Destroying Whack A Monty!

Today we will beat the NSMB DS minigame Whack A Monty. What will the final score be?
#newsupermariobrosds #nintendo #imagerecognition

[@BitOfCode-u9g]

Put your favourite New Super Mario Bros DS minigame (or minigame from another game) in the comments. The comment with the most likes will get automated in the next video. :)

[@BlueYoshi]

please do sort or splode next! I'm loving these vids!

[@pokeninjafireemblem]

I think I've seen someone do that, it's the Bob omb one, right?

[@TimmyChUwU]

⁠@@pokeninjafireemblemyeah, I believe CodeNoodles did a video on it

[@2xhTenchi]

Instead of matching against a picture of a fully emerged Monty, wouldn't detecting a partially visible click on it earlier? Also, since the game takes place on a grid, maybe it could be viable to only target small rectangles around each hole instead of one big area

[@DonavinDraws]

Yes, definitely. Heck, Luigi and the montys are distinct enough you could do it near instantaneously, also would be a quicker internal process since the pixels being looked for could be smaller, too. Real weird they started the video stating the game was a grid, then went on to not even try a grid system.

[@BitOfCode-u9g]

The image of the emerged mole was just for the sake of visualization in the video. In the code I used only a feature of the mole :)

[@Vextrove]

That's satisfying to know. I think it would be cool if you mentioned things like that in videos going forward

[@Sonic-oh2ly]

​@BitOfCode-u9g you should mention it next time!

[@tyronerdmann7563]

And what if you went back to the color way and only checked at the 20 spots if it is black (nothing) or brown (mole) then you only have it check 20 spots and 2 colors

[@reubenb5088]

Please do the boo in the dark minigame! Id be interested to see how youd destroy it.

[@HypK799]

How about the minigame from SM64DS where there is a card floating above the water and you need to try to see the outline of the card symbol from the back? It would be interesting to see if the program can see the faint image on the back of the moving card.

[@pokeninjafireemblem]

I was gonna suggest that one too

[@Chico_Julio]

Other thing to make it faster is plainly change the language since python is slow at execution times compared to other PL's. But really, Who wants to code a program like that just for a video?

[@LessThanPro]

Using something like Cython or whatever compiled python is called may help, and be more feasible.

[@gragogflying-anvil3605]

I assume that most of the time is spent in openCV. But is that written in Python or is it using bindings to a compiled library?

[@Cojosho97]

The trampoline time game sounds crazy, the one where you send the Marios to the various exits on the red DK construction bars by drawing trampolines for them to fall onto. I think over time, the stage moves “up” so the easier top exit gets harder to reach. Drawing longer lines make bigger trampolines that give a smaller jump, while the small ones give a huge jump boost. This suggestion feels more like a final boss however lol

[@Asticky_]

I feel like you could optimize this a lot further, couldn’t you? You crop down the scanning range to get rid of unnecessary checks outside the bounds of the play area, but you’re still checking every single pixel within those bounds for a >90% match with the sprite of the fully-emerged Monty. There are only 20 different spots where a Monty can appear, and the three possible states have very different color profiles. Couldn’t you check, e.g., the red color channel for one or two pixels per hole and tap that spot if there’s a match? That’d cut down the number of pixels to check from ~40,000 to 20 and cut out the need to compare the full sprites with each other? I obviously haven’t tested this myself but I feel like that’d pretty much put the game at its limit.

[@daviddeandres6324]

Me from the past would be even more amazed by this than present video, amazing video

[@pepperonipizza8200]

Now make it only hit Luigis

[@katt-the-pig]

Very satisfying to watch and listen to all those moles get wacked. Had me giggling. But not so much when the game audio got replaced with music.

[@crocogator665]

Not New Super Mario Bros., but I always wondered what optimal play of the Shell Smash minigame from Super Mario 64 DS would look like. Realistically, the game is so chaotic, it might not be possible to know.

[@naryosh_]

the one with the targets painted on the ice? i hella wanna see that

[@Sechan1996]

i always wanted to see the snowball minigame optimally played. its so hard in my opinion

[@bellringgames8225]

These videos are really entertaining!! I’d absolutely love to see an AI try and break that game that is basically Touhou bullet hell but with a bob-omb!

[@Nick-ci8ve]

Missed opportunity for monty python jokes

[@chickensandwich9977]

I always loved the trampoline mini game But that would probably be very challenging to program

[@Loogie_727]

Very good video! I enjoyed watching it I loved the Luigi Casino like mini games

[@dogindagrass]

my favorite game was the Poker luigi casino game

[@CR1MSONACE]

Unfortunately I don't know how automated you could make Picture poker.

[@EP1CxEMAN08]

A score of 154 is impressive using image recognition alone! I looked up a TAS of this minigame, and it seems the true limit is 328. 'course, you can't even see the Montys when the TAS goes that fast, but I bet you could get a score of over 200 with more optimizations!

[@WelshTurkey]

You should try this series on Mario party DS

[@johnsimpsen5]

Please do the Wanted, that one is goated.

[@ghb323]

how about checking exactly 20 pixels of the color of the monty mole by having each pixel over each hole? Unless there is a pixel of the same color between Luigi and Monty.

[@Ap3xHD]

Great video :)

[@CouchPotator]

Couldn't you just scan a single pixel (or small cluster) at each hole for the color of the monty mole?

[@WarioTimeWarioTimeWarioTime]

I think Coincentration would be interesting.

[@AdBlock-User]

Remember this game very well. Can't remember what score I got but far from your result haha. Feel free to do this with all the other mini games as well.

[@GigaOtomia]

Don't different python libraries sometimes result in faster code, or having less lines of code? I find it hard to believe that there was simply nothing you could possibly improve upon after three-ish iterations.

[@rka3477]

Cool! I like this kind of content

[@Wrulfy]

Im going to guess that near the end you're limited to clicking a single monty each frame, can the code detect if there are more than 1 each frame, or detects one, clicks it, then checks for the next?

[@bahamut256]

How you have done this is on the right track but your approach is not quite right. The optimal check pattern is 20 singular pixels checked on the first frame that the mole is clickable. You really only need to check if a singular pixel is changing from black to brown. I think you could get above 250 if you further optimised this.

[@PrevosHD]

You should have a lot more views.It's hard to find good content anymore😊

[@陳冠辰-q2z]

I want to see you slow down the emulator's speed and see what's the limit of the game.

[@Theaxeman-e5b]

Do poker

[@Laconte427]

I have an idea: what if you make an ai to play vs mode in minigames then try to win in a game against it

[@orsonzedd]

Please do loves me not

[@henke37]

Better optimization: run the game in frame by frame mode. Stop trying to optimize the screen capture and instead just provide input for every frame.

[@idadood2278]

The other stuff in the comments would definitely be a lot more interesting to code up.... but I like Pair-A-Gone-And-On. (unsure if thats in nsmb personally, but its in sm64ds...) That's it. That's the only reason I'm giving. (or you could mess with the pinball minigame from sm64 ds :troll:)