Hello everyone. I've decided to repost everything I've posted in The Newbie Thread pertaining to Kaillera here in this thread. I'm asking the mods to sticky this thread. I'm sure with time more players will join the Kaillera community and I'd like for people to have a place where they can reach me and ask questions about it. I'll be editing this thread with more information as I find it.

I just want to clear this up in case anyone else besides MVT is confused about Kaillera. I'm not here "looking for customers". I'm simply sharing what I've found online which allows you to play Mario Kart 64 on your PC with other players online. This isn't an "add-on for the Wii" nor is it a program you "pay-to-play".

********** HUGE EDIT AS OF 4/3/2012 **********
The feds hit Megaupload awhile back, so I've decided to reupload Kaillera for those who're just now finding the forums and don't have a copy, only this time, I'm going to make it a whole lot simpler. I've decided to upload a copy of my entire Project 64KVE folder, with an exception to the Mario Kart 64 ROM, since it's copyright protected and linking to ROMs is forbidden, therefore you'll have to find the ROM on your own. You'll notice the ROMs folder empty for this reason. I've still included Goodwindows and GoodN64, so you can use them for other games, and will still keep the instructions for configuring those here. Should you own a copy of the ROM but it's incorrectly named, you'll have to correctly name it with Goodwindows and GoodN64. Other than that, all you'll have to configure is your controller and what resolution you play the game at. Everything else is already preconfigured.

NEW WORKING LINK TO A COMPLETE COPY OF MY PROJECT 64KVE FOLDER: http://s000.tinyupload.com/?file_id=14958102193344814964

The Emulator
The two widespread types of Nintendo 64 emulators with Kaillera support (which is online capability), are Project 64K and Mupen 64. Although I've heard Mupen 64 is very similar to Project 64K, I've found far more people use Project 64K than Mupen 64, so I've never bothered to use it. Therefore this guide will be aimed towards Project 64K. Their are many different revisions (or versions) of both. When you want to play with other players, you need to have the same revision. Nearly everyone on Kaillera uses the same revision for each type of emulator so people aren't forced to own multiple revisions to play with different people. Project 64K's most widely used revision is 0.13.

You don't want to confuse Project 64 with Project 64K. Project 64 doesn't include Kaillera support while Project 64K does. If you're playing on any OS other than Windows Vista or Windows 7, you can use Project 64K. If you're playing on Windows Vista or Windows 7, you can either work a fix within the input plugin (found within Project 64K) or you can do what I and most others have done and use Project 64KVE (VE for Vista Edition) which has the workaround already setup for you. I've provided a link to Project 64KVE above, which will work for all OS, so no modifications to the input plugin will be necessary.

The ROM
Mario Kart 64's ROM file, which is a file containing the game's raw data, is what you'll be using the emulator to play. This won't be provided in the link to my Project64KVE folder. ROMs are copyrighted and illegal to post links to here or anywhere else for that reason. You'll have to get a Mario Kart 64 ROM on your own.

The ROM Renaming Tool and File
Any ROM you emulate needs to have a correctly named ROM file. You'll need to correct your ROM's name if it's not correct. What I mean by correct is, when Kaillera reads ROMs, it displays their name for others to see. You can play ROMs offline regardless of whether or not their names are correct, however, in order to play with other players online through Kaillera, ROMs need to be named correctly. Names must match. You cannot connect and play with another player with the same ROM if the ROM name's don't match. Regions must also match. Next to the ROM name, it will have which region the ROM is from (such as NTSC or PAL) with a letter in parenthesis. (U) means NTSC and (E) means PAL. You cannot connect to a player hosting the PAL version of the game if you only have the NTSC version. Besides the ROM's name and version symbol, their also needs to be a (!) symbol at the end of the ROM name. This symbol indicates it's a clean ROM (which means it hasn't been hacked). Simply renaming the ROM by right clicking and renaming won't do it. The program GoodWindows and a file called GoodN64 are used to do this. I've included a copy of both within the Project 64KVE folder I've uploaded above. If you happen to have an incorrectly named ROM, you will need to do this for them.

To use GoodWindows and GoodN64, open GoodWindows, and look at the top left hand corner where it says "Mode". Select "Good Tool" just below that, then choose Nintendo 64 in the "Choose a System" box just below that. A prompt will then appear, asking you to select the GoodN64 file from your Project 64K directory. Select the GoodN64 file, then at the bottom left hand corner where it says "Directory to work on", then click on the button just below that which reads "Explore Directory". Now set the path where you saved your Mario Kart 64 ROM. Now look at the top center of GoodWindows where it says "Options". Make sure "Rename" is selected. Now look at the bottom center. Click on the button which reads "Execute: GoodN64.exe rename". Once you've done this, GoodWindows will create a folder within the directory you have your ROM saved to with the correctly renamed ROM within that folder. [/quote]

