
Infinite Super Mario AI Source Code - fogus
http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~rb1006/projects:marioai
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jcl
Essentially, someone wrote a game that allows you to play randomly generated
Super Mario levels of arbitrary difficulty, and the contest was to write an AI
that gets as far as possible on those levels, in real time. This is the
winning entry.

(They actually ran two separate contests, but the videos of this agent were
released around the time of the first contest, which I think would have
discouraged new entrants for the second. Independently, the video went viral
in Japan and picked up half a million views.)

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DarkShikari
_Independently, the video went viral in Japan_

This doesn't surprise me; Japan has a long internet tradition of Mario-related
hacks. One example is the "automatic Mario" videos, specially-crafted Mario
levels that are set up such that they will complete automatically if Mario
moves continually to the right, and the sounds created will match the
background music. A particularly impressive example:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM0ib4GxLPw>

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harpastum
That video of "automatic mario" is absolutely amazing. It boggles my mind just
thinking about how much time that must have taken.

And to anyone who didn't check out that link, it's definitely worth watching.
If you're not interested in the whole thing (eleven minutes) I recommend
starting right at 8:00.

~~~
DarkShikari
And if you like that one, just check the related videos tab for more, like
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt8upKaWzy0> and so forth.

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latortuga
The highlight of this post was discovering the WTFPL, although the videos in
slow motion of mario following the mouse were pretty incredible.

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zandorg
10 Jump

20 Goto 10

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mynameishere
There's something fishy about that. It seems unlikely that even a perfectly
intelligent bot could, for instance, never have to wait for the flying turtles
to line up (as when bouncing across a chasm). They're just always there in the
perfect arrangement when mario gets to them.

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rictic
I'm not quite sure what you're saying, but it's worth mentioning that the
levels generated by the engine are rather simple. For example, there are never
any gaps so wide that they can't be jumped across easily, so no fancy bouncing
needed.

