Competitions / WC24

      Competitions / WC24

      English text
      At the moment, I'm trying to make competitions possible again.
      Since WC24 is down, the only way to get a new competition would probably be a homebrew app.

      But before we can make this homebrew app, I need to find out what format the competition data was in.

      I've searched on the internet, but only found the RKC files. These contain the actual KMP / structure of the competition, but not (for example) the description texts on the tournament begin.

      To find out, how all this is saved inside the savegame, I need as many complete tournaments as possible.

      The tournament data for MKWii is saved inside the VFF-Files in the MKW save game (wc24dl.vff and wc24scr.vff).

      And now I need as many of these files as possible.

      If anyone can see one of the old tournaments in the MKW Channel (go to Mario Kart Wii-Channel -> Competitions and see if it shows "No Competition" or the description of any older tournament).
      As in most cases, the tournament data would be deleted as soon as the competition is over, you can only see this data if your Wii had WC24 turned off at the time Nintendo took a tournament down.

      You may also look in your old NAND backups (you can open them with nandExtract) inside the folder "\title\00010004\524d43??\" (?? is the value of your region) and send me the VFF files that are there.

      The more dump files I get, the higher is the chance that we are able to send out competitions one day.

      German text
      Im Moment versuche ich, die Wettbewerbe ans Laufen zu bekommen.
      Weil WC24 abgeschaltet ist, wird man neue Wettbewerbe wahrscheinlich nur über eine Homebrew-App runterladen können.

      Aber bevor diese Homebrewapp erstellt werden kann, muss erst das Format der verschickten Daten herausgefunden werden.
      Im Internet habe ich nach Wettbewerben gesucht, aber nur die RKC-Dateien gefunden. In diesen sind zwar KMP und Struktur der Wettbewerbe drin, aber zum Beispiel nicht die Beschreibungstexte im Wettbewerbsmenü.

      Um herauszufinden, wie diese Daten im Savegame gespeichert sind, brauche ich so viele vollständige Wettbewerbe wie möglich.

      Die Wettbewerbe für Mario Kart Wii sind in den VFF-Dateien im Spielstand gespeichert (wc24dl.vff und wc24scr.vff).

      Nun brauche ich so viele dieser Dateien wie möglich.

      Wenn irgendjemand im Mario Kart Kanal unter "Wettbewerbe" noch einen Wettbewerb sieht (Also die Wettbewerbsbeschreibung, und nicht "Es gibt momentan keinen Wettbewerb"), macht bitte ein Backup eures Spielstands mit dem SavegameManager GX und ladet die VFF-Dateien irgendwo hoch.
      Da in den meisten Fällen die Wettbewerbe nach Ende gelöscht wurden, seht ihr die Daten wahrscheinlich nur, wenn WC24 ausgeschaltet war, als Nintendo den Wettbewerb beendet hat.

      Sinnvoller ist daher wahrscheinlich die Suche in alten NAND-Backups (diese können mit nandExtract geöffnet werden). Das Mario-Kart-Savegame befindet sich im Ordner "/title/00010004/524d43??/" (?? ist die Region). Wenn sich dort VFF-Dateien befinden, ladet diese bitte hoch und schickt mir einen Link.

      Je mehr dieser Dateien ich bekomme, desto höher ist die Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass es irgendwann wieder Wettbewerbe geben wird.


      EDIT:

      There has been progress with the competitions: See here: English / German

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      I don't think the competitions were distributed using this service. The filename "wc24dl.vff" indicates that it used the special file download service of WiiConnect24. If competitions would have used the RACE-Server, why did competitions stop with the shutdown of WC24?

      I also never saw a Wii requesting this "GetCurrentContestData", which would be a requirement if the Wii checked for tournament updates sometimes.

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      Maybe they had the "general" WC24 server shut down, and the server which was used for competition download was still running?
      One of the WC24-servers is still running because it is used for the first connection of a wii / the shop channel.

      Maybe someone has a network dump from receiving this competition data from Nintendo?

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      Well why would you use 2 different server for the same thing? Its pretty much only the text which was used by the url above (the first one) and the RKC files. So why shouldnt the files be on the racing server? Nintendo used 50 competitions in a random fashion after they were first shown and they conveniently stopped when the Server was taken down for MKWii.

      The result of the "Competition text" also changed after the shutdown to "No current contest found!".
      Ich gehe nur bei Frauen im Alter von 18 bis 20 die Bettwäsche testen.

      Tock schrieb:

      Well why would you use 2 different server for the same thing?

      Nintendo also uses (unnecessarily) three natneg servers all doing the same stuff...

      But even if the contest data and everything needed came from the race server - how do we force the wii to connect to it and check for a contest?

      And yes, now the server returns "No contest found". But have you checked this page at a time a contest was up? And was it really showing the contest data?

      @Chadderz:
      Maybe you can find out, what message / event forces the wii to check for new competitions?

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      OK...

      Do you have a backup of the text / a network dump while browsing to this page from a time there was a competition online?

