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 Wiimmfi Project (formerly Wii-Server Project) to replace Nintendo's servers for Mario Kart Wii and perhaps for other games.

wiimmfi.de

wiimmfi.de is the new domain that replaces nintendowifi.net. All games must be patched to use this new domain and to disable https requests (see below).

The domain wiimmfi.de was registered by Wiimm for this project. If Wiimm discontinue this service at any time in the future, he will give away the the domain, the software and the data base content.

State of the Project

The tester team around Wiimm already played many versus and battle in rooms, in regions and worldwide, sometimes more than an hour without interruptions. They played standard Mario Kart Wii and Wiimms MKW-Fun. The latter is based on CTGP-R v1.02.

Confirmed games

The following games can be played using the custom servers:

• Animal Crossing: City Folk/Let's Go to the City!
• Mario Kart Wii (no mii exchange)
• Pokemon Battle Revolution
• Pro Evolution Soccer 2010 JPN
• Pro Evolution Soccer 2011
• Pro Evolution Soccer 2013
• Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing (only global races)
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl

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:

• Animal Crossing: Wild World
• Fortune Street Wii
• Mario Kart DS (NTSC-U-patch, PAL-patch)
• Mario Strikers Charged
• Pokémon Diamond (NTSC-U-patch
• Pokémon Pearl (NTSC-U-patch)
• Pro Evolution Soccer 2008
• Pro Evolution Soccer 2009
• Pro Evolution Soccer 2010
• Pro Evolution Soccer 2012
• The Last Story
• The Conduit
• The Conduit 2
• Trackmania Wii

It seems that DS games also need a patch to replace https requests by http. Here you can find a patcher that should work with all DS games.

Here you can find always a list of enabled games.

Known Mario Kart Issues

1. There are some problems with the status message system. Sometimes player don't see the online status of others correctly.
2. After registering a new friend, the Miis are not exchanged with the result, that the players can't meet in a room. Workaround: Play one global race.

Game Patcher

To play Wii games using the custom server, the games must be patched using the wiimmfi-Patcher. There are 2 patchers for USB-Loader, one for Mario Kart Wii and one for other games. For Riivolution users, MrBean35000vr is on the way to create a channel, that will patch the strings on the fly.

Bean's Wiimmfi Tutorial - Homebrew Channel

BeanJr's Wiimmfi Tutorial - Universal (ntscj not supported)

Updates/Maintenance

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

The maintenance time is set between 15:00 and 16:00 UTC (17–18h CET) at every day. In this time the server may be stopped for updates and other things without further announcement. Don't be surprised if you are kicked or if 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 MASTER

Server MASTER listens at a UDP port. The clients (games) send frequently status records to the master . The master server stores them into a game specific table, where other clients can retrieve the information using the Server MS (see next point).

Server MASTER is fully implemented as PHP script.

Server MS

Server MS is connected by the clients to retrieve information about other online clients. The query looks like a SQL query with select, where and limit clauses. The reply is encrypted by a game specific secret.

Server MS 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.

Server NATNEG is fully implemented in C. Because it is the only C tool, it has an open second port to send special UDP packtes for Server MS with the faked sender address of Server MASTER.

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. After this date, there will be a homebrew app which reads the necessary data out of the save games and adds it to our server. You can download the app here. Simply start it and all profiles from supported games will get transmitted to our server. You can find a list of all supported games here.

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 connection is done with a new profile.

Friend Code Market

It seems that there are many people who are playing online but have never added any friends. For those people without any registered friends, they can go to the 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-Project
• Web Formula to register your old friend code
• Wiipid extractor to dump your old friend code from the savegames

Other forums

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