Extracting Super Mario Bros levels with Python (opens in new tab)

(matthewearl.github.io)

166 pointsyeahdef7y ago19 comments

19 comments

I made this a few years ago. It's pretty much all of Super Mario Bros. in one image: https://i.imgur.com/g6JQ2WV.png / https://twitter.com/Doomlaser/status/1004802864433147904

I want to do more of these and experiment with training generative neural nets on that kind of thing when I get the chance.

godot7y ago

As a kid in the early 1990s I always thought 8-1 was unusually long and I always seem to get down to the 99s warning music before I can finish the level, even running at full speed. This visualization really shows clearly how much longer that level is compared to the rest.

T-hawk7y ago

Besides the physical length, 8-1 also starts you with 300 ticks on the timer rather than the usual 400.

oh_sigh7y ago

Great visualization, thanks for these! On a side note, I find it funny that this image takes 16x more space than the actual game of super mario.

ekianjo7y ago

The game assets reuse the same sprites all the time, so it's going to be much smaller than a representation of all of its level in bitmap.

1 more reply

ifoundthetao7y ago

I also want you to do that. Then I want you to do an incredibly in-depth video series walking through how you did the whole thing.

bproven7y ago

You sure this wasnt' in Nintendo Power back in '89? ;) I remember these types of visualizations to help walk through / beat the old NES games - especially Metroid!

TAForObvReasons7y ago

Do you have a similar diagram for the Japanese SMB2 ("lost levels") ?

mohn7y ago

The second column here [1] has links to individual level PNGs. It's not the whole game in a single image, though. I'm surprised to see that "VGMaps.com: The Video Game Atlas" hasn't been mentioned yet in this thread.

[1] http://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/NES/index.htm#SuperMarioBros2J

T-hawk7y ago

Nitpick: 3-1 and 6-2 have cloud areas and 4-2 has several pipe areas that aren't shown.

martin_drapeau7y ago

Very nice. A few years back I wrote http://mariocraft.club/ for fun (Super Mario in Javascript). Allows you to build your own levels. Very basic and unfinished but people love building levels.

If anyone has interest in picking up the project, and auto-generating the levels, ping me.

BZH3147y ago

@matts_ramblings approach is great to get a perfect authoritative reference we can use to test and/or train other tools.

Other tools mapping the Super Mario Bros. levels:

1. animmerger [1] by bisqwit

Written in C++.

Takes png images as input.

This tool seems to be the reference in creating level maps for Super Mario.

Matt's tool seems to use animerger to generate the color palette according to the source code [2]

2. ALMA [3] by BZH314 (disclaimer: our baby project)

Matt mentions using this approach as a possibility in the post.

Written in Python using the OpenCV [4] computer vision library.

ALMA takes videos as input, generates the map levels as images (png and animated gifs) and also generates the videos to show the algorithm in action [5]

(shameless self plug: need more YouTube subscribers to get that sweet sweet vanity URL please :-)

ALMA applies background subtraction to remove the moving enemies in order to keep only the background (a problem Matt's tool does not have)

3. Manually stitched

If you're looking for good SMB1 level maps stitched manually, there are some good work out there:

Rick N. Bruns' nesmaps.com [6]

Mariowiki: example of World 1-1 [7]

Are you aware of other tools out there?

---

[1] https://bisqwit.iki.fi/source/animmerger.html

[2] https://gist.github.com/matthewearl/733bba717780604813ed588d...

[3] https://bzh314.com/alma/

[4] https://opencv.org/

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wanvx0PpE1w&list=PLa4uefpt5W...

[6] http://www.nesmaps.com/maps/SuperMarioBrothers/SuperMarioBro...

[7] https://www.mariowiki.com/World_1-1_(Super_Mario_Bros.)

kchr7y ago

Thanks for this trove of resources! :-)

arthurfm7y ago

How difficult would it be to do the same with Super Mario World on the SNES?

hypeibole7y ago

I am not by any means an SMW expert but lately I've developed a keen interest on the SMW romhack scene.

If what you want to do is extract a level and/or play around with level creation the golden standard tool is Lunar Magic [0].

