Flash Client

The Flash client was discontinued on October 26, 2017. This article was kept as it was at this date, but the information here is only relevant for historical purposes now.

Client Artwork 9 — Original loading background of the Flash Client (see more)

The Flash Client is one of three official Tibia Clients, the other being the Tibia 10 and Tibia 11 clients. The Flash Client is always activated if the system requirements are met and can be reached through the Account Management page on www.tibia.com . You only need to select a character from the below list by clicking on it's row, then click on the "Play" button to open up another browser window.

They have written it in Flash as compared to C++, in which the stand-alone clients are written. The Tibia 10 was still available to be used when it was released. Some information has been released and some community feedback has been given on certain aspects.

Even being an official and supported client, many players of Tibian community were still skeptical about it, but the programmers promised that no changes would be made in the game play, and Tibia would remain Tibia!
One of the most significant benefits is that the client can be customised in so many ways (window positioning, text colours, disable some messages from appearing in game window and/or console like spells or private messages, etc.); you can set just about everything in your own style. The other main benefit is the addition of Action Bars with 120 slots that can be used with hotkeys, besides other preset hotkeys. It also gives the player the ability to set or change hotkeys to other actions like logging out, toggling between offensive/balanced/defensive fighting, toggling chat mode on/off or opening you root container (the main container, usually a backpack, placed in your inventory). Walking can also be set to a different key set (for example WASD, or DZXC or any other combination) with the option "chat off".

In general the Flash Client has a better GUI (Graphical User Interface) but worse performance than the original stand-alone client. Because of this and the deprecation of Flash by Adobe it was decided that a new stand-alone client was necessary. The Tibia 11 client was released in April 19, 2016, as the successor of the Flash Client. In order to replace the Flash Client, Tibia 11 has also been released for macOS and has been receiving many of the features that were first seen on the Flash Client.

Tibia Screen

The screen of the Tibia Flash client is divided into several parts:

Status Bar - shows your Hitpoints (green), Mana (blue), Level/Magic Level or any selected Skill (white), and Special Conditions.
Game Window - main part in which all game actions take place.
Action Bars - up to four separate bars around the Game Window. Each has 30 slots to right-click and enter text or an Instant Spell, or drag and drop an item. Slots can be used with a mouse or with a hotkey.
Chat Console - where you can communicate with other players.
- A secondary view so as to watch two chats at once.
Sidebars - up to four total (click arrows on right/left of Game Window) that contain all other windows:
- Filters - at the top of each sidebar are filters that can toggle items on and off for that sidebar:
- General Controls - 'Logout Character', 'Change Character', 'Options', 'Quest Log', 'Character Profile' (replaced old Skills Window).
- Combat Controls - check 'Chase Opponent', 'Mount', 'Secure Mode', or 'Stop' and select among 'Offensive', 'Balanced', or 'Defensive'.
- Minimap - map view of area around your character
- Inventory - here you can see your HP, mana, items and also buttons to perform some actions or to toggle modes
- VIP List - A list of characters that you add who show up as online, pending or offline
- Battle List - characters, NPCs, creatures around you appear here
- Trade - a menu that shows your trade with another character
- Containers - all containers that you have open (like your backpack)

Advantages and Features[]

Compared to the stand-alone clients and specially Tibia 10, some of the advantages and new features are:

No specific OS or browser required, runs wherever Adobe Flash runs (Windows, Linux, Mac);
No manual installation required (in case you already have Adobe Flash installed, which most people indeed have);
Better self-updating process of the client;
Easier access from internet cafés;
Tighter integration between website (account management, character info pages, spell lists, maps etc.) and game (ingame character);
Possibility to add new graphical options like layers (e.g. adding weather effects, picture below); weather effects have not been added to the game yet.
Moveable widgets - every option can be reached quickly.
The new HUD (picture below) feature which will reduce death probability to many players, especially mages.
Action Bars can be opened on all four sides of the game window. Right-click to add text or a spell. Drag and drop an item on a slot to use with a hotkey. The action bar slots can be clicked with a mouse or assigned to a hotkey.
You can now have up to 12 sets (e.g. one for Druid, one for Knight) which save the positions of your different windows and your hotkeys.
Easily way to change equipment, just have to drag a equipment item on a slot, then click it to put on, or take it off, also can be changed for another item if have more than one on slots.
Always know the status of your character, in middle of the status bar, you can see the Special Condition that your character is (burning/drowning/drunk/haste/posioned/within protection zone/slowed/hungry/... etc)
Ability of search spells in the general controls options, with filter of vocation, grup (attack, support, healing), premium, level and known.
Access to Character Profile subscreen ingame, that shows (appart froms skills, levels, experience, etc.) the remaining time of regeneration of the food you ate, modifiers of speed (for example, speed levels increased by using haste spell or lost speed levels by suffering paralysis).
Smart-click feature, which makes it able to skip the context menu and quickly use-with, open, attack, talk with any object, item, creature or NPC.

