User:Wingcapman

Introduction

Hey hello everyone. I'm Wingcapman, call me Wing if my nickname is too long to remember. I'm a Nintendo-fanatic who plays action-platforming games quite often, with a side of party games (mainly Super Mario games, but also Bomberman, the Legend of Zelda and Runbow to name a few). I speedrun as well as setting high scores for a few amount of games too, although I might not be so busy with these whenever I have a project to work on.

I'm also an artist (an amateur designer) who loves to think of new ideas and designs, no matter for and from what it is and/or will be. I love art, I love drawing and painting, too. I need to be more creative in general, though. Plenty of ideas that have a lot of potential, but almost none of them get being worked on, typical.

The main reason why I registered here is to share my Mario Kart Wii-related content to you all as well as sharing ideas.

Current projects being worked on

Status	Description
Mii Outfit C Done!	My rendition of Mii Outfit C. The silly jokes and memes that were made before Mii Outfit C ever got revealed, the way how people spread misinformation or shared their own funny ideas of how this character could look like, that's the kind of stuff I like to think about and to imagine. And so, I had to make my own rendition of it. As soon I saw a YouTube video about Mii Outfit C being selectable and playable, I decided to collect all kinds of information to make it fully playable for local play and online. And that, is finally done! Well, for a public release that is! I might get back to this one to change some of the textures as well as optimizations in the models (as I found out that BrawlBox actually "corrupted" the kart models in a way where changing specific colors and shading results in color corruptions).
Illegal Vehicle Combos Current active project.	Unrestricted Vehicle mod; this is a big project that I host. This mod makes it possible for the player to choose every character on every vehicle, just like as an unlockable Mario Kart DS-feature and how it became a feature by default in Mario Kart 7 and in later games. Currently Luigi is the furthest in progress as he only needs custom animations. Mii Outfit C only has their seat positioning corrected. Textures for several characters' vehicles are done. But in general, there's still a lot to do. Animations and vehicle model tweaks are the very last things to do; a finishing touch so-to-speak. So the important things are getting worked on first, which are the custom vehicle textures as well as fixing the characters' seat positioning!
Menu UI Documentation Slow progression.	Making pages for all the Scene/UI categories so that we can see what those menu files contain. And of course so that we have an explanation for every file that exist and how they're used in the game. So far only MenuSingle.szs and Title.szs are written down, which is quite a lot, and might burn me out if I don't take breaks.
Personalized Menus Slow progression.	Finishing off my custom menus. This goes hand-in-hand with writing down all the Scene/UI category pages. While it has a showcase-release as of now, it's far away from done and I'm still experimenting with things. The current progression is that the whole custom menu project contains custom fonts that are slightly extended. I'm also waiting for Wiimm and Leseratte to get rid of the Extended BMG Text code because now I have to check if my text messages will cut off or not in vanilla Mario Kart Wii... So I literally have to work and test on two builds at the same time, which is simply not practical.
Local/Private Modpack Done but not optimized.	A local modpack where extended cups for races and battles can be played, as well as Mission mode. This is a modpack that won't be published by me if it ever gets published (at least, that's what I currently have planned). While this one is built and shared already, there's still room for optimization as well as missing music that can be added. Plus it includes an experimental version of my Mission Mode build. The game's filesize might be at its limits, though. There might be a second build that includes the Mario Kart DS-drift just for a new way to play Mario Kart Wii. For now it's planned to have this build local play only, so online mode will be scrapped unless people like the idea for all of these. Mission mode will contain 24 (or 32) missions of Wii and retro courses and arenas, while the remaining missions will be missions on custom courses and custom arenas (and of course will range from easy to very challenging and unique). My wishes for Mission mode will also be that we can upload our times at some point, but having a fully functional top 5 that saves your progress as well as showing your star ranking for each mission is what I hope to see in the future. For now it's the extra features and manually writing down your best times on paper for local tournaments that will work for me. And extra features for battle would be great too, such as a Free-For-All mode and certain improvements that I'm sure that can be made, but since I'm not a programmer, I only can wish for all of this to happen some day.

Updates

Date	Information about the update
2013-12-12	I had some personal problems with people who were complaining about how I made Heart of China. Since then I'm working on another custom track (which also be my last one), which might require skills - Inside the Dreamcatcher.
2015-03-16	Updated my information page. I also might will scrap the track Inside the Dreamcatcher and publish it as a sort of open source, but I'm not sure if I'll do it or not.
2018-08-12	Retired from the Mario Kart Wii modding community. Not working on any Mario Kart Wii-related content anymore. However, if you ever want to have my files, click here for my basic stuff and here for my menu modifications.
2023-01-26	I joined back around 2021 but never left an update here because I didn't know I would work back on my projects again. I decided to finish the stuff that's been collecting dust, as well as started new projects, such as Gold Mii & Gold Vehicles (Mii Outfit C Texture) and an upcoming Unrestricted Vehicle mod to help the community extend the game's replayability. At some point I thought it's a bit silly we had custom tracks for 14 years by now, but no extra cups for battle mode has been made, neither the unused buttons and "illegal vehicle combos" really have been developed (yet). It would be great to see the game being expanded to the point we can make plenty of users and players happy. I also added a longer description and background story behind Heart of China's development since I felt like it was needed.

