Mario Kart Online Race Scheduling

[EdenMaster]

We can use this thread to arrange Mario Kart matches! Post your friend codes here so we can add each other to our friends lists, and let everyone know when you're online (or will be online), so we can coordinate and have some crazy fun!

<b><i>EdenMaster's Friend Code:</i></b>
365131
704015

<b><i>Great Rumbler's Friend Code:</b></i>
000059
464157

<b><i>Dark Jaguar's Friend Code:</b></i>
094548
814798

<b><i>Nick Burns' Friend Code:</b></i>
378016
820667

<b><i>DMiller's Friend Code:</b></i>
163270
657853

<i>Hope he doesn't mind me posting this here but...</i>
<b><i>OB1's Friend Code:</b></i>
120318
618260

[EdenMaster]

DJ! Let's race!

[Dark Jaguar]

Okay!

[EdenMaster]

I'm online, waiting in the friends menu.

[Dark Jaguar]

Nutbunnies...

[Dark Jaguar]

Good job Brain!

[Dark Jaguar]

Getting closer...

[EdenMaster]

Why did I pick Bowser? He sucks!

[EdenMaster]

A winner is you!

...because I picked Bowser.

[Dark Jaguar]

I win! That's what I love about a challenging opponent, it improves my skills by a good amount!

[Great Rumbler]

I am the online!

[EdenMaster]

Alright! Three racers!

[Dark Jaguar]

Get online-ER!

[Dark Jaguar]

Oh and, what is it with EM and Rainbow Road? He's a great racer, except for that track.

Counter argument: What is it with you and NOT Rainbow Road?

[EdenMaster]

Get on MSN, DJ! GR and I are on, join us and we shall chat whilst racing!

[A Black Falcon]

I want a DS... but it's expensive, and I'd need a wireless router and mariokart too, so it won't be happening soon. :(

[EdenMaster]

Too bad, because we're having a blast and OB1 even just joined our races!

[Great Rumbler]

I keep getting booted off!!!

[EdenMaster]

Oh, MAN was that fun! Good times were had by all! We shall have to arrange another shindig like that in the near future! Hopefully after GR gets a new router!!

OB1, if you read this, you were a great racer and I'd be happy to play against you anytime! Glad you could join us, and hope you can again in the future!

[Dark Jaguar]

I started out aweful, compaired to these guys, but by the end my skills jumped up to "average"! It was awesome! Also, OB1 and I race in a similar style. In fact, on a boost track we managed to both slam into seperate bananas at the same time.

Truly, this game is concentrated awesome. If you wonder about going "back" to no analog stick, sure that would be nice, but it's not really needed. It controls great!

And oh yes, voice chat is a future must Nintendo! :D

ABF, you should know Nintendo released a special wifi adapter you can just jam into a USB slot. Works fine in Windows, and hopefully in the future they will add drivers for Mac and Linux as well (they do want as many people as possible to be able to use this, it's pretty much a given they will expand support for the device). The problem is, how much does that cost? Hopefully, cheap enough even ABF would have no issues getting it.

There's one thing though. I hope that this little device supports OTHER wifi devices... Well, I guess the odds of THAT are substantially less. However, the odds of someone using this device as a gateway to all sorts of downloadable homebrew apps on the DS is pretty high :D. Lovely feature, that DS option to search for downloadable games in the surrounding area.

Back to da chaos, great fun! Also, I eventually got to doing a lot better than I ever did in SC and WC3 playing against other TC members.

[Dark Jaguar]

In other news, the PIN number that came with the game? The one that is individually printed for each game? Yeah, apparently someone else already registered it at Nintendo.com.

Lovely...

[A Black Falcon]

ABF, you should know Nintendo released a special wifi adapter you can just jam into a USB slot. Works fine in Windows, and hopefully in the future they will add drivers for Mac and Linux as well (they do want as many people as possible to be able to use this, it's pretty much a given they will expand support for the device). The problem is, how much does that cost? Hopefully, cheap enough even ABF would have no issues getting it.

Win XP only, DJ... and the DS plus game is still $160 plus tax. :)

[Dark Jaguar]

XP only eh? And I supppose you don't have that. I see.

[Dark Jaguar]

By the way, it would seem some people are great artists or something. Last night, playing a race against a random opponent named "Zasalamel", I noticed that this racer's emblem (and about those emblems, great though I didn't really think Japan DID emblems in online games, much less custom made ones) was a PERFECT recreation of Cecil's standing Paladin sprite from FFIV.

Two options, he is an excellent artist (possible, that sprite did have to be drawn to begin with when making that game), or that person has one of those special memory cart cartridges and some homebrew that lets a person do things to game data. More likely it's the former come to think of it... I picked the Mickey Mouse looking one, because I can't draw you see.

Of all the add-ons I'd like to see for the DS jammed into the GBA slot, I think the one I'd really like would be an SD card adapter cart (with a USB plug in there too, for hooking up to a PC). Something like that would be great for all sorts of custom artwork in Animal Crossing, just as an example. Sure, some people might take advantage of that and start making unauthorized home applications, now using an official product to store them, but... wait how is that a bad thing again?

[EdenMaster]

Well, I was kind of impressed at OB1's Eduardo the Magical Toaster emblem too. I thought he did a good job on that. But for every artist in online matches, there are 100 other people who merely think they are, and end up with horrible avatars. I raced against one named NES Master. His emblem was simply a red box with a drawn (assumedly with the stylus) NES in the middle. Problem was, he ran out of room for the S, to he had to cram it like underneath everything else :D.

