About the NetYaroze-Europe.com archive site
December 23, 2022, at 11:17 PM (0 comments)
Title: About the NetYaroze-Europe.com archive site Author: mgarcia Date: 2022-12-24 09:17 +1100 Tags: Community, Portal Comments: Open
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This page is a bit ranty and too much information, jump to Maintenance section for details about the archive.
Before going live with the changes, I thought I would mention the history of both domains and my motivation and intentions for doing it.
It's also at the end of a Net Yaroze game jam, with my 2nd entry late and still in progress because of this, however, I thought this was more important and couldn't wait.
To be honest, there isn't much that's new in the archive site that wasn't already in the public domain, it's only been lightly curated and hosted on the original domain name.
The NetYaroze.com domain name.
Image: http://netyaroze.com previous history.
1997 to 1999 and pictured above on the left.
NetYaroze.com was (I assume) created by 'Sony Japan' and not with the original western name which was often spelt Net Yarouze. This suggests it was created for the western launch (February 1997) and audience. The Japanese members site was http://yaroze.spice-net.co.jp and it was mirrored in netyaroze-europe.com.
- "Derek da Silva", Thursday, December 21, 2000 4:17 PM.-
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SCEI hasn't been shut down - see: www.yaroze.spice-net.co.jp The mirror of the above site is so broken it's actually possible to access more of the actual SCEI, even without a password. Derek
2014 to 2019 and pictured above on the right.
A simple site that shared a compilation CD image with 83 Net Yaroze games. The site also provided good instructions on how to play it in an emulator.
August 2022.
I discovered that netyaroze.com was no longer live. I checked it's domain status to see if that was still current, it wasn't and surprisingly it wasn't squatted either.
I had originally hoped that someone else interested in Net Yaroze would take it and do something interesting with it.
After a few weeks, it occurred to me, that netyaroze-europe.com could be moved to netyaroze.com and netyaroze-europe.com could be restored back to what it was, from 1997 to 2009.
Again after thinking about it some more for a few days, the guilt of not doing it, eventually won out and it was registered in late September 2022.
The NetYaroze-Europe.com domain name.
To my understanding, the early days of the Net Yaroze program was hosted and serviced by the same web and newsgroups that the professional developers used, just walled off so the Net Yaroze members couldn't see the professional side and most likely the professionals didn't have access to the Net Yaroze side, there were a lot of dummy user accounts created, I guess for this purpose and journalist etc.
At some stage, I guess Sony decided it would be easier to manage the two separate groups with the Net Yaroze side having it's own completely separate domain name and hardware.
To my knowledge this is true, except for Sony America, which I believe only used http://www.scea.sony.com/net/yaroze as their web portal.
NetYaroze-Europe.com was the Net Yaroze member's site for Sony Europe (SCEE), which include Europe, the UK and other PAL territories serviced by Sony.
Originally, members were expected to pay a membership fee, to access the member's web portal and newsgroups services, but I was never asked for membership fees, I would guess being so niche, that to implement a system like that would have been harder then it was worth, and simply dropped the idea of paid membership renewals.
Surprisingly the service was up and running 12 years, and apart from a few random hiccups, it ran fine! Shutting down in July 2009, which means that the Net Yaroze server was there being run and maintained along other professional developer's back-end systems, including PlayStation, PS2 and PS3.
That's official first party, development support of a hobbyist console, through 3 console generations!
After hearing about Ouya in 2013, I got back into gamedev as a hobby and revisited the Net Yaroze while also looking at modern gamedev.
In 2017, I noticed the Net Yaroze Europe domain name was available and decided to move my Net Yaroze related blog posts to it, while also contacting other Net Yaroze members to recreate their member's page. No Sony material was hosted.
Contacting members for individual permission was too time consuming so that stopped, instead I focused on organising articles and technical information using this wiki looking site.
NetYaroze-Europe.com archive.
I was a Net Yaroze (SCEE) member and signed the Net Yaroze Membership and License Agreement and do take it seriously, and I have.