Concept, Ideas & Development - Heart of China

My first custom Mario Kart Wii track, which was not meant to be a custom Mario Kart Wii track at all. The model was a replica from a location which takes place in a story I've been writing and drawing since 2004, but I tweaked it so much to make it usable for Mario Kart Wii to the point it's not even a replica anymore.

The Heart of China-area has a background story, although it might be a little vague to imagine for at least a few people out there. Basically, this area only ever had a small train station and an abandoned shrine. At some point, a family of 3 members (three Chinese dragons, which are two parents and a child) escaped from a war and hid inside the shrine. Once the war stopped, the parents decided to build a house close to the shrine, and wanted to live with the characters who're in the same region (which is simply based of Japan). From there, they decided to turn the abandoned shrine into partly a restaurant (which is the big red building that's in the middle of the area). The secret background story sentences you've found in the custom track are hints about this story.

So about this weird tunnel near the big red building, that was supposed to be a tunnel that goes to the small train station. In older Heart of China versions, I wanted to make it so that the small train station was actually a metro (which was planned to be put in as another secret area that goes underground, which would be located at the weird door at one of those smaller red buildings), while the inaccessible tunnel was planned to make a tunnel to walk down the mountain (which I ended up giving up on).

An interesting fact about Mario Kart Wii's Heart of China is that there were supposed to be blue shells flying around the track, like the one that's holding the big crate in the air for the sky shortcut, but would act like Moonview Highway's Bomb Car objects instead. Before v2.0 got released, I sent a few people in the community who helped me two different versions; one with the roaming blue shells, and one without. Maybe one day I'll get back to add those in.

Another interesting fact is that the track was planned to have 4 laps, instead of 3. I had to scrap this idea right after I asked people around if they'd like the idea, so I listened and moved on. As for other controversial ideas I had in mind, another one was special itemboxes. Yes, the track has them already, but those weren't actually meant to give those kind of items; it was planned to have blue shell-only special itemboxes, Bloopers-only and Fake Itemboxes-only, just to name a few. This was before we knew much about the Item Slot Table files, so I had no idea that it was actually possible to get those working.

And one more interesting fact is, this track wasn't actually my first custom track...! In fact, I was fooling around with Google SketchUp and thought it'd be fun to create a custom track for Mario Kart Wii that's building blue shells; so basically, a Blue Shell Factory! After a few weeks or so I stopped working on it because my ideas were too big for what I could make at the time. However, this idea still stuck in my head for all those years and made some concept art about how the outside would look like, which can be seen here, and showing a top-view from the outside of the "temple"/factory here.

Concept, Ideas & Development - Inside the Dreamcatcher

The idea behind this track's design is that it is a difficult track to play on. This track in general is inspired by people who're doing researches about dreams, people who want to capture dreams in a video format.

Inside the Dreamcatcher starts in a room, inside this room there's a door you have to go in to. I wanted to make it look like you're racing in your thoughts or dreams. In the first section, you'll find a nice beach-themed location, pretty much in the Super Mario style as well, fitting for the game. There are note blocks which lets you bounce on them, some islands so here and there, and after a tunnel-effect you'll enter the second section - the castle section (better known as the nightmare section). This one's actually based of my old dreams I had when I was 8 years old. What happened in my dream is that every painting I saw in this huge room/hall, is that all of those were firing a long chain of fireballs. I tried my best to replicate it as a model, the location itself looks big and easy, while all the obstacles all around the place makes it intense and pretty difficult...

After the nightmare section, you'll enter the Tunnel of Light, which is another tunnel-effect. But at this point, the concept was made so that the dream simulator thing you're driving in is getting very unstable, so the last section (the corruption) is very difficult because it looks pretty weird to drive through; unfinished solid road objects, block objects and probably a lot of other objects are swarming all over the place. Once gone through this section, you just made it in time to escape. Somewhere in a high location there's a gap to escape out of it, at this point you probably reached the end of your dream. It's a rather weird and vague concept, a "Mystery Dungeon" concept was pretty much unheard of at this point, so I wanted to connect a few weird dreams together and slap some uncontrollable area right at the end.

What can I say, dreams can be pretty wacky.

