This is on a real console, not an emulator. They overflow the snes into the controller registers to achieve arbitrary code execution by hand. They do this by placing koopa shells at pixel-perfect locations to spell out ASM, overflow to the controller registers, and press a specific combination of buttons to jump to the sprite table and their literal shellcode.
At the start of this year there was a crazy few weeks where different speedrunners were competing to execute the "credits warp" in the quickest and most efficient way. It started at around 6 minutes, now it's down to around 2 I think, most of which is the game's intro. Fun stuff. SethBling was the first person to ever execute it on a real console.
I have reasonable suspicion that it wouldn't be nearly as easy to train without "spinning" move which basically gives invulnerability against all enemies sans their bullets, iirc.
I see this videoclip as a great introduction to neural networks and genetic algorithms (something I didn't know existed in ML) rather than a simple "computer completes videogame level". You're probably right nonetheless (I can't remember the mechanics of this mario game) :)
As far as I can tell, it would only require longer time (more iterations) for the network to learn, but it would still work.
The main problem I see is that the algorithm is learning from the same level (or set of levels). It would be interesting to see what happens if you give it some completely new level to play.
This is a really cool and intuitive introduction to this sort of algorithms, and the example and visualization make it very accessible. Great work, I'm sure it will inspire some kids to get into ML and neural networks.
I apologize, this is pedantic, but I think people often overstate the relationship between neural networks and the brain. I'm far from an expert, but saying neural networks are based on the brain is a stretch. They're inspired by a theory of how the brain works that is not wholly in line with what most scientists believe.
It's so tempting to say, this is based on the brain, when really it's more like, this was inspired by one psychologists model of the brain.
Awesomeness. How you explain machine learning principles/NEAT really shows a firm grasp. The fact it's done in lua...makes it even more eccentrically cool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxFh1CJOrTU
This is on a real console, not an emulator. They overflow the snes into the controller registers to achieve arbitrary code execution by hand. They do this by placing koopa shells at pixel-perfect locations to spell out ASM, overflow to the controller registers, and press a specific combination of buttons to jump to the sprite table and their literal shellcode.
At the start of this year there was a crazy few weeks where different speedrunners were competing to execute the "credits warp" in the quickest and most efficient way. It started at around 6 minutes, now it's down to around 2 I think, most of which is the game's intro. Fun stuff. SethBling was the first person to ever execute it on a real console.
Here's a video explaining it, from a different speedrunner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAHXK2wut_I