However, for the past few years I've felt like a gatekeeper, and wanted that feeling lifted from me, looking to pass it on to someone else interested, that didn't happen.
When the NetYaroze.com domain became available, it opened the opportunity to recreate the original European Net Yaroze experience. I felt overwhelmed with guilt if I didn't and so didn't have a choice.
Apologies.
I'd like to sincerely apologize to Sony, especially the people at Sony UK, past and present.
The archive is not monetized in anyway and commercial use is discouraged.
It's shared solely in the interest of preservation, research, education and to encourage game development as a fun and STEM hobby. I do hope this can be seen as a legacy preservation project of your great initiative and work.
Secondly, but most importantly, I'd like to also sincerely apologize to my fellow Net Yaroze members around the world. The Net Yaroze experience was about creating and also sharing, in some cases we shared too much... please look back with fondness and know that we've partaken in something special, even 20 years later.
No malice or harm is intended and at your discretion, content will be removed.
For more information, please read the ethos section.
Please email: mike (at) netyaroze.com to get into private contact with me.
Maintenance.
The goal is to keep the archive as original as possible, while still being accessible and useful in modern day. These can conflict at times, but authenticity will always prevail.
Full names.
On a personal note, I've been using my real name online since I started (late 90's) and I don't consider it to be dangerous. Just like I don't consider full names and contact information in the WhitePages dangerous, however if you want your name scrubbed from the archive, please email me.
Changes.
0) TBA
1) The domain splash image, is from a glossy, double sided, 3 page, thick board, square shaped brochure (scanned by Zetrox2k) that was part of the European Net Yaroze prospectors pack. Surprisingly, even in Australia we received one!
Image: The brochure used the Open button from the Net Yaroze console as it's first page.
The original server didn't have anything there, it simply forwarded the browser to the main homepage. If you hadn't entered your member's username and password already, it would prompt you for it before giving access to anything on the site, this was simply the Apache user authentication module.
2) Member's list ordered by folder size, biggest to smallest and names removed as most of them never uploaded anything (16 Kb or less). However the main homepage listing does include the member's name, this information was already in the public domain.
3) Newsgroups page was changed to an iframe page to keep the top navigation bar, I can't recall the original page, it was not archived.
4) There is no site search, instead I added a google domain search, however it will take time to index all the new files.
5) The link on the Europe homepage "News: news:www.netyaroze-europe.com/" points to http:netyaroze-europe.com/yaroze/newsgroups/ , and I've put more newsgroup related information on that page.
6) Added the navigation bar to the tops of the problems and new members category pages, and an archive of the originals are in that directory.
7) The 404 missing file page will list the contents in the current directory, ie ~user/ftp/dir.listing will show the actual listing in ~homepage/ftp, etc
8) Extracted all .zip, .gz, .tar, .rar, .lzh, .z, .7z into folders where they're located.
9) All text files (c, h, bat, makefile, auto, etc) should be viewable via the browser.
10) Apache web server directory listing is turned on, the archive also has captures of these, so you will have to do #7, to see #8
11) Converted all .pdf and .doc to .pdf.txt and .doc.txt respectively.
Notes.
0) The original site used the www subdomain as default, non www. links will automatically redirect to the www subdomain.
1) The site CGI counters does work, using the same software that the original server also used, however some browsers don't call the image HTML tags with parameters correctly, unfortunately.
2) Homepage listing Some listings doesn't work, ie Terry Arnold II was a SCEA member, I guess someone added it for him, to my knowledge, SCEA members didn't have access to the SCEE server and vice versa.
Todo.
1) Look at SCEA & SCEI.
2) Maybe add a list of use full links.
Thanks for reading.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays 2022!
Regards.
Mike Garcia.
Please email: mike (at) netyaroze.com to get into private contact with me.
For a public discussion or private messaging, join us on the Chat Server (Discord).
Or feel free to leave public comments regarding the Net Yaroze on any page. Questions, suggestions, problems, complaints etc.