories I forgot I had. Not only playing these games, but Flash introduced me to gamedev. I can clearly remember struggling in Actionscript, trying to get collision detection and resolution working. I never got it to work properly lol.
By the way, if anyone wants to relive some old flash games/movies, there is https://ruffle.rs/, an open source Flash implementation. It's great!
Man the Flash era, and the overall vibe of creativity on the internet back then (hey it was only 20 years ago), was the kind where you could feel a limitless potential for the future, where everyone would be awesome.
Then it all congealed into the tentacles of 4-5 corporations and now we're forever stuck in their "How do you do fellow kids" cringefest..
AI also ha[s/d] potential, but it's already getting crippled at birth by corporate idiocy and lawsuit fever.
These animations got me into Flash and soon after into programming thanks to ActionScript, one copycat music video that maybe made even stronger impression in teenage me was a sad adult-themed music video from 2004, I just found ii after looking online for a bit: I love death - Lodger (Finnish band) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BoFQV4jXun4
I was knee-deep in the flash animation scene through the late 90s early 00s, and I don't remember anyone calling anyone 'Flashers'. China-only I suppose.
I did think Stick Death came out before Xiao Xiao?
There’s not much in the group gallery now, so probably I was looking in the individual galleries of some of the members and I think some of the time some member would make something and post it to Albino Blacksheep and sites like that and maybe post a journal entry about it to their own individual journal on their own profile.
deviantArt also had IRC-like group chats. Flashers had a chat room. There’s a link to it still in the about section of the group, but that link doesn’t work any more. Even if a group didn’t have much posted into its gallery they could have a lot of member activity in those chat rooms. And from what I remember, I think I visited the flashers chat room a few times and that it was pretty active.
I think some chat rooms were private, and some were open even to people who were not in any particular group.
I grew up learning Flash and started my love for programming due to ActionScript 2 then 3, is there anything like this today I am looking for something for my 10 year old daughter.
I remember a “choose your own story” stick figure Flash app, called Time to Die (I believe), where the “protagonist” was a condemned convict, used as target practice by scientists.
You could pick weapons used by the scientists. In most, he’d just get blown away, but in one scenario, he grabs the gun, and kills everyone in the facility.
Not sure if it was this guy, or was just inspired by him.
Some tools were certainly better, like Flash. Mobile made a lot of things complicated. Half the game dev tools still don't run properly for mobile. HTML5 was supposed to make things easier, and for a while it did, but it got rapidly more complicated afterwards.
Some things are much better today, like Procreate.
I dont think HTML5 was supposed to make things easier. It is just that major players wanted to get rid of flash for own reason (some of them valid) and HTML5 was something they were able to point at. It was never easier or even half replacement, it was significantly more complicated and crappier experience for an average normal creator.
It never even got some convincing demo. All those I have seen at the time were the "spend a lot more time to produce something much less impressive" kind of anti demos.
No, and a lot of Flash projects have already been converted; notably, Google was one of the first to release a flash-to-html5 converter, because a lot of ads were Flash at the time.
But Adobe's missed opportunity was keeping Flash alive, "just" adding a html5 / canvas / JS version instead of the browser plug-ins that were killed when smartphones/tablets refused to support them.
SFDT was the first online community I was a part of. It was a special time on the early internet. I feel so lucky to have been a very small part of it.
Can't believe this is the only mention of sfdt so far on this thread. I have similar nostalgia about it being the first online community I joined. Collaborating with others, getting a glimpse into their personal lives, chatting off-platform on MSN/AIM. I wonder if that experience exists for kids in the modern day internet...
the Xiao Xiao Flash series were amazing. I always wondered when someone would come up with a beat'em-up game with that style. Simple, fast-paced, lots of free movement and use of tools/weapons.
Was not expecting to read about Xiao Xiao today! I loved Xiao Xiao as a preteen, and spent many hours playing Xiao Xiao 4 [1], or re-watching the other Xiao Xiaos over and over again.
Ah man, these are some awesome memories! Hot damn I liked these when I was a kid! I was first introduced to them on a LAN party. We would pass these kinds of things to eachother between CS 1.5 matches (VLC can play any file format!)
I remember towards the end of my lan party going days, these sick fights were finally outdone by the much more advanced Killer Bean.
> It was the era when a major company could brush off the bad PR that comes with copying a major online artist. Is it believable that no one involved in the Nike ads had seen Xiao Xiao? Not really — it was popular with young people worldwide. Yet Zhu was new media at a time when old media ruled. What could he do?
This doesn't make any sense. From earlier in the same article:
> Zhu didn’t invent violent stickman animations. In the ‘90s, the Western site Stick Figure Death Theatre hosted exactly what its name implied. But Xiao Xiao, and its mix of Jackie Chan with Jet Li with The Matrix, perfected the idea.
