Wiimmfi

Nintendo has announced that the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection service will be discontinued on May 20, 2014. This will impact all DS and Wii games with online features, including Mario Kart Wii. Wiimm had been analysing the Mario Kart Wii network traffic since November 2012 and had already written an helper tool named mkw-ana. And so he decided together with other people to create the Wii-Server Project to replace Nintendo's servers for Mario Kart Wii and perhaps for other games.

State of the Project

The tester team around Wiimm already played versus and battle in rooms, in regions and worldwide. They played standard Mario Kart Wii and Wiimms MKW-Fun. The latter is based on CTGP-R v1.02. Mario Kart Wii is running very stable now.

On Sunday different player met >90 minutes in region 125 (MKW-Fun 2014-04) without any problems. For MKW, the custom it is very stable now. The only problem may be the total number of players — time will show.

Before playing on the new server, the game images must be patched to exchange the domain and to replace https by http access. There are 2 patchers available:

Game Patcher

To play Wii games using out own server, the games must be patched. There are 2 patchers for USB-Loader, one for MKWii and one for other games:

• wiimmfi-Patcher

For Riivolution users, MrBean35000vr is on the way to create a channel, that will patch the strings on the fly.

Confirmed games

The following games can be played using the custom servers:

• Mario Kart Wii
• Animal Crossing Wii

Don't forget, that the custom server runs in test mode and the development is not finished.

Games ready to test

The following games are enabled and waiting for tests:

• Mario Kart DS (NTSC-U-patch, PAL-patch)
• Animal Crossing DS
• Pokemon Diamond (NTSC-U-patch
• Pokemon Pearl (NTSC-U-patch)
• Pro Evolution Soccer 2008
• Super Smash Bros Brawl

It seems, that DS games also need a patch to replace https requests by http.

Here you can find always a list of supported games.

Updates

2014-05-11 14:30 UTC

• Some of the users had created new profiles while connected to the custom servers. These Profiles are invalid now and you should remove them.
• Henceforth, new profiles are stored permanently, even on a server update.
• MKWii: Meeting of non friends works now much better and faster. The solution was to insert a "sleep(1/2 sec)" at the right place.

Maintenance Time

The wiimmfi-server is running in test mode. There is a second server for the active development. And so major updates most be done frequently.

The maintenance is set between 15:00 and 16:00 UTC (17–18h CET) at every day. In this time the server maybe stopped for updates and other things without further announcement. So don't be astonished if you are kicked or login is not possible during this period. This time will also used to insert new retrieved friend codes.

Implementation

Wiimm decided to implement the code in PHP as a fast solution and to find out the protocol details. From the beginning it was clear, that it must be rewritten in C or C++ for performance reasons. While developing, there were some other issues, so one of the servers is already implemented in C.

Server NASWII/NAS

Server NASWII is the https based login server. NAS is an old NDS implementation for http. Both can be interchanged. The server is implemented using APACHE2 and PHP5.

At the moment, only logins are accepted with old and new profiles. Complete new savegames send a request to get their unique console nickname from the server. This is not implemented yet.

Server GPCM

If entering the WFC, the Wii connects to the Server GPCM using TCP. The connection is closed, when leaving WFC. The server is used for general maintenance and for message exchange between the clients.

It is implemented as PHP script. Because of interprocess communication (transferring messages) an re-implementation in C is planned. Currently the custom server does not support all kinds of messages.

Server GPSP

Server GPSP is used to retrieve information about friends. The Wii connects and disconnects frequently using TCP. We use Nintendos GPSP server to retrieve the profile_id and nick pairs.

Server GPSP is fully implemented as PHP script.

Server NATNEG

Server NATNEG is used to establish a connection between two players both being behind NAT. The clients only communicate with this server when they try to connect to another player.

Using old profiles

For each profile, there exists a profile id and nick name pair. Only the Wii of the user and the server database knows both of them. At login, the Wii sends the nick name and the server answers with the related profile id. If the profile id is wrong, the game aborts the login.

If you want to use your old profile with the new custom servers, you must use the Web Formula to register it. The server will then try to retrieve your related nickname. This retrieving works only, if you have registered friends, and at least one friend has registered your profile.

This data retrieving only works until 18th May, 2014. For the future, a homebrew app to read the necessary data out of the savegame is planned.

If you want to use one of your old profiles, please use one of them during your first connection. It may lead to problems if your first connecton is done with a new profile.

Friend Code Market

It seems, that there are many people, who playing online, but never added friends. For those people without friends, there exist a Friend Code Market:

• Friend Code Market

It is also possible to exchange your friend codes in other forums or at the discussion page.

Links

Project forum @ Wii-Homebrew.com

• MKW-Server-Projekt
• Web Formula to register your old friend code

Other forums

• Project thread @ mariokartwii.com
• Project thread @ gbatemp.net