Concept, Ideas & Development - DS Dokan Course -> Warp Pipe Island

I always wanted to give a finished look or a whole different theme to unfinished designs, or simply showing my personal rendition for such designs. DS Dokan Course is one of them. Even if this track was originally meant for collision testing purposes, I always saw something more in this track, it was charming to look at and its layout was fairly simple and fun. After trying out the track on Mario Kart DS, I've been wondering if someone will ever remake or port this track. Now that some people ported this track, I still kept thinking it misses something; which is a theme. It even looked unfinished for a test track, so I decided to fulfill my wish and started working on my own version of DS Dokan Course. As how my version of the track sounds like, it is a big island with a lot of Warp Pipes around.

For some fun details and decorations, I thought adding Dolphins and Cheep Cheeps will be a great idea to put in to make the track more alive, and maybe some of these would be funny to see as obstacle if possible, such as the long slanted blue pipe on the left at the beginning of each lap; the idea was to make it spit out either a special itembox or a Cheep Cheep that bounce around on the road and then leap back into the water. As for its theme, I wanted to give it the same charm as Koopa Cape has, hence why I added a mountain and changed the last tube in such a way to drive through a glass tube that goes through the mountain. The inaccessible green pipe inside the mountain was meant to spit out a Dolphin that makes a terrible jump out the pipe, splashes around and simply falls down in the abyss (which was planned to have water there if I kept this silly idea in).

Before I sent over the project to Luke Chandler, my original plans were adding a dock behind the first long U-turn's mountain. There's a way to get through the wall on the left and possibly some other ways, but originally it was meant to hit yourself up the wall. I had an idea to add the yacht object or a ship there so that we could see how the characters actually got on this island. Another section of an inaccessible area is right after the furn long U-turn, where if you go out of bounds, there's this small grass patch, leading to a dead end. My idea was to add a pipe object there that hides a special itembox inside. Just a fun little secret that I fooled around with when I showcased the track back when it was in a proof of concept-stage.

The big green pipe around the first long U-turn was also planned to be able to jump out of it where there's a water geyser always available and never goes down. Before the metal grid at the end of the glass tube got added, my plan was to actually have the water geyser go out the pipe and at some point back inside the pipe. This pipe was supposed to have a split-section where you eventually drive underneath the main road, so an underground finish or underground entering lap 3.

Concept, Ideas & Development - Item Mode Test Track

As the name of the track says, this one was made purely for testing purposes and as a quick base for other users to work with. The checkpoints are misplaced on purpose so that you'll notice where the mistake is made, so that the user could play around with it. Itemboxes and objects like bushes (what they spawn) spawn special items as well. And lastly, it's made to make it battle-compatible, too! Basically this track/stage is one small cheatsheet, although I didn't do anything with the CPU and item route which wasn't really smart. I think I only wanted to show how the basics worked.

My Mario Kart Wii-Future

Since I left a few times and jumped back in, I probably should clarify that struggled over all my content at some point; I had a double-person perspective where I allowed to people to modify my content as long they ask for permission, and the next day I simply didn't want to have that at all. After all those breaks I decided to just let it happen and changed my point of view. Besides, we're doing the same thing with Nintendo's content after all. But that doesn't mean people can't show their own ideas or renditions if they have a different perspective for whatever design you can name.

While that ended pretty positively, my future for Mario Kart Wii (as in, how I use or play the game), I might not be around for long as soon I finish all my projects. I do want to see the game and its community grow and having a great time together. I get that we all are busy with pretty much anything and everything, but I do hope to see this game getting expanded in such a way we don't have to scrap or remove modes anymore, and instead of that, simply add new content without sacrificing anything that can be used in vanilla Mario Kart Wii.

Once I'm done with my projects and if I'm still not that satisfied enough to see actual expansions, that's all on me and my perspective, but I'd probably leave and only use Mario Kart Wii for nostalgic-purposes, and maybe play a game or two with friends once in a blue moon.

Do not worry though, I learned a lot from this game, the modding community and the communities that are all around them, and I'm grateful for that. But at some point we just need to move on, and I feel like my time will come to step up eventually. Besides, it just doesn't feel that great to modify someone's work without asking for permission, let alone it's all stuck on an IP... :P

If you want to stay in contact, I'm not going to share my communication-related usernames here, I think I've been on the internet for so long that you might as well just simply google me in order to find me; it's surprisingly easy. And putting a bit of effort in even the smallest things makes you less lazy, too.

By the same author: Wingcapman

Custom Tracks:
Heart of China – Item Mode Test Track – Inside the Dreamcatcher – Warp Pipe Island

Remakes:
Kinoko Cave

Characters:
Gold Mii & Gold Vehicles

Other Mods:
Lap Texture Fix – Wingcapman's Custom Menus