This is a long one, so strap in. For those in a hurry, if you have an account on the Nextcloud, Jellyfin or Home Assisstant instances on this server, you are not affected. This issue only affects those using the apps formerly listed on the Downloads page as "Legacy MCAESVR software". This change is effective immediately, and will be occuring over the next few days. More details will be below.
If you are familiar with the inner workings of this webpage and the server this is hosted on, it may be incredibly obvious that the legacy apps will be discontinued. But for the uninitiated, allow me to give you the lore dump.
While this page did not publicly go online until Summer of 2023, there is a whole history of things from far beyond then. In 2019, I started this server off my Raspberry Pi, only hosting its contents exclusively over LAN. The original objective of this server was to provide the same types of services as we are hosting now, but with all systems being powered by software written in-house. Originally, this ecosystem was going to be known as Fileshare, but since another cloud service used this name, I would then call it Filelink. This also wouldn't work out, as Filelink is also the name of a feature included with Mozilla Thunderbird that lets you send larger attachments in emails. Thus, this name was also dropped from usage in 2023 when the URL was put online. This name still shows up in some of the legacy apps and was only haphazardly removed from the visible HTML pages. Most of these legacy apps still go by this name internally.
If you were somehow able to interact with the apps (unlikely since my testing indicated that the installers don't work unless modded to use the URL instead of the LAN IP address), you may have found that the apps never saw the light of day in full force. These were all demo apps, and the full versions were intended to have logins and fully functional software. These plans changed when I installed Nextcloud on the server and found that it was everything I wanted and more. With this considered, the fate of the legacy apps was largely sealed.
Now, while most of the apps had demos released, two apps didn't: Retroplay and FMB. Development on FMB never started, and was only metioned on the early posts on this blog. Retroplay, however, was incredibly close to seeing a demo. Retroplay was the streaming service in the ecosystem, as was set to release on the next version. The only thing missing were some of the special pages used to make the software work, fully constructed. This software worked by statically hosting the audio files and special markup files to list the music stored. Video never came to it but music did, by way of a test page. This poses significant problems, which brings us to today, and what we are doing now.
As stated earlier, Retroplay and the other programs hosted the media, statically, i.e. as if it were a webpage. This was problematic as there was no security or access control, allowing access to anyone who knew how to find it. The software wasn't completely necessary, as the files were just standard MP3/FLAC files. From a copyright perspective, this is no good. As a result, the Retroplay library will be taken down immediately.
For the apps that aren't like that, while it would be nice to keep the old apps running, they aren't used anymore. Thus it is pointless to keep the apps available. Additionally, the downloads do not work as they need to be modified to connect to the server. Thus the downloads are also going to be shut down.
With all of that history out of the way, let's get to the meat of what's happening.
First off: Legacy app download links are being removed.
Secondly: The components of Retroplay is being shut down, effective immediately.
Third: This blog will remain, in both the legacy app form and on the HTML version. However, this will be the last post new post made for the legacy blog (kinda ironic, since the legacy app is newer than the web version). I am not certain if the blog will even see a future update, since Nextcloud does a better job at this.
If you don't have an account for this server (such as a Nextcloud or Jellyfin account on this server), you will lose all access to the things this software was meant to provide. These products were not meant to be publicly accessible, meant only for the LAN. While we do have a signup page, your sign up will more than likely be rejected due to security concerns. We thank you for being around and using this software and hope to see you on future things that may be publicly available.
If you do have an account, however, this means nothing. As stated earlier, this software never saw the true light of day. If you have an account, you likely never used this software or needed it, as Nextcloud and Jellyfin was already set up and did not need this software. Thank you for using the server.
And with that being said, that's the end of the legacy apps and the end of this post. If you ever used any of this software, we thank you for messing with it and hope it was at least somewhat enjoyable despite how broken it was. If you are interested in some publically accessible stuff on the server, keep an eye on the blog. I might make something publically accessible soon, and will announce it here when it becomes ready.