> Either way, it was Xiao Xiao that made “stick fights” massive online. Clones were rampant — even Stick Figure Death Theatre had them. As one paper reported in 2002:
>> The Web’s legions of part-time Flash animators have begun producing their own copies of Xiao Xiao — so many, in fact, that there’s a whole portal dedicated to them. Stick Figure Death Theatre ... has so many stick man knockoffs, you have to wonder why Zhu doesn’t just give up.
If we assume that people at Nike were familiar with Xiao Xiao... and that they were also familiar with the mountains of similar material, what are we saying they did wrong?
i was OBSSESSSED with this growing up. i had no idea about the origin or real name or that it was chinese origin. incredible. thanks to whoever found and submitted this
And most people weren’t talking about it, but it’s inevitable that some were, and I guess that’s you. Surely you’re not surprised about all the times when you’re not talking about something that then shows up on HN?
You talk about stuff everyday, and stuff shows up on HN everyday, eventually they’ll coincide.
I used to make animations with https://pivotanimator.net/ a lot as a kid, trying to make fight scenes like these. A sort of related thing is ToriBash, which is kind of a multiplayer 3D animation game where you fight each other by making decisions on which muscles to contract at each time interval.
Loved this stuff so much. I miss my summers off from school, where I would never think of a day gone as time "spent".
>A sort of related thing is ToriBash ...
If memory serves, the sound effects were a fantastic touch on top of the multiplayer hilarity of that game.
Looks like there's still an active community around it today, based on a cursory YouTube search.
The first animation that made me love these was the old 'stickman vs door' gif,
Thanks for reminding me of that one
Ah, XiaoXiao. Under the amazingly named `E:\Storage\Old\Fun\old\XiaoXiao` I have fight (xiaoxiao1).avi, XiaoXiao_City_Plaza.swf, and xiaoxiao2.swf - xiaoxiao9.swf
Send us a file listing for `fun' :)
It wasn't until the mention of "City_Plaza.swf" that memories finally came flooding back.
This unlocked memories I forgot I had. Not only playing these games, but Flash introduced me to gamedev. I can clearly remember struggling in Actionscript, trying to get collision detection and resolution working. I never got it to work properly lol.
By the way, if anyone wants to relive some old flash games/movies, there is https://ruffle.rs/, an open source Flash implementation. It's great!
Man the Flash era, and the overall vibe of creativity on the internet back then (hey it was only 20 years ago), was the kind where you could feel a limitless potential for the future, where everyone would be awesome.
Then it all congealed into the tentacles of 4-5 corporations and now we're forever stuck in their "How do you do fellow kids" cringefest..
AI also ha[s/d] potential, but it's already getting crippled at birth by corporate idiocy and lawsuit fever.
These animations got me into Flash and soon after into programming thanks to ActionScript, one copycat music video that maybe made even stronger impression in teenage me was a sad adult-themed music video from 2004, I just found ii after looking online for a bit: I love death - Lodger (Finnish band) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BoFQV4jXun4
Same, I had been making stickman animations in powerpoint of all things, before a friend mentioned I should try FlashMX.
I even made this terrible thing as my first foray into AS2:
https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/408469
I remember that video well
I was knee-deep in the flash animation scene through the late 90s early 00s, and I don't remember anyone calling anyone 'Flashers'. China-only I suppose.
I did think Stick Death came out before Xiao Xiao?
Yeh stick death definitely was before Xiao Xiao. I remember all the lads at school sat around a computer in school binge watching them all.
There was a group on deviantArt called flashers. I wasn’t a member myself, but some of their members made some neat stuff I remember.
The group hasn’t been active for many years now it looks like, but the group page still exists.
https://www.deviantart.com/flashers
Group founded 2004.
There’s not much in the group gallery now, so probably I was looking in the individual galleries of some of the members and I think some of the time some member would make something and post it to Albino Blacksheep and sites like that and maybe post a journal entry about it to their own individual journal on their own profile.
deviantArt also had IRC-like group chats. Flashers had a chat room. There’s a link to it still in the about section of the group, but that link doesn’t work any more. Even if a group didn’t have much posted into its gallery they could have a lot of member activity in those chat rooms. And from what I remember, I think I visited the flashers chat room a few times and that it was pretty active.
I think some chat rooms were private, and some were open even to people who were not in any particular group.
Yeah, I miss DeviantArt.
>I did think Stick Death came out before Xiao Xiao?
Definitely remember Stick Death in highschool around '99-'01, 2+ years before this flashers group supposedly started.
I grew up learning Flash and started my love for programming due to ActionScript 2 then 3, is there anything like this today I am looking for something for my 10 year old daughter.
For games or animation?
Godot might be today's analogue for games.
I remembered Alan Becker (https://youtube.com/@alanbecker) who creates stories with an array of his stick figure characters.
Sometimes, they interact with real world too!
Yes when I saw stick figures mentioned on HN I immediately thought of his "Animator vs Animation" [1] (to which I've just rediscovered the title!)
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npTC6b5-yvM
I remember a “choose your own story” stick figure Flash app, called Time to Die (I believe), where the “protagonist” was a condemned convict, used as target practice by scientists.