Must Read: Useful Information
If everything's worked out well for you once you've gotten everything set up and played a few times online, I strongly recommend getting yourself a controller, whether it be your N64 controller hooked up to your PC or laptop with a USB adapter or a USB controller. You can buy a USB adapter for a N64 controller for around 10 bucks. If you don't have a N64 controller, just about any standard USB controller will do. You don't have to buy an expensive one either. You can get a brand new USB controller for 20 to 30 bucks online. I paid a bit more for mine ($50) as it's a high precision controller perfect for cranking out drift boosts at ridiculous speeds but a standard one will do just fine. Some players stick with the keyboard but I've only ever crossed one good keyboard player. He's one of the regulars and he only uses one to play because he's unfortunately lost an arm in combat. It makes drifting and racing in general a bit more tedious for him but he's one of the top 3 battlers on Kaillera, so I'd say he's definitely an exception. Every one of the other greats I've come across all use controllers so I'd recommend one to anyone who's thinking about playing somewhat often online. It's worth it. Trust me.

This game becomes extremely addictive when you have a good group of players to play it with on a daily basis. If you enjoyed playing it on the N64, you will love it on Kaillera. Playing with the group of players I play with now made me such a better player and our competitiveness has gotten really intense. If you join the Kaillera community and get discouraged for whatever the reason, don't be. When I started 3 months ago, I was good, but I would get destroyed on a daily basis by the two best players. Now after a ton of practicing every day, I'm a little better at drifting than both of them. If I can get this good, anyone can. It just takes practice. We are a very good group of people who're very friendly and willing to teach you everything we know. We can be a little bit cocky (namely myself) at times but we want nothing more than to bring as many players to the Kaillera community as possible. We're always looking for and welcoming more competition. The group that I play with are the best players on Kaillera and pretty much every day we are teaching the new players the techniques we know, whether it be my hopping skills, the basics of drifting, how to crank out more drift boosts quickly, or the various shortcuts found within each map. So we welcome every one of you to join us. If you come across testy, D-Reaper, Ulariel, Zidane2006, soniczfan, h34dshot, Icefox, Iceyoshi, or myself, Mr. Mario Kart, tell us you're new to Kaillera and we'll be more than willing to give you a helping hand. Don't mind soniczfan though, sometimes he can be a bit of a troll lol

When I heard about Kaillera 3 months ago, it took me 3 days of trial and error to get everything working. I read about it on a forum and I first had to find a copy of Project 64K. I went searching through alot of dead posted links before I found a working copy. Then I found I had to find a working input plugin fix being a Windows 7 user. I couldn't find a copy of the file needed to make the fix so I began looking for a workaround and found out about Project 64KVE. It took some time sorting through all the posted dead links before I finally came across a working link but I finally found it. VE was alot harder for me to find than the standard Project 64K. Then I had to find a copy of GoodWindows and GoodN64 and figure out how to use them. After further fooling around with Project 64K, I had everything set up. It was frustrating but I figured it out. I've made everything for you very easy and have posted the links to all of those files right here. All links posted here are working as of today. Once you get everything set up within Project 64K, it stays saved, so you won't have to keep making changes. You'll be able to connect and be playing within minutes from then on.

The Kaillera community is pretty strong. Not everyone plays Mario Kart 64 but alot do. Depending on what time of the day you logon will determine the number of players you'll encounter. Players are constantly logging in and out of GodWeapons and The Galaxy servers, checking who's online and what games are being hosted, so most of the day you'll have at least some competition. Their are two Galaxy servers so you'll need to check both to see which gets more traffic. One usually has a bit more than the other. Every day after about 12pm Eastern time the amount of players online picks up. The Galaxy usually has more players than GodWeapons but at times it's the other way around. Myself as well as the group I play with prefer to play on GodWeapons a little more because our ping is about 2 frames of delay less thare than on TheGalaxy servers, which isn't much, but it's still better.

After about 12pm Eastern on TheGalaxy, you can usually find over 20 players present at any given time with people constantly coming and going. It'll fluctuate on GodWeapons and both TheGalaxy servers up until about 6pm. From 6pm on until about 12am is when the server reaches it's peak. You'll have anywhere between 30 and 50 players present at any given time on one of TheGalaxy servers, and anywhere between 20 and 30 players usually on GodWeapons. After 12am, the traffic starts to decrease into the wee hours of the morning.

Thanks for more details, I've sent you a PM .
Another question I have is: Do you play more GP or VS races? Battle mode is additional stuff for fun, I guess.

Mr. Mario Kart wrote on 07/15/11 at 21:25:30:


This link doesn't work. Can't wait to play some VS

Zoran

OK I have the emulator and and ROMs, tested offline and ok (using x360 pad, was quite nice). How do I play online, do I need to download Kaillera (no link I could see above) and if so any particular version?

