So, I'm trying to download a flash to post on this site, but every time I try to download it, all I get is the preloader. Any and all attempts to play/jump ahead to various points in the flash don't work, and say that the animation can't be played. I'm not entirely sure what is causing this, but it's something I really could use some help on...

not enough info to help with anything i'm afraid. if you give a link (you can link it in your post here by typing post #. example: post #1234) i or someone else can check it out for you.

It's possible some of the resources are actually loaded off-site and causing the weird behavior you see, but it's hard to say without it in front of me. If you could point me to the post I'd be happy to take a look at it for you.

I've got two links here, one is the actual site where I found the flash, and the other is where the flash is hosted.
www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=6009
uploads.ungrounded.net/userassets/3591000/3591093/cascade_loaderExt.swf
They both work fine, it doesn't work only when I try to load the downloaded file.

ah, it has been a while since i last time saw the cascade

yep, offsite loading. you can download it via that uploads.ungrounded link and get a 293kb swf file containing only the preloader but when loaded in a flash player (i use UnH Solutions flash player) it's obvious that it's offsite loading. if it wasn't, all i'd have gotten is the preloader and likely a steady stream of error popups like when you try loading a broken swf file (gotta ctrl+alt+delete out of that kind of mess). well, that or JUST the preloader animation. >.>

tyrusmaxim said:
I've got two links here, one is the actual site where I found the flash, and the other is where the flash is hosted.
www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=6009
uploads.ungrounded.net/userassets/3591000/3591093/cascade_loaderExt.swf
They both work fine, it doesn't work only when I try to load the downloaded file.

Hmm. I don't know enough about flash to merge them into a single file (or if you can even do that), but you can download the individual parts with these links:

http://uploads.ungrounded.net/userassets/3591000/3591093/cascade_segment1.swf
http://uploads.ungrounded.net/userassets/3591000/3591093/cascade_segment2.swf
http://uploads.ungrounded.net/userassets/3591000/3591093/cascade_segment3.swf
http://uploads.ungrounded.net/userassets/3591000/3591093/cascade_segment4.swf
http://uploads.ungrounded.net/userassets/3591000/3591093/cascade_segment5.swf

I've tested a couple of them offline and they seem to play just fine individually, but the preloader doesn't work with them (i.e., by putting them in the same directory and hoping they'll magically work). I don't know if there's a trick to getting it to work with the preloader, but at least you can play them individually.

parasprite said:
I've tested a couple of them offline and they seem to play just fine individually, but the preloader doesn't work with them (i.e., by putting them in the same directory and hoping they'll magically work). I don't know if there's a trick to getting it to work with the preloader, but at least you can play them individually.

Looking up "how to merge swf" seems to have promising results, but I have to ask just how you found the other parts to the animation. I looked several places and tried several variations of related file names, but came up with nothing.

tyrusmaxim said:
Looking up "how to merge swf" seems to have promising results, but I have to ask just how you found the other parts to the animation. I looked several places and tried several variations of related file names, but came up with nothing.

Most modern browsers have something similar, but for Chrome you can right click -> "Inspect Element" -> Network tab, then refresh the page. This will show all of the resources that are loaded on a page and where they came from. The info in there is a bit dense and overwhelming if you aren't used to web development, but you can't actually break anything in there. Right click on the individual files to open the link in a new tab.

If you do this on a direct link to the .swf file it should only show resources that the flash file itself is fetching (there are exceptions but they are relatively rare outside of malware sites). Some sites like youtube will split the files in a way that makes it harder to save files this way, but for your purposes this should work fine.

*You can also find it in the menu bar somewhere (edit?) under Developer -> open developer tools (or something like that), but I don't remember where it is off-hand. Depending on your setup, you may have to do this anyways since flash files have their own right click menu which overrides the normal one. Let me know if you can't find it.

parasprite said:
Most modern browsers have something similar, but for Chrome you can right click -> "Inspect Element" -> Network tab, then refresh the page. This will show all of the resources that are loaded on a page and where they came from. The info in there is a bit dense and overwhelming if you aren't used to web development, but you can't actually break anything in there. Right click on the individual files to open the link in a new tab.

If you do this on a direct link to the .swf file it should only show resources that the flash file itself is fetching (there are exceptions but they are relatively rare outside of malware sites). Some sites like youtube will split the files in a way that makes it harder to save files this way, but for your purposes this should work fine.

*You can also find it in the menu bar somewhere (edit?) under Developer -> open developer tools (or something like that), but I don't remember where it is off-hand. Depending on your setup, you may have to do this anyways since flash files have their own right click menu which overrides the normal one. Let me know if you can't find it.

Alright, thanks for the info! Even if I end up not being able to merge the files into one, there are plenty of videos of the flash, so I might grab one of those. e621 takes videos, right?

tyrusmaxim said:
Alright, thanks for the info! Even if I end up not being able to merge the files into one, there are plenty of videos of the flash, so I might grab one of those. e621 takes videos, right?

Yeah, provided it's furry-related and generally relevant to the site (I don't actually know anything about mspaint adventures and I'm on mobile at the moment :x ).

parasprite said:
Yeah, provided it's furry-related and generally relevant to the site (I don't actually know anything about mspaint adventures and I'm on mobile at the moment :x ).

Alright. There is Homestuck/MSPA content on the site already, so I should be safe, but I'll keep my fingers crossed just in case.