You could pick weapons used by the scientists. In most, he’d just get blown away, but in one scenario, he grabs the gun, and kills everyone in the facility.
Not sure if it was this guy, or was just inspired by him.
Macromedia Flash had probably the best UX of all the programs ever created. It all goes downhill from there.
I feel that way about a lot of things. Maybe it's just nostalgia...but heck we had Flash, Frontpage, VB,...we were spoiled.
I sometimes wonder why such concepts went away, and everything became far more complicated.
Some tools were certainly better, like Flash. Mobile made a lot of things complicated. Half the game dev tools still don't run properly for mobile. HTML5 was supposed to make things easier, and for a while it did, but it got rapidly more complicated afterwards.
Some things are much better today, like Procreate.
I dont think HTML5 was supposed to make things easier. It is just that major players wanted to get rid of flash for own reason (some of them valid) and HTML5 was something they were able to point at. It was never easier or even half replacement, it was significantly more complicated and crappier experience for an average normal creator.
It never even got some convincing demo. All those I have seen at the time were the "spend a lot more time to produce something much less impressive" kind of anti demos.
[delayed]
Is there any reason why they couldn’t be emulated with WASM+canvas?
No, and a lot of Flash projects have already been converted; notably, Google was one of the first to release a flash-to-html5 converter, because a lot of ads were Flash at the time.
But Adobe's missed opportunity was keeping Flash alive, "just" adding a html5 / canvas / JS version instead of the browser plug-ins that were killed when smartphones/tablets refused to support them.
SFDT was the first online community I was a part of. It was a special time on the early internet. I feel so lucky to have been a very small part of it.
Can't believe this is the only mention of sfdt so far on this thread. I have similar nostalgia about it being the first online community I joined. Collaborating with others, getting a glimpse into their personal lives, chatting off-platform on MSN/AIM. I wonder if that experience exists for kids in the modern day internet...
the Xiao Xiao Flash series were amazing. I always wondered when someone would come up with a beat'em-up game with that style. Simple, fast-paced, lots of free movement and use of tools/weapons.
Was not expecting to read about Xiao Xiao today! I loved Xiao Xiao as a preteen, and spent many hours playing Xiao Xiao 4 [1], or re-watching the other Xiao Xiaos over and over again.
[1] https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/25718
Ah man, these are some awesome memories! Hot damn I liked these when I was a kid! I was first introduced to them on a LAN party. We would pass these kinds of things to eachother between CS 1.5 matches (VLC can play any file format!)
I remember towards the end of my lan party going days, these sick fights were finally outdone by the much more advanced Killer Bean.
Just a bean, trying to get some sleep.
Those were the days
Woah, this brought back memories. Like that one flash game where you played a stickman hitman.
> It was the era when a major company could brush off the bad PR that comes with copying a major online artist. Is it believable that no one involved in the Nike ads had seen Xiao Xiao? Not really — it was popular with young people worldwide. Yet Zhu was new media at a time when old media ruled. What could he do?
This doesn't make any sense. From earlier in the same article:
> Zhu didn’t invent violent stickman animations. In the ‘90s, the Western site Stick Figure Death Theatre hosted exactly what its name implied. But Xiao Xiao, and its mix of Jackie Chan with Jet Li with The Matrix, perfected the idea.
> Either way, it was Xiao Xiao that made “stick fights” massive online. Clones were rampant — even Stick Figure Death Theatre had them. As one paper reported in 2002:
>> The Web’s legions of part-time Flash animators have begun producing their own copies of Xiao Xiao — so many, in fact, that there’s a whole portal dedicated to them. Stick Figure Death Theatre ... has so many stick man knockoffs, you have to wonder why Zhu doesn’t just give up.
If we assume that people at Nike were familiar with Xiao Xiao... and that they were also familiar with the mountains of similar material, what are we saying they did wrong?
what a trip down memory lane.
for some extra nostalgia, check out "one finger death punch 2" game (and its prequel). i bet it's sort of an homage to those animations.
I loved the xiao xiao series. They were amazing.
Stick figures still fight to this day! Go check out hyunsdojo
Xiao Xiao and Ninjai *chef's kiss*
i was OBSSESSSED with this growing up. i had no idea about the origin or real name or that it was chinese origin. incredible. thanks to whoever found and submitted this
Hyun’s dojo was awesome
I added ELIZA to shittalk for a statistical ML model to play bouts on 'stickfight' PVP game around 2000. :)
That's spooky, we were literally just talking about stickdeath in the office and then this shows up.
And most people weren’t talking about it, but it’s inevitable that some were, and I guess that’s you. Surely you’re not surprised about all the times when you’re not talking about something that then shows up on HN?
You talk about stuff everyday, and stuff shows up on HN everyday, eventually they’ll coincide.
Oh my god do you think it was selection bias? No way, I’m certain it was spooky action at a distance! /s
Yep. StickDeath was the shit.
Youtube used Flash.