Disadvantages/Weaknesses[]

The Flash client must redownload the data if you clear your browser's cache.
Even if your browser has cached the client files, it can take a while to load the client.
If for some reason your login fails (the common 'already logged in' problem exists in Flash as well) the Flash client does not reload your character list, you have to reload the entire client to log in.
The Flash equivalent of 'change character' (Ctrl+G in Stand-Alone Client) does not check if you can even log out, which will cause the character change to fail.
The Minimap can be slow to navigate through and it tends to load slowly.
It seems that maps sometimes do not save after exploring a new area. But if you have cookies enabled, your map files will be saved.
There are difficulties with importing maps, usually when overwritting a zone already explored, leading to large black spaces in the minimap.
If there are issues with other Flash products on a player's computer then the Flash Client may also suffer the same issues.
A player cannot log out just using keys. The stand-alone client's Ctrl+Q shortcut will log you out completely, while in the Flash client you must confirm your choice to log out.
It is not always possible to drag items into ones backup because it does not always allow dragging into the space between slots. But has been fixed for almost all cases.
Stacked players appear in the reversed order from the stand-alone client. Instead of seeing the player you will push from a stack, you see the last person you would push from it.
Item animation is different on the Flash client: an item's animation state is based on when it was placed in the game window or when its position changed. On the Stand-Alone Client it is based on a more universal time, producing some inconsistencies between clients. For example: if you place 2 Slime Gobblers down, their animation is unlikely to be synchronized. On the stand-alone client the animation is always perfectly synchronized.
Newlines are ignored when pasting text into the console, while on the Stand-Alone Client they are converted to spaces.

Changes[]

Some existing features have also changed:

General Controls, Combat Controls, Minimap, Inventory, VIP List, Battle List, Trades, and Containers can be toggled on/off from filters on a sidebar (default: right)
Health, mana, skills, and conditions are now each displayed as bars on one widget (default: top of the playing window; can be moved to 4 sides of window).
- Only one skill bar can be shown at a time, by right-clicking and select from menu or through options.
All Skills are now under 'Character Profile' accessed by General Controls or default Ctrl+P.
Stacked items can be moved altogether without using the Ctrl button. Using the Ctrl button will popup a menu to select how many items you want to move. Using the ⇧ Shift button still moves just one item in the stack.
A secondary chat now allows the ability to monitor (not chat in) a second window.
All chat messages can have their colours customised to one of 12 options.
You can import/export your customised options in an xml file, as compared to a cfg which did not have a built in function to access it.

System requirements[]

Operating System: Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP
Browser: Internet Explorer 8.0 (or higher), Mozilla Firefox 4 (or higher), Google Chrome
Flash: Adobe Flash Player 11.2 (or higher)
Hardware:
- 2.6 GHz Intel Pentium 4, AMD Athlon 64 3400+ or 1.6 GHz Intel Core Duo (or higher)
- 1 GB of RAM
- 42 MB free space on your hard disk (+ approximately 150 MB for the complete map files)
Internet connection

Note: You can try the Flash client on other operating systems and browsers, but is not ensured that it will work and cipsoft will not take care of problems that appear on non-supported operating systems and browsers.^[1]

Official Chronology[]