Edit: Nevermind I was launching using the Project64 launcer didn't notice there were two launchers and I should be using the other one (KVE)

I had the same problem, Zoran. You have to rename your ROMs with GoodWindows as it's described in the first posts of this topic.

i deleted 1 file by accident , it looks fine now

Zoran

Mick wrote on 07/17/11 at 05:17:41:

That's kind of what I was thinking when you posted. That's why on pretty much every other site I've seen people just say to google ROMs instead of posting.

I don't know if you mentioned it in this thread, but Mario kart specifically pretty much requires that you play on the LAN setting for the kaillera client if you don't want much input lag. There (back when I used to play anyways) is also generally much less desync issues with Mupen64.

Was mostly a smash player when i was around on galaxy and godweapons. Is there really that many more people playing mk64 now? Most people I played against were pretty mediocre to be honest, I might get interested again if there's some better players now.

karterfreak wrote on 07/17/11 at 18:36:26:


I've been playing it for around 3 months so i wouldn't know how it was before then but their's a few really good players now. Granted they're not online enough but they're around. I'd say about 90% of those who play on Kaillera are what you would call the average casual player, while about 5% are pretty good, while the other 5% are the regulars who're pretty much unstoppable unless you're on our level. Their's about 7 or 8 of us who're in that top 5% from the people I've played. If you're giving it some thought, I really encourage you to join us.

TellTale wrote on 07/17/11 at 19:22:27:


Sorry, I'll clear some of this up. Kaillera is a client which allows you to connect with other players through emulators. It includes but isn't limited to N64 emulation. I tried to keep the setup information as to-the-point as possible. I only included direct instructions to go from point A (downloading Project 64K) to point B (playing the game online). I plan to go into great detail about everything their is to know about it here in this thread. I'll be updating this thread daily with more and more information. Sorry if it seems complicated and vague. I tried to make it as simple and easy to follow as I possibly could. It took me around 5 hours of editing this thread when I initially created the first 4 posts as I was revising them so they'd be as close to a simple step-by-step guide to follow as possible.

As far as this being "better" than any other system, it probably isn't. However, like so many emulators on Kaillera, the playerbase is lazy to upgrade their revisions and it forces players to stay with the same old revisions even though better ones have been created. An example of this is that I've posted the 0.13 build as the standard for Project 64K. Their are further revisions such as 0.17 which are better. However, since you can't play with players who use a different revision than you and since everyone has always stuck to 0.13 even though it's widespread information that their are better revisions, in order to play with more players, we're forced to stick with the older revisions. This is the same reason why I don't bother getting Mupen 64. The vast majority of N64 players who play Mario Kart 64 play on Project 64K.

This emulator is ran on PC. As far as what OS it's compatible with, I can only know that it's compatible with Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7. If you're on a different OS, you could give it a try, but I'm not the creator of Project 64K, so I couldn't tell you each and every one of the technical aspects of it. I've learned everything that I know through trial and error. The same way I learned how to mod PC games and the same way I learned about emulation. You'll just have to give it a try and see if it works.

No, you don't have to use a keyboard. I already answered that in one of my initial posts above (the 4 original posts that I posted altogether). You can use a controller. Just about any kind of controller too. In fact, I strongly recommended using one. Keyboard is very hard to use and I honestly wouldn't even bother trying to play a game like Mario Kart 64 with one.

No, this isn't based for the Wii. This is using the original ROM files found within the N64 cartridge to emulate the game on your PC through Project 64K, a virtual copy of the original Nintendo 64. As far as the development team goes, I'm afraid I can't provide you with information on that. However, up until a few days ago, the original Kaillera website has been down. I was told it's been down for a few years. A new site has been up for the last few days but I can't confirm whether or not it's ran by the original development team. As far as whether or not the development team is the same as the Dolphin team, you're asking the wrong guy. I own a copy of Dolphin and emulate Gamecube games myself but I'm familiar with the development team. I'm just a guy who happened to stumble across this great way to play Mario Kart 64 online. Take from that what you will.

I've found Project 64K isn't too bad when you get use to it as long as you're able to play without much lag. It's really up to you though whether or not you like it or find it worth your time to setup. I've always wanted to be able to play Mario Kart 64 with other players online but never knew about emulation online capabilities until 3 months ago. As soon as I read about it, I knew I had to get it. I've enjoyed it ever since.

Actually you dont have to download goodwindows and good N64. Just PM me and ill send you MK64 roms. All you have to do is download kaillera from the main site and Project 64 from the link above and unpack them.

If anyone wants to play just PM me.

Zoran

Nocontrol PM'd me asking about connection types. Thank you. That's something I forgot to mention in my original posts, which is pretty important. Your connection type needs to match that of the person you're playing with. You set your connection type in the "Connection Type" box just before you join a server. Most people play with LAN on GodWeapons and TheGalaxy.