Mario Kart Goes Online...Thanks to Warp Pipe

[GameMaster]

From IGN Cube


November 25, 2003 - Last month, GameCube Advanced broke the news on an underground movement led by Chad Paulson to get LAN enabled Nintendo titles playing online. Chad and the Warp Pipe team have been hard at work optimizing their tunneling project (which fools the GameCube into thinking it's on a local area network when it's actually online.
When we last reported, Warp Pipe was still in alpha testing,

Now, Warp Pipe has managed to get Mario Kart running online at full speed with their private build. Testing took place between Chad in Berwyn, IL and his friend in Bloomington, IN. The connection speeds were a respective 256kbps and 128kps. Although the Warp Pipe's test was successful it is important to note that this trial was between the two closest parties in the project (approx. 250 miles) and that trials over longer distances are not as successful (although playable).

The Warp Pipe team is hard at work preparing a quality beta for testing. The original requirements are a PC and GameCube with broadband connector sharing a router network. The Warp Pipe team has begun testing builds that don't require a router, and have had successful tests with a hub/switch directly connected to the internet, two PC network cards, USB cable modem and a PC network card, NAT (DSL/cable router), and a NAT and hub/switch. Along with their hopes to optimize Mario Kart: Double Dash!! and other LAN enabled Nintendo titles like 1080: Avalanche and Kirby Air Ride for online play, they also hope to port Warp Pipe to OSX and create a region free build.

When we asked for an official statement on the Warp Pipe Project, Chad Paulson responded, "I would like to emphasize that your ping to the person you plan on playing is a very important factor when determining speed. A ping of 40ms or lower, with an upload rate of 128kbps or higher should produce results seen in the video when playing Mario Kart: Double Dash on Warp Pipe. Kirby Air Ride will also be supported, but the bandwidth requirements for that game will be higher, although they have yet to be determined."

"Since peer to peer gaming carries many factors with it, results may very, but we feel confident that our beta product will be able to weather the storm of latency that is the internet. Even thought beta will require you to enter someone's IP address to connect, and carry the same interface as our alpha application, we look forward to releasing a feature-rich 1.0 application that will allow you to login to a central server to meet and play others in the beginning of 2004."



Although we pestered the Warp Pipe Project for an official release date, Chad's said was, "Although we do, indeed, have a date in mind to release beta, we are not releasing that information to the public. We have made it know that it will be out by the end of the year."

If you need to see Mario Kart online to believe it, Chad has provided IGNcube with an exclusive movie of he (in Illinois) and his fellow team member (based in Indiana) playing the Yoshi Circuit. Check it out in our media pages. For more info on the Warp Pipe Project, click here.

IGNcube will have more on the Warp Pipe Project when the beta goes live.

Here's the article in context.

This is great news.

[Jason1]

w00t! Go Illinois!

[Seth]

There's more MK movies at the warp pipe webpage.

I have a feeling the beta will be released in the next 2 weeks. The way the dev team is progressing(pretty fast) it shouldn't be too much longer before they have it ported to OSX and get the interface better.

that's 256 and 128 uploads. That's not that good and they're getting full speed.



Looking forward to this bigtime.

[Dyne]

Nice! =D

Can't wait.

[Jonbo298]

I've been reading about the Warp Pipe project for awhile now. Great stuff they are doing.

On a similar note..
What the **** happened to Gamespy and their Tunneling Software?!

[Dyne]

Dunno, still working on it, maybe?

They just announced a "partnership" kind of thing with Gamespy; they didn't say tunneling specifically, did they? People just assumed that.

[Seth]

I've played about 10 races. I've found that the speed is more dependant on the distance(not geographical but 'internet distance') than upload speeds.


I played a guy from vancouver and was getting about 25 fps. I played others from Louisianna and California. It was more at 10-15 fps. It's hella fun. I got my friend to play on my cube with the guy from vancouver so we had 3 carts in total and the the game didn't slow down any. Great race, close until the end.

So far it seems good, you just have to find people who are closer. There's no shortage of people also, so that's good.

[GameMaster]

To whom it concerns, the Mac OS X software has been released.