Custom Tracks Worldwide

What is a Custom Track Worldwide?

Also known by the acronym CTWW, the term currently refers to the use of custom tracks in a regional race set to use an unused region by Nintendo. The term Custom Track Worldwide has actually been in use for a greater length of time than many people are aware, and in fact the concept was around for far longer than there have been any supported means to utilize it.

History

In the early days of the CTGP, Custom Track Worldwides could actually be done at any time providing there was more than one person who had custom tracks running on their game. However back then it involved searching for a regular Worldwide room and then spamming custom track votes, which at that point used the same slots as Nintendo tracks. This was a highly unpopular method of racing on custom tracks due to the unfortunate intrusion of players who were not running the tracks, as these people could still easily join through the use of their own Worldwide search function. It also came with the nasty side effect that if some of the racers were playing on a track that used a cannon, anyone who was not running a cannon track would have their Wiis frozen as soon as anybody entered it - this was caused by the non-cannon track searching for a cannon point that did not exist in the KMP. As a result of all these factors combined with the inconvenience involved in successfully getting a large number of people running the tracks to join, custom track worldwides were shelved at this stage in favour of friend rooms for online play.

Later on, research performed by community member XeR provided a promising suggestion that the Regional/Continental feature could be manipulated to allow for more stably functioning Custom Track Worldwides, and it was at this point that the much more convenient way of locating other custom track players was born.

How do Custom Track Worldwides actually work?

Normally in Mario Kart Wii when you select the Worldwide button the game takes you to region 0, which is something that every game has access to (thus, allowing you to connect with players from around the world). Similarly, all of the Regional/Continental buttons take you to another numbered region, raging from Japan (1) to China (7). When this region value is modified, the games will stop telling all copies of the game to go to their correct regions, and instead will send them towards ones that Nintendo never intended to be used - regions that no ordinary players could access - providing an environment where the only inhabitants were people that fulfilled certain conditions (which is obviously perfect since only some people have custom tracks).

For a full list of the regions used in Mario Kart Wii (including those included in custom track distributions) click here.

Can I be banned by Nintendo for participating in Custom Track Worldwides?

You may have seen in the CTGP Revolution custom track distribution a message on the start-up screen that reads: "Use of the Custom Tracks Worldwide mode could result in a ban from online play". This has always been a bit of a grey area for many people, and in some instances players have actually been put off from using the feature altogether for fear that they will be banned for doing so.

As far as the community is aware there have been no bans issued directly as a result of using the custom tracks worldwide feature for the simple reason that we are acting outside of Nintendo's normal regions, therefore not coming into contact with any normal players and hindering their gameplay through such methods as VR modifications, item hacking etc.

So the answer to this question is either:

• Nintendo has no way of detecting who is using a custom region.

or

• Nintendo knows who is using a custom region, but does not care as it does not get in the way of the gameplay of those players not running the modifications to their Wii.

However it is worth noting that when using the "Save to SD Card" option recommended to avoid the corruption of save data, you must not attempt to connect to Nintendo WFC using the same license both with and without this option enabled. The reason for this is that after racing on CTWW your VR level will have either increased or decreased compared with what it was before, and since this information is stored on both the server and your Wii it is possible for Nintendo to detect that your VR is constantly jumping around from what they expect it to be and could ban you for VR hacking. A simple way to avoid this is to simply create a new license for your SD card save, or to just use the SD save every time you want to connect to Wi-Fi with that license.

Dysfunctional Live Views

Unfortunately, due to the fact that the game was never planned to be able to load so many track slots, everything after slot 42 refuses to show up correctly in a live view without further editing. The result is seeing all of the racers flying around on whatever course slot is being used to load the custom track, rather than the slot itself as would be expected. As a result of this, live views shown before v1.01 of the CTGPR not only appear very confusing, but also have the potential to freeze the Wii of the person viewing it if the custom track has a cannon and the Nintendo track viewed does not. In v1.01 of CTGP Revolution this problem was fixed so that all tracks are shown correctly in live views and no longer cause freezes.

The Rules

As outlined by MrBean35000vr:

• Don't glitch. Glitches include: Throwing yourself off a track to spawn later in a lap, taking a huge risky "shortcut" that sometimes doesn't count a lap, or a move that significantly reduces the time taken to complete a lap and was obviously not the intended method. Should something happen by mistake, don't do it twice, and wait for your opposition to catch up.

• Don't troll. Unless you and your opponent are on good terms and don't mind, stopping behind to hit racers with stars, red shells, etc. is not good practice. Turning around to pass a Thundercloud is not counted as trolling.

• If a track is known to be glitchy, try to avoid picking it where possible. This is in an attempt to prevent other players from glitching and thus spoiling the fun for others in the room.

Is there somewhere to contact those who I've faced in Custom Tracks Worldwide mode?

Yes, if you wish to talk to others you may have raced against to discuss the races etc. then click here to go to the Mario Kart Wii forums. Here you will find many other players of custom tracks worldwide, and will be kept up-to-date with future releases along with several other things.

Which Custom Track distributions use the Custom Track Worldwide feature?

The main distributions recognised to use this feature are:

• CTGP Revolution
• Multiple packs by the author Wiimm

Version History

Version	Date of release	Information
v1	2011-11-18	First public release of the CTWW patch.
v1.1	Unknown	A fix to allow friends running the patch to join you, and to prevent friends on your real region from joining if they are not running the patch.

Names in Other Languages

The translated names for this feature as seen in CTGP Revolution:

Language	Translated Name
Dutch	Wereldwijd zelfgemaakte banen
French	Custom Tracks Mondial
German	Custom Tracks Global
Italian	Custom Track Mondiale
Japanese	カスタムのコースせかいのだれとでも
Spanish	Custom Tracks Mundial
Greek	CTς Παγκοσμίως
Portuguese	Custom Tracks Mundial
Polish	Własne Trasy Przez Internet