The first official news about the Tibia Flash client was released in 2008 on an article that can be found here.
After quite a bit of time, in 2009, on an interview with Akananto (CipSoft's lead programmer), he revealed a few more details about the Flash client.
The next official news of the client was posted on March 9, 2010, titled "Flash Foward", they uploaded a screenshot of what is supposed to be the Flash client running. The interesting new about this image is that you can see fog in the scenario.
On May 06, 2010, an interview with the product managers (Craban, Guido, and Skyrr) answered some questions about the Flash client.
On August 06, 2010, a post titled "Client Sidebar - Join the New Flash Client Discussion!" bring up more news about the client.
On October 26, 2010, they released the teaser "Tibia Flash Client - Feature Teaser" which shows a wider screenshot of the Flash client.
On December 02, 2010, in the featured article "Tibia 2010 - A Retrospective", CipSoft emphasized that the screenshot released in the previews teaser was not how the client will look like in the future! They also said that the release of the new client is scheduled for the first half of 2011.
On February 24, 2011, they released next teaser "Lil' Flashy Has Grown Up". There was shown new skin of the Flash client.
On March 9 and 10, 2011, they released 2 articles ("Wanted:Closed Beta Testers" and "Lil' Flashy Makes Your Character Feel Good") about the new Flash client. One for recruiting beta testers, and the other for giving small hints about the sidebars (especially the health and mana bars), and showing the new feature (HUD), which can also be disabled if the player doesn't like it.
On March 21, 2011, they released the final teaser before the closed beta test, "Lil' Flashy Keeps Track of Friends and Foes". It mentions the new feature of filtering the Battle Window by creatures, NPCs, skulled players, party members, etc. and the ability to sort the data, ascending or descending, by options like name, distance, or hitpoints.
On May 05, 2011, they posted a news article titled "Lil' Flashy is Getting Dressed Up". It focus on the progress they've made since the end of the closed beta test.
On May 20, 2011, they released the teaser "Flashy in a Nutshell" which is focused on general features.
On May 24, 2011, they announced a date for the open beta test and in the teaser "Open Beta Test Ahead". It also included a screenshot of the chat console and the minimal system requirements for the beta version of Tibia Flash client.
On June 7, 2011, it was announced in the News Ticker that the Beta Flash Client will be released on June 9, 2011.
On June 9, 2011, the Beta Flash Client was released in a brief summary article, "Beta Flash Client Release".
On July 20, 2011, it was announced in the News Ticker that players can now import their map from the Stand-Alone client to the Beta Flash client.
On August 11, 2011, the beta flash client got some technical improvements and fixes, including the FPS display shows the right value now. (link).
On April 2, 2012, the beta flash client is improved again ...(link).
On August 9, 2012, with the patch to client 9.61, the flash client was updated as well. A skill icon is now displayed next to the status bar. You can now zoom in and out the Minimap with your mouse wheel. In the character's profile window the name and vocation of your character are now displayed. The colours of some text messages have been changed. The graphics of buttons have changed (a mouse-over effect has been added) and the light effects (which were disabled on ...) are enabled again.
On August 23, 2012, a lot of new features were added to the beta flash client. See here for more info.
On August 29, 2012, the beta label was removed from the Flash Client. See here for more info.
On May 17, 2013, the loading times for the flash client were optimized in a patch, by loading objects individually when first encountered, instead of all at once at the launch of the flash client. When changing floors or seeing objects for the first time this feature can cause some delay/lag.
On October 29, 2013, the smart-click feature was added in a patch
On November 7, 2013, with some fixes some bugs were fixed.
On December 18, 2013, with a patch (Updates/10.31) two fixes to the Flash Client were released. You can now drop stuff into a container regardless of the borders between spots. Also your widgets are not closed after opening and closing the options menu.
On January 20, 2014, a short alternative tutorial exclusive to the Flash Client was implemented. It is started when a new account is created via the landing page. News ticker
On April 11, 2017, CipSoft announced that they were working on the discontinuation of the Flash Client.
On August 16, 2017, it was announced that the Flash Client would no longer receive bug fixes and new features. It also received new warning messages informing that the client was considered outdated. In order to facilitate the transition for players still using this client, CipSoft added the options to import the minimap from the Flash Client to Tibia 11. From now on, before logging into the game, someone would have to wait at least 5 seconds with a message box explaining the client was no longer supported and asking to download Tibia 11.
On October 25, 2017, it was announced that it would no longer be possible to log in any game world using the Flash Client starting the next day i.e October 26, 2017. This marked the official end of this client, 9 years after its first announcement and 6,5 years after the release of its first beta-version.