Custom Tracks Worldwide
Overview
Custom Track Worldwide (also known as CTWW) refers to the use of custom tracks in a regional race set to use an unused region by Nintendo. The term 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 CTGP 2.8, Custom Track Worldwides could actually be played at any time provided 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 favor 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 Does it Work?
Normally, in Mario Kart Wii, when selecting the Worldwide button, the game does not use any region, 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 a numbered region, ranging from Japan (0) 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 who 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), see the list of Custom Track Regions.
Can I be Banned for Participating in Custom Track Worldwides?
You may have seen a message on the start-up screen in the CTGP Revolution custom track distribution that says: "Use of the Custom Tracks Worldwide mode could result in a ban from online play". This has always been a bit of a gray 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 had no automatic way of detecting who was using a custom region.
or
- Nintendo knew who was using a custom region, but did not care as it did 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 create a new license for your SD card save, or to use the SD save every time you want to connect to Wi-Fi with that license.
Since Nintendo WFC has been taken down, all custom track distributions use Wiimmfi as a replacement. You can use Custom Tracks Worldwide without any risk getting banned. You will only get banned for cheating online in regular or Custom Track Worldwides.
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 CTGP Revolution 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. Before the official live view fix was released, Tock made a patch which prevented freezes when watching a live view in Custom Tracks Worldwide mode (however, it still showed the Nintendo track rather than the custom track). In v1.01 of CTGP Revolution, this problem was fixed so that all tracks would be shown correctly in live views and could no longer cause freezes.
The Rules
As outlined by MrBean35000vr:
- Do not perform glitches. Glitches include: Throwing yourself off a track to spawn later in a lap, taking a huge risky "shortcut" that sometimes does not 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, do not do it twice, and wait for your opposition to catch up.
- Do not troll other players. Unless you and your opponent are on good terms and do not 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.
Usage of the Feature
This feature has been first introduced in CTGP Revolution. This patch has been in the acknowledged in other distributions, using these below as examples:
Version History
| Version | Date of release | Information |
|---|---|---|
| v1.0 | 2011-11-18 | First release |
| v1.1 | Unknown | Fixed people not running the patch still being able to join. |
| v1.2 | Unknown | Update by Leseratte:
|