Pulladium

Pulladium is a community maintained fork of Pulsar, a Mario Kart Wii Kamek-Based engine to create CT distributions. It comes with its own software to aid in building custom distributions, and multiple quality of life features.

The Pulladium fork exists to continue development of Pulsar, and to provide new packs a stable foundation upon which to develop. In its early stages this means more of a focus on bug fixes and quality of life with the pack creator. Later versions will include more engine features. Much is planned!

New features

• WiiLink WFC support (thanks mkwcat!)
• Local multiplayer settings button (thanks Toadette Hack Fan!)

Fixes from original Pulsar

• Toadette Hack Fan: Fixed issues with tracks containing LEX files causing them to not work properly
• ZPL: Fixed many bugs and stability issues with KO mode
• BlueLeopard: Fixed an issue causing 200cc's max speed to be higher than intended. (This behaviour can be reverted to prevent ghost desyncs if preferred)
• ym: Fixed an issue where the race count in a friend room wouldn't be updated
• ZPL: Fixed the Mii head setting not working as intended
• Saucy: Fixed Mega TC showing in the roulette in vanilla worldwides
• Blazico: Fixed speedometer thousandths digit calculation
• Saucy: Fixed the vanilla track order when playing worldwides
• Toadette Hack Fan: Significantly improved NTSC-K support
• Erythtini: Fixed ObjFlow and GeoHitTables not loading from track szs ./Common/ folder, as it was in LE-CODE (files on .szs root will take priority)
• Saucy: Fixed an issue where crates do not spawn in the correct place due to overlapping track position

Developer additions

• Improved versions.txt (thanks Toadette Hack Fan!)
• Expanded symbols.txt (thanks Toadette Hack Fan!)
• Completely rewritten build script with significant compile time improvements over the old .bat

Base Pulsar features

Core:

• Cup select expansion
• Settings that are directly modifiable in-game, including in friend rooms
• Up to four time-trial modes (150cc, 150cc feather, 200cc and 200cc feather)
• Ghost saving on all tracks and all four modes (on the SD on console and on the NAND on dolphin)
• Support for staff ghosts should the creator make them
• KO mode
• OnlineTT mode
• LEX support
• XPF support (from Gabriela)
• USB GCN Support (from Gabriela)

UI:

• A speedometer that is flush with the game UI
• In-game crediting of track authors
• Between Races Change Combo, which has its own UI along with a randomize button
• Team selection, where the host of a room can manually set the team of each player.
• Boot in Wiilink WFC directly
• Better ghost replay which allows multi ghost watching and point-of-view switching

Sound:

• BRSAR entry size patch to make all brstms loop normally
• Conditionnal channel switches; the game will only switch channel (on Koopa Cape for example) if the currently playing brstm has at least as many channels as the brsar entry requires.
• BRSTM Volume, much like it works in CTGP by editing byte 0x3F of any BRSTM
• BRSTM expansion
• Optional Music speedUp on final lap (the music is sped up when you cross the line instead of switching to the fast lap version)

Gameplay:

• 200cc support
• Ultra Mini-Turbos
• Mega TCs
• CLF78 and stebler's feather
• Support for custom CC distribution
• COOB (both kHacker35000vr's and Riidefi's versions)
• Team VS has been edited to play exactly as normal VS does, while keeping the coloured minimap icons and the scoreboard after races.

Network:

• Rooms that can only be joined by people on the same pack (including the same version)
• A much faster Host Always Wins where the host selects the next track directly in the race.
• Worldwides that work as on vanilla
• The features that impact gameplay the most (200cc, UMTs, feather, mega TCs) can be turned off in the software when making your distribution. Pulsar can also be used as a base to add your own features. CTTP is such an example. The software only outputs the tracks and a config file, but the code binaries can be modified to fit your needs.

Credits:

• Treeki for Kamek. The engine has been ever so slightly modified to create a new output format which combines the usual 4 binaries.
• Gabriela for XPF support and USB GCN support from Aurora. An exception from the GPLv3 licensing was provided, allowing these files to be used in this project.