      But although the competition was distributed this way, there must still be a way for the server to tell the Wii that there's a new contest. The race / sake servers can't do this since they do not initiate a connection to a wii.
      So the WC24 service must have told the Wii that there is a new contest. But how?

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      I tried it, and it instantly told me "wait for the start of a competiton" without anything showing up in a network dump. Do you have another result? Do you see a request for "GetCurrentContestData" somewhere?

      Also, if WC24 had nothing to do with competitions, why does the game tell "turn WC24 on and wait for the start of a contest"?

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      Well Nintendo also talked about the ghost rankings / Ghost sending recieving when they published the wiiconnect24 MK Channel and it still uses the sake server(?)

      Sadly I dont have a network dump but i remember using that page and receiving the Japanese text of the tournament. Sadly I never used the country codes for the region ID because im sure that way Nintendo distinguished languages.
      Ich gehe nur bei Frauen im Alter von 18 bis 20 die Bettwäsche testen.
      Well, I could now start implementing this service, but as we are unable to force the game to connect for now, I think that'd be wasted time.

      Another question: In the description on this page you can see the competition texts and the rankings, but not the competition itself. How was it distributed, I do not see a field for it...
      I think this "GetCurrentContestData" is only if you want to receive the top10, the rankings of the current contest.

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      Could it be that the game connected after it got the WC24 information for an ongoing contest?
      Edit: I mean: It's Nintendo, they've done many obscure things with their WFC, right? ;)

      IIRC I played a single contest until today, therefore I forgot almost everything about them :whistling:
      „A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP“ – Leonard Nimoy

      http://www.mariowiki.com/List_of_Mario_Kart_Wii_tournaments schrieb:

      Even though WiiConnect24 services have discontinued in June 28, 2013 the tournaments were still available.

      They were distributed up until May 2014 … but how did this work without WC24 … Why did Nintendo always tell lies about WC24? :P
      „A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP“ – Leonard Nimoy
      A little bit more information:

      The general WC24 login / mail check pages were up until end of May. So Nintendo might have used them
      - Here is a proof: click. Nintendo used the WC24 Mail service to notify us about the WFC shutdown in March 2014.
      - It might be possible that Nintendo used this Mail service to send the competitions to the Wiis
      - I found some piece of text inside one of the WC24 database files saying "[email protected]". Maybe those announcements were sent to that address.

      So it might be helpful to get the files inside /shared2/wc24/mbox/. Those contain the send and received messages, and if you do not have any private data in it, I'd be happy if someone can upload those files so I can search for the competition data. In my files, there is no competition data since I did not use the competitions since 2011 and all the messages are deleted yet.

      If anyone has a NAND backup, you can extract it with nandExtract and send me those files.

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      I just said I dont recall getting any tournament Mails anymore. I never said they were not able to sent out other mails afterwards :P

      What did WC24? You were able to recieve/sent mails and you were able to send and recieve ghost data in MKWii even though that still used the sake server.

      Edit what Nintendo said was taken down with the WC24:

      Mario Kart Wii

      The ability to send records of time trials, and Grand Prix, trial ghosts and invitations e-mails to friends is no longer supported.


      No words about tournaments.
      Ich gehe nur bei Frauen im Alter von 18 bis 20 die Bettwäsche testen.
      Just to have this information written down and saved:

      Earlier today I found some interesting, still accessable, URLs in the "nwc24dl.bin":


      They are also accessable without SSL (their cert is invalid) (you can also change the region, eu_ge is Germany, you might have guessed):


      "messagedl" is the contest notification mail sent to "Mario Kart Wii information subscribers".
      "maindl" seems to be the leader board, I guess.

      Could someone have a look for similar URLs in NAND backups and a look at the linked files?
      Maybe we'll find the download URL of contests in there.


      Edit: Just found this post by Wiimm, so there should only be these two URLs/files.

      Edit 2: Yesterday I also grabbed through my hole NAND to look for URLs to "*wifi.net", "nintendo.com", nothing special, just found most of the known URLs.

      Is there anybody out there capable of reverse engineering Mario Kart Wii (afaik it is allowed at least in Germany to keep abandoned software working) to find some information about the type of event that triggered Mario Kart to add these 2 URLs to the nwc24dl.cfg or even better: Which event lets Mario Kart know that there is an ongoing contest?
      I mean: They are still accessable but the game won't download them, right?
      „A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP“ – Leonard Nimoy

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      Now I got the Wii to send any outgoing mails to my server, but I do not know how to tell the Wii that it should download "/cgi-bin/receive.cgi" to check for new mails.

      Is anyone able to analyze the Wii's WC24 software to check what forces the wii to download the new mails?

      The related debug lines are:

      Quellcode

      1. [KD Report] NHTTPCreateRequest: [rcw.wc24.wii.com]
      2. [KD Report] CGI result: 100 (Success.)
      3. [KD Report] isNewmail = 0, interval = 10
      4. [KD Report] === KD_CheckMail() leaving. (result: 0) ===
      5. [KD Report] MailSpan: 10


      but a "isNewmail=1" in the answer does not change anything at the Wii's behavior.

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