I think my Eden Insignia emblem came out rather nicely. It took a while to get it just so. You should probably know what it really looks like after five years of me but...



If there had been a darker blue (or even ligher, besides that cyan color), I could have made it better, but I'm happy with it nonetheless.

GR needs to make an emblem too! At least DJ used SOMETHING!

:D

[Dark Jaguar]

Hey now! Mickey Mouse is a racer! Remember that one game by Rare?

[Great Rumbler]

How do you make an emblem?

[A Black Falcon]

I'd attempt to draw a Black Falcon shield, I think... though given that I'm not an artist, to say the least, it probably would be pretty bad...

[Great Rumbler]

Okay, I made one. Now let's race!!

[Dark Jaguar]

When I finally get back to my DS, I'll get right on it!

In the mean time, OB1's friend code eh? How'd EM find that one? Unlike XBox Live's service, there seems to be no way to get a list of recent opponents so that I might ask the individual I just raced to be my bestest buddy.

I think that of all the minor flaws, that one may just be a tad on the important side. If I find a good rival, I would like to be able to befriend them, rather than just being two passing spirits in the night, a single chance encounter and then never to meet again (the new romance novel by Nintendo Wifi Service). Some sort of communication would be nice too, but oh well.

I have recently read that the games can only communicate with games using the same language. That's a little odd considering there should be no language issues involved at all. All the data that is actually communicated in Mario Kart is sans language of any sort. As far as the text shown in-game, that's not something that actually needs to be transferred between games. A number of PC games aren't language specific even though they DO allow communication, simply because the in-game translatino is irrelevent to the actual data transfer. The only reason to prevent this would be true version conflicts, for example if we have a track that they don't (which can be worked around to an extent) or if our physics have been adjusted compaired to their own. That is a version issue rather than a language issue though.

[EdenMaster]

Well, GR actually was the one who gave me his Friend Code. I'm pretty sure GR and OB1 still correspond with one another, so he probably just sent it to him.

As for not connecting to other versions, that doesn't make much sense. Even if it were a language thing, it's not like it has to translate anything, there are Japanese characters that could be used for peoples names, and perhaps some changed textures in the Japanese version so that signs and display's read Japanese, but that's all very subjective. The only thing the game needs to transfer is what's happening between the karts.

Who knows. In any case, I'll be busy tomorrow night, so I won't be joining the fun again. Saturday...perhaps. We'll see what the weekend brings. I'll let you guys know.

[Dark Jaguar]

Subjective isn't really the right word... I wonder what the technical word is, but yeah, texture changes don't matter because those aren't transferred (that would be a decedant waste of bandwidth). The only things transferred are the names (and as you pointed out, there are already Japanese characters in our version) and those emblems.
<img src="http://www.vgcats.com/comics/images/051115.gif">
And, since there is no communication, it's not like there would be some problem communicating with people who don't speak your language. I also am fairly sure there were no changes to the game, physics, tracks, carts, whathaveyou, that would require this sort of segregation. It all seems rather silly, if true.

[A Black Falcon]

Well, GR actually was the one who gave me his Friend Code. I'm pretty sure GR and OB1 still correspond with one another, so he probably just sent it to him.

He's on AIM once every few months (and on those times I talk to him), but yes, I think that him and GR talk a lot more often than that.


Connecting to other versions: If not, why is there a 'World' randomplay option?

[Dark Jaguar]

So you can play people around the world playing the English version? Honestly it doesn't make much sense any way you slice it. I did hear it from the same article that revealed the various play options one would have, and it didn't make sense theneither.

I think perhaps this needs some looking in to.

[Great Rumbler]

I'm pretty sure GR and OB1 still correspond with one another, so he probably just sent it to him.

We both post at the same forum.

[Dark Jaguar]

You mean this one? http://www.kfccinema.com/xtemplex/
LURKER! Oh wait, that's me...

We should use the Starcraft Lurker unit as a smily when we suspect lurker or lurker supporting activities! :D

[Great Rumbler]

It's not like you'd have to be a lurker there to know that's where we post. You could just Google either or both of our usernames. I'm surprised no one has thought to do that until now.

[Dark Jaguar]

I did, a while back! Oh wait, you mean besides me...

[Great Rumbler]

Get on MSN, guys!!!

[EdenMaster]

DJ, get on MSN!

[Dark Jaguar]

How did you get more points? 2 on 2 match, I win two, then lose two. Where did two extra points come from?

[Great Rumbler]

I thought it was five races?

[Dark Jaguar]

5 races? Why 5?

[Great Rumbler]

Balance.

[Dark Jaguar]

Hmm... I just assumed it was 4 over and over, but I may be mistaken. I'll need to keep count next time.

[EdenMaster]

Did you get your new router yet, GR?

[Dark Jaguar]

Not yet, he'll get one right around the time we've all upgraded to a sort of Borg Collective.

[EdenMaster]

DJ! I got some time to kill! Get on MSN and w'll have a race or two!

[Dark Jaguar]

Sure thing! Oh yeah, Warp Pipe ended up being terrible, but I've found another online solution regarding Double Dash you all might be interested in (double dash is STILL an awesome game after all).

http://www.teamxlink.co.uk/index.php

Unfortunatly not many people at all are in Double Dash. Usually it's lucky to see two people in the double dash section. However, that doesn't mean we can't at least play against each other. I'd like to test this out some time so if you all are up for it, download the program and hook your Gamecubes up to your routers.

...

Oh, how many of you have a broadband adapter anyway?

[Great Rumbler]

I got a new router and I'm waiting on MSN!