Was reminded of this only after it became February 8 here, but it's still February 7 elsewhere, so I guess that kind-of counts.
15 years ago, on February 7 2009, I released the first version of YANG to support server advertising, making use of a master server; Sometimes, more than one such server. Although YANG was originally released in April 2008, server advertising was the last feature missing before making it (more) usable for others, helping to find other players. Dukester X was used for playing Duke3D online beforehand, and it supported server advertising, of course.
Replica had been hosting master servers for that February 7 2009 release and the various other releases that followed. Replica eventually retired from hosting for YANG as of August 5 2022 (if not August 4 in my or Replica's timezone), following the initial public release of NukemNet from July 31 2022; ok, it's possible more people really started testing NukemNet a day later, but should be close enough.
Back to YANG: aaBlueDragon, the author of Dukonnector and NukemNet, offered to host a master server instead of Replica. Since there was still a bit of demand for YANG at the time, I agreed. Nowadays, I don't think there's much, but aaBlueDragon is currently still running it, as there's already a server for other purposes, so that doesn't really add a cost for him. The circumstances may still change, so you might find the master server shut down at some later point.
In the meanwhile, you maybe saw in an earlier message of mine that I originally planned to write a public farewell from the YANG service, following Replica's shutdown of hosting for YANG. I eventually didn't do this, due to aaBlueDragon offering alternative hosting.
Even though aaBlueDragon is currently still hosting a YANG master server, I think that I can post this purposed 2022 farewell. The timestamp of the file yang-farewell-202208.txt was "2022-08-19 13:07:01.559646500 +0300".
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Yet Another Netplay Guider (YANG) 2008-2022
Experimental single-player launcher: 2007
YANG client: 2008-2020
YANG master server: 2009-2020
Website hosting for YANG: 2008-2022
Master server hosting: 2009-2022
Thanks to:
- SiteSled.com, for offering a place for hosting a website for me (NY00123), later used for uploading the YANG client.
- Duke4.net staff, for providing another place for hosting later. From what I remember, TerminX did the job of transferring website contents for me, even without asking him for it.
- Replica, for hosting the standalone YANG website afterwards, and also for previously hosting Dukester X and YANG master servers, along with other possible services of similar nature. Further thanks Replica for becoming the "Voice of YANG" after I departured for post.
- Turrican, for becoming a significant contributor to the YANG codebase around the time people started to use YANG for real. With possible exceptions, Turrican was also serving as the sole coder for YANG after my aforementioned departure. He further contributed to a few ports of Duke Nukem 3D.
- StrikerTheHedgefox, for giving YANG source modifications a try, including (but not limited to) assistance with making YANG more wxWidgets 3.0 compatible. He also created a git repository for the project. He's working on NetDuke32 nowadays.