1588487 - The Pause feature is broken in Flash games, depending on Windows version

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, defect, P5)

Description

[gserg.g]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:69.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/69.0

Steps to reproduce:

Starting from Firefox 60+ (not sure, but have verified on v61 and v69, on Windows 7 x86 and x64), the Pause feature is broken in many Flash games, to various degree depending on the game and the Windows version.

It would appear that the affected games are the ones that use an engine that links the Pause feature to detecting when the focus leaves the Flash window on the page.
It would appear the focus detection mechanism is broken and causes the pause to malfunction.
It would appear that some games are affected more deeply than others. In the more affected ones, you cannot even pause manually. The less affected ones only fail to pause on focus leave, but still can be paused manually. This appears to be linked to the Windows version too, because apparently only on Windows 7 the games become fully broken (no manual pause, no auto-pause), but on Windows 10 only the auto-pause is malfunctioning.

Same games correctly work in Internet Explorer 11 on the same computer and same Flash version (pause on pressing P and on the focus leave).

All tests made using the latest Flash player (32.0.0.270) and two archived versions (31., 30.). Used Firefox 69.0.3 and 61.0.2.

Actual results:

Visit https://www.kongregate.com/games/matakukos/robin-the-mercenary (a very random example, applies to many games) from Firefox on Windows 7.
Start level 1.
Observe that pressing P does nothing, and so does moving the focus out.

Visit https://www.kongregate.com/games/matakukos/robin-the-mercenary from Firefox on Windows 10.
Start level 1.
Observe that pressing P pauses the game, but moving the focus out does not.

Visit https://www.kongregate.com/games/Hamumu/robot-wants-ice-cream from Firefox on Windows 7 or Windows 10.
Start new game.
Observe that pressing P does pause the game, but moving the focus out does not.

Expected results:

Visit https://www.kongregate.com/games/matakukos/robin-the-mercenary from IE11 on Windows 7 or Windows 10.
Start level 1.
Observe that pressing P pauses the game, and so does moving the focus out.

Visit https://www.kongregate.com/games/Hamumu/robot-wants-ice-cream from IE11 on Windows 7 or Windows 10.
Start new game.
Observe that pressing P does pause the game, and so does moving the focus out.

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

Bugbug thinks this bug should belong to this component, but please revert this change in case of error.

Comment 2

[gserg.g]

It would appear key presses in general are broken on Windows 7 + Firefox + Flash, and only where it comes to the letter keys.

Keys like spacebar and arrow keys work universally, but letters have a huge chance of not working on Windows 7.

E.g. https://www.kongregate.com/games/CosmicMaher/after-years-in-dark-tunnels, under Windows 7 no letter keys work at all (Z, X, C, V), but spacebar and arrow keys do. On Windows 10, all keys do work.

Same Flash version each time (32.0.0.270).

I suspect it has something to do with wrong scancode/symbol conversion during interaction between Firefox and Flash, so games do not register the letters they listen to.

Comment 3

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The priority flag is not set for this bug.
:jimm, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 4

[BMO Automation]

Resolving as wont fix, plugin support deprecated in Firefox 85.