In the last two weeks, Wiimm, me, MrBean and Chadderz have all worked on different aspects of the NATNEG process, and we rewrote a whole bunch of code both in Mario Kart Wii and on our NATNEG servers. If you've watched MrBeans Twitch streams in the last few days you probably already know about some parts of this test.

With the new update, the following things will be supported:

- Only for MKWii (CTGP and non-CTGP): The game will always use port 22000 plus the last three digits of your console serial including the check digit. So if your console serial number was LU12345678[9], then your port would be 22789. That way, you only need to forward one single port to your console instead of a whole port range, and this also works fine with multiple consoles on one internet connection. Unless they happen to have the same three digits at the end of the serial number.
- If you want to change that autogenerated port to a different one you can change that port in the Wiimmfi Portal (not implemented yet)
- Only for non-CTGP: Mario Kart Wii will analyze your router's port mapping behaviour (STUN-like) and let the server know, so that NATNEG should be compatible with more routers. Will be added to CTGP in the future. (not fully implemented on the server yet)
- Rooms are less likely to get stuck and crash between races / on the track selection screen - if someone causes it to stuck, that player will be kicked after a timeout
- CTGP will support UPnP to automatically add port forwardings if your router supports UPnP.
- CTGP will finally support the "green triangles" in the NATNEG matrix that non-CTGP clients have already supported for a couple months.
- In around ~90% (estimated) of all cases, and about ~99% of cases when one of two players has A) either all ports forwarded, B) their console-specific port forwarded, or C) an UPnP port mapping through CTGP, the NATNEG connection between these two players will be done instantly, no NATNEG server or wait time required, all the NATNEGs will run in parallel instead of after another.
- "Ghost racers" (where some people don't see a player X in a race and others do) should no longer happen and should automatically get resolved

Things that we are still working on, unsure if they will work:
- UPnP support for non-CTGP clients.


As you can imagine, these large changes will need to be tested a lot. In the Wiimmfi portal you can now configure if you want to take part in beta tests. If you enable that setting (and you are NOT using CTGP, this beta test does not work with CTGP) you will automatically use the NEW updated better NATNEG code and all the other improvements explained in this post.

Just go to wiimmfi.de/payload/settings and switch the "Payload Branch" from Public to Beta. Leave the "Payload Wish" field as "none".

This thread can be used to discuss the new updates, to report problems with the beta update or for anything else related to that update.

@PokeAcer yeah, your console is on the beta already. I have already started a couple tests to use some game libraries for UPnP stuff, but that's not working properly yet, so I don't know if I can get that to work.

And yeah @FancyDolphin, if you forward one specific port and configure that in the Wiimmfi portal, the probability of you causing 86420 will probably be lower. But the other players could still trigger it (for you) unless lots of people do that. Also, the very first NATNEG (to the room host) will still use "normal" NATNEG and not this fixed one, so that could still cause 86420, too.

If we can't get UPnP to work in the game itself through the "normal" update system, we will probably add it to the Auto Wiimmfi Patcher and release an updated version of that (just like in CTGP). But there's stil lots of other patchers (ISO patcher, patchers in USB Loaders, patcher in Priiloader, ...) where that can't easily be done that way.

As soon as the beta is available I will let everyone know in this thread, and then there will be a menu in the Wiimmfi Portal where you can choose to receive the beta on your console.

As I already said in the post above - when the beta is ready you will be able to sign up for it in the Wiimmfi portal yourself.

@FancyDolphin @Reboot @Nin10aaronmulleader

The Wiimmfi beta is now ready for everyone (non-CTGP only so far).


To join the beta test, go to this page on the Wiimmfi portal: wiimmfi.de/payload/settings

There you will find a list of your consoles. Switch the "Payload Branch" from Public to Beta, and leave "Payload Wish" on its default setting "none". Then restart your game (non-CTGP!), connect to Wiimmfi, and you should be running the beta. You can confirm that looking at the "Version" column, that'll be 67 for the beta and 63 for the non-beta.

You need to restart the game every time you switch versions.

The page to enter a custom port is not available yet. Consoles running the beta will take the last three digits of their serial number and add them to 22000 to use as a port.
So if your console has the serial number LEH12345678[9] the UDP port the game will use will be 22789.

With this beta, NATNEGs to other beta clients will be much faster. But you can still play with non-beta players, so you can join normal WWs or friend rooms with this beta, too.
if you are running into any trouble (especially if the game crashes!) please let me know. You can, at any point, decide to go back to the normal version by switching back to "Public" and restarting your game if you run into trouble with this beta version.

So we've just done a bunch of tests with CTGP-beta and normal beta clients in MrBeans Twitch stream, and looking at that it seemed to have worked fantastically, even for clients without UPnP or port forwarding.

Public release of this beta for everyone shouldn't be that far in the future.

Just in case someone hasn't seen it yet, as of a couple hours ago this update is now live and active for everyone, and is working great.

If you still have the Beta Branch enabled you can set it back to Public if you don't want to automatically take part in the next beta test, whatever and whenever that will be.

Yes, it's exactly the same as for a Wii. Last three digits including the one inside the square.