Editing the code of .swf games?

[Bilge Rat]

I have some fun but simple flash-type games that run in internet explorer and are comprised of a whole bunch of .swf files. They are all clearly named and it occured to me that I might be able to open them up and tinker with the code. The games are mostly just a combination of text, buttons and static pictures anyway. I naïvely thought that I would be able to open them with notepad like html files but this is clearly not the case.

Is there an application that allows you to open and edit .swf files? Is this even possible or are they protected in some way? Does anyone know?

[Veela Magnet]

As far as I know, you can't edit a .swf or it's actionscript directly. You'll need to get hold of the the original .fla file and open it in Adobe Flash to edit the layers and the actionscript which originally bore the .swf

[Bilge Rat]

Oh, so its kind of like if I had a Photoshop document with different layers and text boxes and then saved it as a jpg? Someone couldn't open the jpg and move the layers around or alter the text - they would need to get hold of the original psd file?

[MikeHaggar]

There are ways to make swf files back into fla files, but most costs money.

Like these:
http://buraks.com/asv/index.html
http://www.sothink.com/product/flashdec ... /index.htm

[Veela Magnet]

Oh, so its kind of like if I had a Photoshop document with different layers and text boxes and then saved it as a jpg? Someone couldn't open the jpg and move the layers around or alter the text - they would need to get hold of the original psd file?

Kind of, yeah -- the thing is though, you can export a swf back into Flash, but it comes out as a single layer of individual frames, but within each frame, any isolated symbols or buttons are left intact, as opposed to flattened. So if you had the time, you could realistically recreate your own version of the game, by isolating the symbols and reapplying your own handwritten actionscript to them