Metropolis Street is Racer Back Online!

[rjay63]

Hi Jial, thanks for your reply.

Yes, when I said UK version, I meant PAL (European) version.

Re the Dreamarena login situation, I do not think I was clear enough in my original sentence so I will try to clarify below. Please accept my apologies for any confusion

If you had a PAL copy of the game and wanted to access the MSR website, you would first need to log into Dreamarena...however this was automatic! On the PAL versions, you can see it says "Connecting to Dream Arena" when you try to go online. This is because the game assumes you had already set up a Dreamarena account. If you did not have a Dreamarena account, then the MSR Internet option would either be grayed out or would not connect when you dial. To make a Dreamarena account, you would have used a Dreamkey 1.0 or 1.5 disc (that came with new Dreamcasts) that was programmed to dial a free phone number that took you to the Dreamarena registration page. Once you have created an account, this information would then be saved internally to your Dreamcast's memory. Once you completed registration, you then could then use the MSR browser to access the relevant pages within Dreamarena. The PAL MSR browser is a modified version of Dreamkey 1.0 (without the registration facility).

Technically your DreamPi credentials stored within the DC's internal memory are now substituting for the automatic Dreamarena login.

With regard to the US version, you note it states "Connecting to ISP" when dialing as they were able to choose their own providers from the outset. However the US version also uses a modified version of Dreamkey 1.0 (called Internet Viewer and again minus registration facilities). While you could view some MSR pages outside the Dreamarena wall, the leaderboards and the ability to upload times was contained within Dreamarena itself. However I do not know exactly how US users gained access; were they required to create some kind of Dreamarena account or were they given some kind of special access where Dreamarena automatically recognised them as US based and just let them in? I know the "authenticate.dream-key.com" URL pops up when you browse some of the US MSR pages on the Wayback machine.

The main URL is the same for both PAL and US versions (metropolis.dream-key.com). I doubt Seganet had any involvement with MSR at all (that was a monthly subscription service for online gaming in the US. MSR only had online features).

Basically anything involving Dreamcast online in Europe went via Dreamarena in some way. This continued until early 2002 when Dreamarena closed and Dreamkey 3.0 was released (which allowed European users to choose their own ISP)

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The "ringcode" I am referring to is actually on the back of the GD-ROM itself. It's located just by the disc hole (the serial number). Here are the codes for the 3 PAL versions:

MK-51022-0146SS: v1.001 (10.10.2000)
MK-51022-0146SA: v1.002 (10/20/2000)
MK-51022-0146SB: v1.009 (11/21/2000) **final PAL revision**

Taken from: https://www.sega-dc.de/dreamcast/Metropolis_Street_Racer
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The demos can be found by going into the Options menus. While it is just footage of CPU cars, you can see how the replay option may have looked if it was implemented (there are no replays in any version of the game).

[jial]

Hi rjay63, now i understand, yes you are right!

Unfortunally I didn´t use dreamarena so much, and this is a thinkg that I regret. There are a lot of lacks about how works dreamarena itself and how works inside the websites, in Sonic Adventure , for example, when you create a upload file, the game adds your email address registered in the dreamcast memory in a field within the file, so you can identify the user, but in msr, as you said, after dreamarena authentication (simulated by dreampi) I didn´t find any data about that registration.

i assume that when you registered an account on dreamarena, your username was the same that the username on internet connection (BT was the ISP that support that at the beginning)

One of my pendant subject is to learn who works dreamarena, who registered internally all data, and all in general.

The login pages is a patch, if we could know more about that, we could get a more realistic experience.

So, if anybody have technical knowledgements o know something, it will great!!

Thanks for all

[hadyn]

Just a quick thought (I think I’ve mentioned it previously) - would it be possible to point players on where they need to go to get a Seganet account from as some people might access the page but are unfamiliar with this forum or thread?

[jial]

Yes, I can add a link to seganet registering page if you want

[jial]

@rjay63, I sorted courses by name, can you see if all works fine?

About add the track lenght and a link to seganet, I will do after I release the source code.

Sorry for not release the code last saturday but I wanna introduce that change before

[rjay63]

Hi Jial, unfortunately this change seems to have made all the World Time Trial leaderboards disappear completely. When you try to view the leaderboards by selecting the city and hitting GO, the select circuit option is now blank (for all cities). Here's a picture:

I tried to view these leaderboards on both PC and DC. If this is too difficult to fix, you may wish to change it back to the original setting.

I have also tried to upload a New Time Trial record for the "Shibuya" course and received a error, even though it displayed the correct summary below (username & country, course, car). I think hadyn also pointed this in an earlier message. Please also note, when you go to the upload screen after logging in, the "file" button (that takes you to your VMU) does not say "file", but is written as some kind of computer code.

Please do not be disheartened by the above; I think it is fantastic you have been able to bring the MSR website back in this way. Thanks again!

[jial]

Hi Jial, unfortunately this change seems to have made all the World Time Trial leaderboards disappear completely. When you try to view the leaderboards by selecting the city and hitting GO, the select circuit option is now blank (for all cities). Here's a picture:

example.png

I tried to view these leaderboards on both PC and DC. If this is too difficult to fix, you may wish to change it back to the original setting.

I have also tried to upload a New Time Trial record for the "Shibuya" course and received a error, even though it displayed the correct summary below (username & country, course, car). I think hadyn also pointed this in an earlier message. Please also note, when you go to the upload screen after logging in, the "file" button (that takes you to your VMU) does not say "file", but is written as some kind of computer code.

Please do not be disheartened by the above; I think it is fantastic you have been able to bring the MSR website back in this way. Thanks again!

No problem rjay63, I notice the bug, I think that I can solve easily so, this weekend I will fix it. About shibuya bug it's pendant. Can you tell me if the rest of new time trials works correctly? thanks

[jial]

I solved the course list bug, now is showed!!!!

next shibuya time trial bug

[Jako]

I solved the course list bug, now is showed!!!!

next shibuya time trial bug

Thanks Jial! I saw too that times was missing but reading this I understood that you was fixing something

Rjay63!!! Very nice times uploaded and thanks too for that important info!!! That 2000' experiences and memories are so important. And funny to read them, good times

[hadyn]

Keep up the great work jial!