There are some forums with information about rom hacking, level creation, music creation and so on for SMW, like SMWCentral [1].

[0] https://fusoya.eludevisibility.org/lm/index.html

[1] https://www.smwcentral.net/

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19 comments

doomlaser7y ago

I made this a few years ago. It's pretty much all of Super Mario Bros. in one image: https://i.imgur.com/g6JQ2WV.png / https://twitter.com/Doomlaser/status/1004802864433147904

I want to do more of these and experiment with training generative neural nets on that kind of thing when I get the chance.

godot7y ago

T-hawk7y ago

Besides the physical length, 8-1 also starts you with 300 ticks on the timer rather than the usual 400.

oh_sigh7y ago

Great visualization, thanks for these! On a side note, I find it funny that this image takes 16x more space than the actual game of super mario.

ekianjo7y ago

The game assets reuse the same sprites all the time, so it's going to be much smaller than a representation of all of its level in bitmap.

1 more reply

ifoundthetao7y ago

I also want you to do that. Then I want you to do an incredibly in-depth video series walking through how you did the whole thing.

bproven7y ago

You sure this wasnt' in Nintendo Power back in '89? ;) I remember these types of visualizations to help walk through / beat the old NES games - especially Metroid!

TAForObvReasons7y ago

Do you have a similar diagram for the Japanese SMB2 ("lost levels") ?

mohn7y ago

[1] http://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/NES/index.htm#SuperMarioBros2J

T-hawk7y ago

Nitpick: 3-1 and 6-2 have cloud areas and 4-2 has several pipe areas that aren't shown.

martin_drapeau7y ago

Very nice. A few years back I wrote http://mariocraft.club/ for fun (Super Mario in Javascript). Allows you to build your own levels. Very basic and unfinished but people love building levels.

If anyone has interest in picking up the project, and auto-generating the levels, ping me.

BZH3147y ago

@matts_ramblings approach is great to get a perfect authoritative reference we can use to test and/or train other tools.

Other tools mapping the Super Mario Bros. levels:

1. animmerger [1] by bisqwit

Written in C++.

Takes png images as input.

This tool seems to be the reference in creating level maps for Super Mario.

Matt's tool seems to use animerger to generate the color palette according to the source code [2]

2. ALMA [3] by BZH314 (disclaimer: our baby project)

Matt mentions using this approach as a possibility in the post.

Written in Python using the OpenCV [4] computer vision library.

ALMA takes videos as input, generates the map levels as images (png and animated gifs) and also generates the videos to show the algorithm in action [5]

(shameless self plug: need more YouTube subscribers to get that sweet sweet vanity URL please :-)

ALMA applies background subtraction to remove the moving enemies in order to keep only the background (a problem Matt's tool does not have)

3. Manually stitched

If you're looking for good SMB1 level maps stitched manually, there are some good work out there:

Rick N. Bruns' nesmaps.com [6]

Mariowiki: example of World 1-1 [7]

Are you aware of other tools out there?

---

[1] https://bisqwit.iki.fi/source/animmerger.html

[2] https://gist.github.com/matthewearl/733bba717780604813ed588d...

[3] https://bzh314.com/alma/

[4] https://opencv.org/

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wanvx0PpE1w&list=PLa4uefpt5W...

[6] http://www.nesmaps.com/maps/SuperMarioBrothers/SuperMarioBro...

[7] https://www.mariowiki.com/World_1-1_(Super_Mario_Bros.)

kchr7y ago

Thanks for this trove of resources! :-)

arthurfm7y ago

How difficult would it be to do the same with Super Mario World on the SNES?

hypeibole7y ago

I am not by any means an SMW expert but lately I've developed a keen interest on the SMW romhack scene.

If what you want to do is extract a level and/or play around with level creation the golden standard tool is Lunar Magic [0].

There are some forums with information about rom hacking, level creation, music creation and so on for SMW, like SMWCentral [1].

[0] https://fusoya.eludevisibility.org/lm/index.html

[1] https://www.smwcentral.net/

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse