15 ms·

Mario meets Pareto

1583 points by superMayo 2y ago

frankvdwaal 2y ago
From the site: "all elements on the frontier are not equally good." Peach is just as good as Daisy, for example, so I'd say: "Not all elements of the frontier are equally good."
evilc00kie 2y ago
tl;dr: use peach with teddy buggy, roller tires and the cloud glider.
stefanlindbohm 2y ago
Love the application and visualization! Having spent the past year building a journey planner algorithm, which heavily builds on pareto optimality/sets, from scratch, I was waiting for the full set of pareto optimal solutions. I.e. all kart combinstions that are best in at least one way. Should be doable by iterating through all possible stats and merging[1] into a set for each one. We might get a lot of solutions, but it should be somewhat managable. Has anyone tried this? 1: Merging is to take the new entry and 1) removing any existing entry that is dominated by it, and 2) adding the entry if it is not dominated by any existing entry.
- ndr 2y ago
  Isn't this what the last part of TFA covers?
bandrami 2y ago
I haven't played this series since the SNES 30 years ago. Do the different characters still get different power-ups from the cubes? Because that was always what I picked based on.
- sspiff 2y ago
  The items you get are the same, but maybe the frequencies are different? I never heard of that being the case, only that the weapons you get depend on your position in the race (you get better weapons when doing worse in the race). But I also didn't realize this was the case on SNES. I only ever played the SNES version as a young kid, and it was a Japanese NTSC version on a PAL television through a cartridge adapter and it was pretty janky.
- baku-fr 2y ago
  This is the case on Mario Kart: Double Dash!! (GameCube), on the Arcade GP series and Mario Kart Tour (smartphone). In all other games, character choice doesn't affect item distribution.
LarsDu88 2y ago
This is seriously the most impressive visualization I've ever seen. What tool did the author use to do this?
- simple10 2y ago
  Looks like svelte + three.js Svelte has some pretty nice built-in scroll animation support: https://svelte.dev/repl/051cd352ce284d15b55c91c8b30fa32f?version=4.2.12 https://svelte.dev/repl/051cd352ce284d15b55c91c8b30fa32f?ver...
  - hantusk 2y ago
    more specifically it's using the svelte wrapper of three.js called Threlte: https://threlte.xyz/ https://threlte.xyz/
  - superMayo 2y ago
    Author here. I'm using Svelte, which is great for interactive applications. For the event handling I'm very influenced by what https://mlu-explain.github.io/ https://mlu-explain.github.io/ does. The 3d plot is made with Threejs through the Threlte wrapper. One challenge was animating the 20k points in the 3d plot, which is handled by a custom vertex shader.
    - simple10 2y ago
      Thanks for sharing the tech stack. It's a really impressive site.
- danans 2y ago
  Looks like Svelte (https://svelte.dev/ https://svelte.dev/)
- _nhh 2y ago
  Nothing beats https://ciechanow.ski/sound/ https://ciechanow.ski/sound/
themoonisachees 2y ago
If the creator happens to come by here: Very cool and I see the vision Unfortunately on firefox for Android 13 on my nothing phone (2a) almost all on-screen assets flicker non-stop. I thought I was a style decision at first but now that I'm further down it's very clearly a bug. Still very cool, learned about pareto efficiency from a video about this exact topic a few years ago that only computed the pareto front for accel and speed because they couldn't represent higher dimensions well. Maybe same author?
- superMayo 2y ago
  Thank's for the info, will fix asap !
neokrish 2y ago
This is absolutely brilliant! Bookmarked and I’m sure I’ll be revisiting this and sharing this broadly!
Saba21 2y ago
Cool, great!
micheljansen 2y ago
This article was way more interesting than the title suggested. Well done!
- andai 2y ago
  The submission originally had a much more descriptive title, but it was changed to match the article's title as per the rules.
james_a_craig 2y ago
A dissenting opinion on the design - for me, this presentation was like watching a video to find information; too slow paced, and it made me impatient the whole time. The original notebook format was far better in that regard. The layout within each section is beautiful, but the animation and the scroll-sensitive layout (vs. just having a series of static diagrams) makes it unpleasant for me to read. The content's excellent and it was fascinating to see how the differences between characters and karts play out though!
- atomicUpdate 2y ago
  > the animation and the scroll-sensitive layout (vs. just having a series of static diagrams) makes it unpleasant for me to read. I totally agree; I don't understand the fascination HN has with these types of sites. It all feels like extraneous design just for the sake of it, rather than actually making anything easier or better to understand.
  - sas41 2y ago
    I think sites/pages like this hold an important role, presenting information to people who have trouble visualizing concepts or need visual aid to better assimilate information is important and sometimes, a simple 2D rendering or a dry graph just isn't enough. And if you need a 3d graph, you're only a handful of lines away from smoothing out your presentation, so why not? There's also the more subjective aspect, I think adding the effort to make something look nice and slick, animated well, could be both an interesting challenge and a relaxing pass-time. It's pleasing both to make and digest, in a way, it sits in an intersection of design, art and technique and as an added bonus, could help capture the attention of someone who struggles with short attention spans even better!
wcrossbow 2y ago
Nice article! The resulting Pareto front really highlights how hard game design is. You can get millions of possible combinations but the reality is that only a handful of them will ever happen in a competitive environment.
- CGamesPlay 2y ago
  That doesn’t mean that the other combinations are worthless. Presumably there’s value in the cosmetics, plus the puzzle aspect of creating and optimizing the builds along the different dimensions. Surely there’s a meta-Pareto-front of the balance between usefulness of each combination in competitions and amount of fun it adds to the game!
  - kibwen 2y ago
    Seconded. As a game designer, you want to add silly and suboptimal things to your game. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that every decision must be perfectly balanced and equally weighty, because your game will turn out bland and textureless. And beyond the considerations of "optimal" play, putting suboptimal options into your game can serve as both a way of naturally selecting difficulty without having to implement ungainly difficulty sliders, and also accommodate fun/silly challenges for people who just want to mess around.
- KeplerBoy 2y ago
  Keep in mind that the pareto front is not a two-dimensional line, but a surface in a some high dimensional vector space. In every game there are many, many aspects to min/max. As others pointed out even Mario Kart doesn't boil down to speed and acceleration. In a sufficiently complex game every build is on the pareto front as it optimizes some specific cost function.
  - wcrossbow 2y ago
    I was refering here to playing competitively, that is, playing with the only goal of winning. Of course, it is perfectly acceptable to play for style or to manage a podium with the worst configuration or anything you fancy []. However, if your one and only goal is winning I suspect that the high dimensional vector space will end up not looking so high dimensional once you account for the correlations between the different features you use. This is already clear from the very strong correlation between speed and accelaration. []I myself have played MK64 a lot and sometimes the goal was simply to see the world burn, standing on a corner with a shell waiting for the what would've been the winner of the race. Fond memories.
anArbitraryOne 2y ago
I once messed with using linear programming to approximate this, and I have to say you did an excellent job explaining it! Worth noting that the tires and gliders are independent, so one can first find their pareto frontiers, then combine that with those of the drivers for all dimensions
yu3zhou4 2y ago
Here's the repo: https://github.com/SuperMayo/mayerowitz.io https://github.com/SuperMayo/mayerowitz.io
deleted 2y ago
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Etherlord87 2y ago
You have a lot of options to choose from. How to pick the truly best option? Let me show you a method, in which you arbitrarily pick 3 out of 6 attributes and then use an artificial, unintuitive interface to choose an optimum trade-off between them. And once you do, my super-amazing method will tell you what combination to use, easy! OK I might be an old bitter cynic, but the beginning got my hopes up for something clever. The only value I see here is explaining the Pareto frontier, but it doesn't take a genius to independently figure out, if you have 2 attributes, and someone else has one of the attributes at least equal, and another higher, that someone else is a better pick… Of course, what the article doesn't even touch, is that some attributes could get worse results as they get higher: imagine having an acceleration and speed so high that you effectively can't steer your car. Also a pedantic argument could be made on the cosmetics possibly actually affecting performance…
- Scarblac 2y ago
  I thought it was a clever relatable way to explain the concept of the Pareto frontier. And that of the 703560 builds, you can pick just 14 and choose among those depending on what you prefer was a surprise to me.
- lkirkwood 2y ago
  Not entirely sure what you're looking for. If you don't want to use the "artificial, unintuitive interface" (bit rude IMO) you could just google "best mario kart setup". The selection of attributes is not exactly arbitrary. AFAIK speed has always been by far the dominant stat in mario kart, then acceleration. Choosing e.g. better handling at the expense of speed is an immediate disadvantage. If your problem is that this doesn't help you to choose atteibutes in the general case, take it up with the chaos of the natural world... This article solves a problem people have (not knowing what setup to pick) in a very stylish way (subjective) and teaches the reader something along the way (what a Pareto frontier is). Not a particularly constructive comment if you ask me.
  - Etherlord87 2y ago
    Just because the selection is "correct" (e.g. gives best results in practice) doesn't mean it's not arbitrary. The article starts with the premise and fails to deliver. The visual layer of the article is nice. But ultimately the example of using the Pareto's frontier is a FAIL because it doesn't deliver on its promise of finding the best kart setup.
samwho 2y ago
This is superb. Really great work!
jeroenvlek 2y ago
This is the kind of content I'm here for. Thank you, superMayo!
trojanalert 2y ago
This is so darn good!
blauditore 2y ago
When buying a bike, I kind of used this method by looking at the cost-vs-spec-level plot on 99Spokes. Although it should be taken with a grain of salt, as spec level is a heuristic and not always very accurate. Found a nice MTB for a good price that way, but struggled with other types of bicycles.
Mulderns 2y ago
If I'm optimizing for 'weight' is it supposed to be heavier or lighter? At the moment it seems the more weight I put on 'weight' the heavier the build is.
- po 2y ago
  Pretty sure weight mostly affects how badly you're knocked by other players when they hit you. So heavier is better (although it's often correlated with slow acceleration or poor handling). You want an EV... heavy as hell but with amazing acceleration.
jacksonhacker 2y ago
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AtlasBarfed 2y ago
Mario kart doesn't have weight as a metric for speed in turns?
dancemethis 2y ago
_The_ Pareto? The thin-voiced lawyer who was the victim of Brazil's best prank call in the 80s? No, A Pareto, the excellent economist.
HiJon89 2y ago
Really cool analysis and visualizations! Although there’s an interesting wrinkle with Mario Kart 8 + 200cc - most players don’t want speed over a certain level because you’re too fast to control. So rather than trying to maximize absolute speed stat you may want to minimize the delta from your optimal speed stat
- cout 2y ago
  That sounds not so different from building a race car irl. There's no point in a big engine if you have to brake so early that you get passed in the corners. Plus all that braking will cook the brakes. It's often letter to have a lower top speed and never have to slow down.
- kzzzznot 2y ago
  Exactly. Handling and Acceleration are the most important factors at 200cc. Acceleration because when (not if) you get hit/crash, you need to be able to catch up quickly.
kqr 2y ago
> A portfolio with low risks and high returns? [...] Of course, if you already know the exact weights Or! In this case, it reduces to a one-dimensional optimisation thanks to the structure of the problem. What we're optimising in portfolio selection is not the return of a single investment, but of a lifetime of investments. And thanks to compounding, that is a function of both risk and return. So we can find the optimal allocation without making any tradeoff: https://two-wrongs.com/the-misunderstood-kelly-criterion.html https://two-wrongs.com/the-misunderstood-kelly-criterion.htm...
- gizmo 2y ago
  Not quite, because one big input is the ratio of your investments to your annual savings. Large drawdowns are bad late in life, early in life they're not such a big deal. Kelly prohibits very profitable bets when they come with considerable risk of ruin (because you lose out on any future compounding when you zero out your wealth), but that is too conservative when you're young and your portfolio is small relative to your income. The article even hints at this by observing that the discounted sum of future salaries are part of your current wealth. Which is exactly correct and also -- if you're young -- the most significant variable by several orders of magnitude. Curiously, the author understands this but doesn't care.
batterylow 2y ago
Nice analysis and visualisation! I used a Pareto approach for my exercise and a project I’m working on - https://limitgym.com https://limitgym.com
davemp 2y ago
This great visualization/article highlights one of my pet peeves with current game design--options for the sake of options. I feel like the common trap for designers is to put too much stock in tag lines like "Over 700,000 different builds!" You're dumping a combinatorial explosion of overhead onto players. If all those choices don't significantly enhance the core game experience, you as a designer as wasting people's time. Doubly so if most of the choice space can be safely eliminated by savvy players. The internet exists after all and someone is going to do the math. Why would you gate the competitive portion of your game behind convex optimization problems? Certainly not to make things more fun. Some examples of these trends are load-outs in FPS games. Every gun now has tradeoffs for sights, barrel, under-barrel, magazine, ammo, etc. and these choices only come after you've chosen a class/weapon. When the core of an FPS is tactical positioning and aim, these options feel like a cheap gimmick in order to milk slightly more time out of players. Franchises like Halo and Battlefield fell for this trap and have completely ruined their reputations. You can still give players choices that _add_ to the core gameplay like counterstrike does with the round economy. If the entirety of a choice you're giving a player happens in a menu, that should be a red flag. The game design industry needs to less emphasis on statistics/combinatorics and more on gameplay/narrative.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  It depends on why you play though; the "combinatorial explosion of overhead" is only a problem if you're trying to min/max, if you play for fun it's more "What character do I like" or "What wings do I find pretty". The most important thing: Don't tell others how to play. Don't tell them "you should pick X because it's the best" unless they explicitly ask for it. Let people play their own way, and don't push how you play games onto others.
  - cableshaft 2y ago
    Yeah, especially for a game like Mario Kart, I'm not too obsessed with making sure I'm picking the most efficient combination of things. I'm picking what I think looks cool or has the most fun personality (in the case of characters) for me in the moment. For that, having more choices is (mostly) better. Even something like Counter-strike, where a lot of the differences are pretty subtle, I liked having a good amount of choices just to play a couple rounds with a gun that feels slightly different and see how well I do. I had my preferences but I played with them all. That being said I do think there's something to be said for not just dumping a bunch of options on a player and be like "you figure out how you want to play", even though I've been guilty of that in a couple past games I've designed, thinking more options is better. Like I remember on of my sequels to a game I tried all sorts of ideas for how to change up options, and instead of pinning down that "okay the hand size is going to be 5 tiles, and if you place next to an ally tile you'll bump them up by X amount, and you can choose what set of numbers the tiles can be (like 1-5, or 1-10, or 1-20)... with my new sequel I've mostly pared it down and I'm taking away game options, because I bet almost no one did anything but use the defaults anyway. At least before I hid them in an options menu you had to choose to open.
countvonbalzac 2y ago
What I wish this article had was a simulation that generated the best kart for each variety of stats. The article doesn't really address that different karts suit different driving styles, so as a Mario Kart lover I was hoping there would be a list of the best karts for each of a variety of different driving styles. But this isn't _really_ about Mario Kart I suppose...
Too 2y ago
In reality, the number of dimensions will always be more than 2, often several magnitudes more. Is there a good way to visualize the Pareto front for higher dimensions?
ycombinatrix 2y ago
if racing with items, acceleration should be ranked higher than speed
Olesya000 2y ago
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ihaveajob 2y ago
Beautiful presentation. I love when visualizations serve the goal and not the other way around. Tufte would be proud.
- wgx 2y ago
  > would Tufte is still alive!
  - ihaveajob 2y ago
    Of course, but I'm not inside his head :)
- Fnoord 2y ago
  Bugs out for me in Firefox at around 2/3. Works fine in Safari. My kid (6) crashes all the time, and she is naturally attracted to picking Peach. I'd say because of that, a character with high acceleration is going to be better. Though she also just likes to push the gas. Though we're playing the one from GBA on Analogue Pocket. Which is probably a lot less advanced as the one in question here (a game for Wii U from 2012), it does resemble Wacky Wheels quite a lot.
  - denkmoon 2y ago
    FYI Mario Kart for the Switch has a handful of accessibility options that help less experienced/younger/elderly players stay in the game and on the course without taking away from the fun.
  - djbusby 2y ago
    Gotta teach the kid about using the brake and the "poomp" slide (called boost after N64) on the corner. I race Mario but when she's on, mine (8), can get me on the 150 tracks (switch). I'm still crushing on the 200 tho (for now) ;)
  - captn3m0 2y ago
    Bugged out for me around 2/3 on Firefox/iOS (which is really Safari) with Lockdown mode.
martijnarts 2y ago
Excellent article! Super approachable and relatable, making it very good at explaining a useful model. It immediately has me looking for other places to apply this. This'll be top of mind for a while!
michael-online 2y ago
This excites me to consider using it as a design tool. When trying to design a game with a more large pareto front of fun and viable builds.
bombcar 2y ago
I did not know the drivers and carts made a difference at all.
quibono 2y ago
I really like the article and the presentation! With that in mind, is this style of presentation (i.e. different elements jumping out or moving into focus as you scroll down the page) easily doable OOTB with any JS libs? Or is this pretty much a custom job?
- swyx 2y ago
  keyword you want is “scrollytelling”. lots of tutorials here and on youtube. easy to start hard to master like with most things.
amarshall 2y ago
One thing this should mention is what game version it uses. Updates frequently change the stats and thus what builds are “best”.
- superMayo 2y ago
  It's the latest version, stats are from https://www.mariowiki.com/Mario_Kart_8_Deluxe_in-game_statistics https://www.mariowiki.com/Mario_Kart_8_Deluxe_in-game_statis...
- jdmarble 2y ago
  The first paragraph mentions this: "In Mario Kart 8, ..." If this was more than a tool for teaching multi-objective optimization, I'd like to see how the Pareto front changes over Mario Kart releases!
  - crtasm 2y ago
    Yes, but there have been many versions (updates/patches) of the game. I don't know how many changed character stats: https://www.mariowiki.com/Mario_Kart_8_Deluxe_update_history https://www.mariowiki.com/Mario_Kart_8_Deluxe_update_history
- rafd 2y ago
  Mario Kart 8 is now frozen, no more patches to come.
modeless 2y ago
Wait, Bowser and Wario are the fastest? I thought it was the other way around. I guess it's reversed from Mario Kart 64.
- CapnCrunchie 2y ago
  They have the highest top speed. It was that way in Mario Kart 64 as well. They have the worst acceleration though.
  - modeless 2y ago
    This is not true. The lighter characters Yoshi and Peach and Toad had higher top speed in 64. https://tasvideos.org/GameResources/N64/MarioKart64#:~:text=310-,Top%20Speed%20(150cc),-324 https://tasvideos.org/GameResources/N64/MarioKart64#:~:text=...
- xanderlewis 2y ago
  I'm not sure, but it kind of makes sense as a choice, since acceleration and speed should be negatively correlated and since Bowser and Wario are both massive they should accelerate more slowly than others (given constant force). So they get to have the highest top speeds to compensate.
  - cout 2y ago
    In a real kart a heavier driver would have lower top speed and acceleration, in exchange for better handling (more body weight means you can more easily shift weight to the wheels that need more traction, unlike a car where the driver's weight is insignificant). But they seem to have ignored kart physics and made it more like a car, where bigger cars might accelerate slower but can accommodate a more powerful engine.
    - xanderlewis 2y ago
      Why would the top speed be lower? Because of increased friction with the ground due to the weight? Ignoring friction, I think what I said would be true. I hadn’t actually thought about it before but as an incredibly skinny person what you said lines up with my experience in a kart. I could seemingly go slightly faster than others but more easily span off and lost control.
xanderlewis 2y ago
Well... that was a seriously impressive presentation. I already knew about Pareto efficiency/the Pareto frontier, but now I'll never be able to forget it. And I'll think of Mario Kart (and poor Koopa being dominated) every time.
- teekert 2y ago
  Playing with Koopa is MK on hard mode, and you can feel better about winning. You'll be like Piccolo or Rock Lee keeping their weights on while training ;)
- laborcontract 2y ago
  These are the sorts of articles that a lot of news sites and digital publications dream of when pitching venture capitalists to cultivate this as a new sort of medium. But I've always found that the most compelling stuff, the most compelling digital presentations are often emergent. I think designing around it as a goal is impossible and often comes off as contrived and annoying. However, there are a times like this where it's just stunning as in, "yes, please hijack my scroll, go ahead".
  - georgesimon 2y ago
    From what I understand of Svelte, it was built by a working data journalist with the dream of enabling these type of rich media articles. So yeah, 'emergent' and 'uncontrived' are in the DNA of this article and the tech beneath it.
- redman25 2y ago
  I wonder if Koopa does better with different customization?
  - dwringer 2y ago
    One thing I noticed is if you set the graph axes to "Speed" and "handling" and the weight slider about 3/4 toward "handling" then Koopa becomes the only member of that 2D slice of pareto front. I suppose this could be a benefit depending on the course design. At least, it's an example of how looking at only 2 dimensions can be limiting.
jbjbjbjb 2y ago
I was disappointed by the lack of a radar chart
fredsmith219 2y ago
My 9 yo is better than me at Mario Kart but not by much. This knowledge may make the difference for me. Thank you!
- sph 2y ago
  In summary: the difference between raw talent and experience. Your kid has likely better reflexes and motor skills than you have, but on your side you have experience and wisdom accumulated over the years :)
- wheelinsupial 2y ago
  In case you aren't aware, you can select a few builds and quickly compare the stats using: https://mk8dxbuilder.com/ https://mk8dxbuilder.com/ Another thing is the coins. Collecting them gives you a speed boost for each coin you collect.
  - brrrrrm 2y ago
    this one groups the characters/cars by identical stats: https://www.bettermk8dxbuilder.com https://www.bettermk8dxbuilder.com
0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
Do professionals use different builds per map? For example, a map has long straightaways (favoring top speed) vs a map with more sharp turns (preferring acceleration)?
- prmoustache 2y ago
  "professionals"? This is Mario Kart we are speaking about, not formula 1 or counter strike.
  - CameronAavik 2y ago
    Mario Kart has a large and flourishing competitive scene[1][2], including numerous competitions with prize money. In 10 days, Nintendo is hosting the Mario Kart World Championships where they are flying in the best players across the world to Tokyo for it. Obviously, not on the same level as F1 or CS, but there absolutely is a competitive scene for this with dedicated players. [1] https://www.mariokartcentral.com/ https://www.mariokartcentral.com/ [2] https://www.mk8dx-lounge.com/ https://www.mk8dx-lounge.com/
    - prmoustache 2y ago
      This is not the point. How many players are making a living competing mario karts? Taking part in competitions with prize money doesn't make you a professionnal player. When I was a road racing cyclist in the upper amateur echelon I was making a decent amount of money in finish prizes, was sponsored, was given a high end bike, clothing and enough tires to last a season, and the mechanic wouldn't charge me for his work, all non local travels were paid. Yet I wasn't a professionnal cyclist as I didn't have a salary nor would I have made enough yearly money to support a family and leave a job. So what are the highest, median and average income of those so called 'Mario Kart pros"?
- Laremere 2y ago
  If you look at the first place (after clear cheaters) time trials for different tracks, you'll see different choices but clear patterns. The main mode of the game has you race a set of four different tracks, and the online mode throws in all of the tracks; So in those modes the choices are going to be more constrained towards an average good. For my part, I got the best rank in single player on all pre-DLC tracks with only toad and the default kart, so it's a part of the game you can entirely ignore if you're not competing against other humans.
throwawayk7h 2y ago
Something not mentioned in this analysis is that after summing the stats from the different components, the value is rounded down, giving 7 possible outcomes per stat.
- rvba 2y ago
  Why is it rounded down?
  - throwawayk7h 2y ago
    That's just something the game does. I don't know why. But it shows you the little ticks in the stat bar that it rounds down to.
jeffbee 2y ago
Missed a unique opportunity to title the article: It's-a-me, Vilfredo!
SrslyJosh 2y ago
Couple points: 1. Skill absolutely matters, more than the kart, etc. that you pick. Watch some expert players on YouTube playing with weird builds and you'll see that they are still able to do well even when playing with significant disadvantages. 2. In practice, you don't really need to know the value of the hidden mini-turbo stat because higher acceleration == higher mini turbo. For 99% of players, acceleration can just be used as a proxy for mini-turbo.
SignalM 2y ago
Very cool love the design of the site and now I know which cart to win with
rozab 2y ago
This is all very webdesign-y and might be good for a less techy audience, but tbh I think the original article with its notebook format provides a lot more useful information https://hinnefe2.github.io/python/tools/2015/09/21/mario-kart.html https://hinnefe2.github.io/python/tools/2015/09/21/mario-kar...
- brrrrrm 2y ago
  that one doesn't have mini-turbo, which has largely superseded acceleration as a stat (it correlates but isn't 1:1)
  - mikepurvis 2y ago
    Indeed. MK8 courses are absolutely loaded with mini turbo opportunities— every drift, jump, or bump in the road is a chance to get that little boost. I’m not at all surprised it can make the difference in competitive play.
- sequoia 2y ago
  I don't think it's fair to disparage this article. The other one is perhaps good for a "deeper dive" but I'd say TFA is better overall at illustrating the concept.
hansonpeter 2y ago
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jmholla 2y ago
I always knew those little red tires were the best. Sadly, this misses the most important thing to me: style. And my love of Zelda. So I'm afraid I'll personally have to disregard all of this.
- aidenn0 2y ago
  In the original MK8, the Triforce tires and Hylean gliders were pretty good, but the stats in MK8 Deluxe for them are not nearly as good.
  - pushedx 2y ago
    Also keep in mind that the 3.0.0 patch for Deluxe changed a bunch of stats.
- bovermyer 2y ago
  You're just optimizing for a different outcome. You could still apply this thinking, just with "Zelda adjacency" as the primary metric.
- kzzzznot 2y ago
  Well I always pick Koopa, who is apparently the worst. Although in my group of friends I win the most by far… I’ll keep with him to keep it fair :)
- VelesDude 2y ago
  There are no grounds on which I can disagree with you.
  - hypercube33 2y ago
    But you can add that as a dimension to the chart!
    - sspiff 2y ago
      Hard to quantify into numbers, no? I like Luigi more than Mario. But do I love Mario like a 6 and Luigi like an 8?
dluan 2y ago
Now this is ~~pod racing~~, uh, game theory
Buttons840 2y ago
How to calculate a Pareto front world take me some thought. I wonder, in practice, does defining my preferences and weights and then using a genetic algorithm find the optional solution? That would take me less thought, because I already know exactly how to define a score function and use a random API.
- eggdaft 2y ago
  If by “optional” you mean “optimal” then no, a GA is not guaranteed to find the optimal solution in the general case.
- swaits 2y ago
  Yes, indeed. There are quite a few “nature inspired metaheuristic algorithms” which do exactly this. When I say “quite a few”, I mean countless. Look up NSGA and NSGA-II for a good starting point. Then Kagi your way deeper into the rabbit hole.
non-chalad 2y ago
How would this mesh with Halo Kart (2)? 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K0IcawLpCE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K0IcawLpCE
petesergeant 2y ago
This is great, but like many casual players I’m very wedded to my character but not their build. Be great to pin the character and then get the best build for them.
- superMayo 2y ago
  I hope your character is not Koopa
jhatemyjob 2y ago
God I am so disappointed, I thought he disassembled Mario Kart 64 into C and refactored the codebase. Fuck my life
- keithalewis 2y ago
  No, just go get one. Don't be a PL obsessing over a video game.
- superMayo 2y ago
  So sorry I've disappointed you, but don't fuck your life plz
  - jhatemyjob 2y ago
    It's too late. I already fucked it.
y1zhou 2y ago
This is so neat! MOO has been a integral part of my work yet it has never occurred to be that Pareto optimization could be applied in kart picking.
edisondotme 2y ago
I just partook in a finance class not too long ago and learned about the concept of an "efficient portfolio". => https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient_frontier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient_frontier While reading this article, I saw those graphs and thought, "Where have I seen this before?"

1583 points by superMayo 2y ago

From the site: "all elements on the frontier are not equally good." Peach is just as good as Daisy, for example, so I'd say: "Not all elements of the frontier are equally good."

evilc00kie 2y ago

tl;dr: use peach with teddy buggy, roller tires and the cloud glider.

stefanlindbohm 2y ago

Love the application and visualization! Having spent the past year building a journey planner algorithm, which heavily builds on pareto optimality/sets, from scratch, I was waiting for the full set of pareto optimal solutions. I.e. all kart combinstions that are best in at least one way. Should be doable by iterating through all possible stats and merging[1] into a set for each one. We might get a lot of solutions, but it should be somewhat managable. Has anyone tried this? 1: Merging is to take the new entry and 1) removing any existing entry that is dominated by it, and 2) adding the entry if it is not dominated by any existing entry.

ndr 2y ago
Isn't this what the last part of TFA covers?

bandrami 2y ago

I haven't played this series since the SNES 30 years ago. Do the different characters still get different power-ups from the cubes? Because that was always what I picked based on.

sspiff 2y ago
The items you get are the same, but maybe the frequencies are different? I never heard of that being the case, only that the weapons you get depend on your position in the race (you get better weapons when doing worse in the race). But I also didn't realize this was the case on SNES. I only ever played the SNES version as a young kid, and it was a Japanese NTSC version on a PAL television through a cartridge adapter and it was pretty janky.
baku-fr 2y ago
This is the case on Mario Kart: Double Dash!! (GameCube), on the Arcade GP series and Mario Kart Tour (smartphone). In all other games, character choice doesn't affect item distribution.

LarsDu88 2y ago

This is seriously the most impressive visualization I've ever seen. What tool did the author use to do this?

simple10 2y ago
Looks like svelte + three.js Svelte has some pretty nice built-in scroll animation support: https://svelte.dev/repl/051cd352ce284d15b55c91c8b30fa32f?version=4.2.12 https://svelte.dev/repl/051cd352ce284d15b55c91c8b30fa32f?ver...
- hantusk 2y ago
  more specifically it's using the svelte wrapper of three.js called Threlte: https://threlte.xyz/ https://threlte.xyz/
- superMayo 2y ago
  Author here. I'm using Svelte, which is great for interactive applications. For the event handling I'm very influenced by what https://mlu-explain.github.io/ https://mlu-explain.github.io/ does. The 3d plot is made with Threejs through the Threlte wrapper. One challenge was animating the 20k points in the 3d plot, which is handled by a custom vertex shader.
  - simple10 2y ago
    Thanks for sharing the tech stack. It's a really impressive site.
danans 2y ago
Looks like Svelte (https://svelte.dev/ https://svelte.dev/)
_nhh 2y ago
Nothing beats https://ciechanow.ski/sound/ https://ciechanow.ski/sound/

themoonisachees 2y ago

If the creator happens to come by here: Very cool and I see the vision Unfortunately on firefox for Android 13 on my nothing phone (2a) almost all on-screen assets flicker non-stop. I thought I was a style decision at first but now that I'm further down it's very clearly a bug. Still very cool, learned about pareto efficiency from a video about this exact topic a few years ago that only computed the pareto front for accel and speed because they couldn't represent higher dimensions well. Maybe same author?

superMayo 2y ago
Thank's for the info, will fix asap !

neokrish 2y ago

This is absolutely brilliant! Bookmarked and I’m sure I’ll be revisiting this and sharing this broadly!

Saba21 2y ago

Cool, great!

micheljansen 2y ago

This article was way more interesting than the title suggested. Well done!

andai 2y ago
The submission originally had a much more descriptive title, but it was changed to match the article's title as per the rules.

james_a_craig 2y ago

A dissenting opinion on the design - for me, this presentation was like watching a video to find information; too slow paced, and it made me impatient the whole time. The original notebook format was far better in that regard. The layout within each section is beautiful, but the animation and the scroll-sensitive layout (vs. just having a series of static diagrams) makes it unpleasant for me to read. The content's excellent and it was fascinating to see how the differences between characters and karts play out though!

atomicUpdate 2y ago
> the animation and the scroll-sensitive layout (vs. just having a series of static diagrams) makes it unpleasant for me to read. I totally agree; I don't understand the fascination HN has with these types of sites. It all feels like extraneous design just for the sake of it, rather than actually making anything easier or better to understand.
- sas41 2y ago
  I think sites/pages like this hold an important role, presenting information to people who have trouble visualizing concepts or need visual aid to better assimilate information is important and sometimes, a simple 2D rendering or a dry graph just isn't enough. And if you need a 3d graph, you're only a handful of lines away from smoothing out your presentation, so why not? There's also the more subjective aspect, I think adding the effort to make something look nice and slick, animated well, could be both an interesting challenge and a relaxing pass-time. It's pleasing both to make and digest, in a way, it sits in an intersection of design, art and technique and as an added bonus, could help capture the attention of someone who struggles with short attention spans even better!

wcrossbow 2y ago

Nice article! The resulting Pareto front really highlights how hard game design is. You can get millions of possible combinations but the reality is that only a handful of them will ever happen in a competitive environment.

CGamesPlay 2y ago
That doesn’t mean that the other combinations are worthless. Presumably there’s value in the cosmetics, plus the puzzle aspect of creating and optimizing the builds along the different dimensions. Surely there’s a meta-Pareto-front of the balance between usefulness of each combination in competitions and amount of fun it adds to the game!
- kibwen 2y ago
  Seconded. As a game designer, you want to add silly and suboptimal things to your game. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that every decision must be perfectly balanced and equally weighty, because your game will turn out bland and textureless. And beyond the considerations of "optimal" play, putting suboptimal options into your game can serve as both a way of naturally selecting difficulty without having to implement ungainly difficulty sliders, and also accommodate fun/silly challenges for people who just want to mess around.
KeplerBoy 2y ago
Keep in mind that the pareto front is not a two-dimensional line, but a surface in a some high dimensional vector space. In every game there are many, many aspects to min/max. As others pointed out even Mario Kart doesn't boil down to speed and acceleration. In a sufficiently complex game every build is on the pareto front as it optimizes some specific cost function.
- wcrossbow 2y ago
  I was refering here to playing competitively, that is, playing with the only goal of winning. Of course, it is perfectly acceptable to play for style or to manage a podium with the worst configuration or anything you fancy []. However, if your one and only goal is winning I suspect that the high dimensional vector space will end up not looking so high dimensional once you account for the correlations between the different features you use. This is already clear from the very strong correlation between speed and accelaration. []I myself have played MK64 a lot and sometimes the goal was simply to see the world burn, standing on a corner with a shell waiting for the what would've been the winner of the race. Fond memories.

anArbitraryOne 2y ago

I once messed with using linear programming to approximate this, and I have to say you did an excellent job explaining it! Worth noting that the tires and gliders are independent, so one can first find their pareto frontiers, then combine that with those of the drivers for all dimensions

yu3zhou4 2y ago

Here's the repo: https://github.com/SuperMayo/mayerowitz.io https://github.com/SuperMayo/mayerowitz.io

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Etherlord87 2y ago

You have a lot of options to choose from. How to pick the truly best option? Let me show you a method, in which you arbitrarily pick 3 out of 6 attributes and then use an artificial, unintuitive interface to choose an optimum trade-off between them. And once you do, my super-amazing method will tell you what combination to use, easy! OK I might be an old bitter cynic, but the beginning got my hopes up for something clever. The only value I see here is explaining the Pareto frontier, but it doesn't take a genius to independently figure out, if you have 2 attributes, and someone else has one of the attributes at least equal, and another higher, that someone else is a better pick… Of course, what the article doesn't even touch, is that some attributes could get worse results as they get higher: imagine having an acceleration and speed so high that you effectively can't steer your car. Also a pedantic argument could be made on the cosmetics possibly actually affecting performance…

Scarblac 2y ago
I thought it was a clever relatable way to explain the concept of the Pareto frontier. And that of the 703560 builds, you can pick just 14 and choose among those depending on what you prefer was a surprise to me.
lkirkwood 2y ago
Not entirely sure what you're looking for. If you don't want to use the "artificial, unintuitive interface" (bit rude IMO) you could just google "best mario kart setup". The selection of attributes is not exactly arbitrary. AFAIK speed has always been by far the dominant stat in mario kart, then acceleration. Choosing e.g. better handling at the expense of speed is an immediate disadvantage. If your problem is that this doesn't help you to choose atteibutes in the general case, take it up with the chaos of the natural world... This article solves a problem people have (not knowing what setup to pick) in a very stylish way (subjective) and teaches the reader something along the way (what a Pareto frontier is). Not a particularly constructive comment if you ask me.
- Etherlord87 2y ago
  Just because the selection is "correct" (e.g. gives best results in practice) doesn't mean it's not arbitrary. The article starts with the premise and fails to deliver. The visual layer of the article is nice. But ultimately the example of using the Pareto's frontier is a FAIL because it doesn't deliver on its promise of finding the best kart setup.

samwho 2y ago

This is superb. Really great work!

jeroenvlek 2y ago

This is the kind of content I'm here for. Thank you, superMayo!

trojanalert 2y ago

This is so darn good!

blauditore 2y ago

When buying a bike, I kind of used this method by looking at the cost-vs-spec-level plot on 99Spokes. Although it should be taken with a grain of salt, as spec level is a heuristic and not always very accurate. Found a nice MTB for a good price that way, but struggled with other types of bicycles.

Mulderns 2y ago

If I'm optimizing for 'weight' is it supposed to be heavier or lighter? At the moment it seems the more weight I put on 'weight' the heavier the build is.

po 2y ago
Pretty sure weight mostly affects how badly you're knocked by other players when they hit you. So heavier is better (although it's often correlated with slow acceleration or poor handling). You want an EV... heavy as hell but with amazing acceleration.

jacksonhacker 2y ago

[dead]

AtlasBarfed 2y ago

Mario kart doesn't have weight as a metric for speed in turns?

dancemethis 2y ago

_The_ Pareto? The thin-voiced lawyer who was the victim of Brazil's best prank call in the 80s? No, A Pareto, the excellent economist.

HiJon89 2y ago

Really cool analysis and visualizations! Although there’s an interesting wrinkle with Mario Kart 8 + 200cc - most players don’t want speed over a certain level because you’re too fast to control. So rather than trying to maximize absolute speed stat you may want to minimize the delta from your optimal speed stat

cout 2y ago
That sounds not so different from building a race car irl. There's no point in a big engine if you have to brake so early that you get passed in the corners. Plus all that braking will cook the brakes. It's often letter to have a lower top speed and never have to slow down.
kzzzznot 2y ago
Exactly. Handling and Acceleration are the most important factors at 200cc. Acceleration because when (not if) you get hit/crash, you need to be able to catch up quickly.

kqr 2y ago

> A portfolio with low risks and high returns? [...] Of course, if you already know the exact weights Or! In this case, it reduces to a one-dimensional optimisation thanks to the structure of the problem. What we're optimising in portfolio selection is not the return of a single investment, but of a lifetime of investments. And thanks to compounding, that is a function of both risk and return. So we can find the optimal allocation without making any tradeoff: https://two-wrongs.com/the-misunderstood-kelly-criterion.html https://two-wrongs.com/the-misunderstood-kelly-criterion.htm...

gizmo 2y ago
Not quite, because one big input is the ratio of your investments to your annual savings. Large drawdowns are bad late in life, early in life they're not such a big deal. Kelly prohibits very profitable bets when they come with considerable risk of ruin (because you lose out on any future compounding when you zero out your wealth), but that is too conservative when you're young and your portfolio is small relative to your income. The article even hints at this by observing that the discounted sum of future salaries are part of your current wealth. Which is exactly correct and also -- if you're young -- the most significant variable by several orders of magnitude. Curiously, the author understands this but doesn't care.

batterylow 2y ago

Nice analysis and visualisation! I used a Pareto approach for my exercise and a project I’m working on - https://limitgym.com https://limitgym.com

davemp 2y ago

This great visualization/article highlights one of my pet peeves with current game design--options for the sake of options. I feel like the common trap for designers is to put too much stock in tag lines like "Over 700,000 different builds!" You're dumping a combinatorial explosion of overhead onto players. If all those choices don't significantly enhance the core game experience, you as a designer as wasting people's time. Doubly so if most of the choice space can be safely eliminated by savvy players. The internet exists after all and someone is going to do the math. Why would you gate the competitive portion of your game behind convex optimization problems? Certainly not to make things more fun. Some examples of these trends are load-outs in FPS games. Every gun now has tradeoffs for sights, barrel, under-barrel, magazine, ammo, etc. and these choices only come after you've chosen a class/weapon. When the core of an FPS is tactical positioning and aim, these options feel like a cheap gimmick in order to milk slightly more time out of players. Franchises like Halo and Battlefield fell for this trap and have completely ruined their reputations. You can still give players choices that _add_ to the core gameplay like counterstrike does with the round economy. If the entirety of a choice you're giving a player happens in a menu, that should be a red flag. The game design industry needs to less emphasis on statistics/combinatorics and more on gameplay/narrative.

Cthulhu_ 2y ago
It depends on why you play though; the "combinatorial explosion of overhead" is only a problem if you're trying to min/max, if you play for fun it's more "What character do I like" or "What wings do I find pretty". The most important thing: Don't tell others how to play. Don't tell them "you should pick X because it's the best" unless they explicitly ask for it. Let people play their own way, and don't push how you play games onto others.
- cableshaft 2y ago
  Yeah, especially for a game like Mario Kart, I'm not too obsessed with making sure I'm picking the most efficient combination of things. I'm picking what I think looks cool or has the most fun personality (in the case of characters) for me in the moment. For that, having more choices is (mostly) better. Even something like Counter-strike, where a lot of the differences are pretty subtle, I liked having a good amount of choices just to play a couple rounds with a gun that feels slightly different and see how well I do. I had my preferences but I played with them all. That being said I do think there's something to be said for not just dumping a bunch of options on a player and be like "you figure out how you want to play", even though I've been guilty of that in a couple past games I've designed, thinking more options is better. Like I remember on of my sequels to a game I tried all sorts of ideas for how to change up options, and instead of pinning down that "okay the hand size is going to be 5 tiles, and if you place next to an ally tile you'll bump them up by X amount, and you can choose what set of numbers the tiles can be (like 1-5, or 1-10, or 1-20)... with my new sequel I've mostly pared it down and I'm taking away game options, because I bet almost no one did anything but use the defaults anyway. At least before I hid them in an options menu you had to choose to open.

countvonbalzac 2y ago

What I wish this article had was a simulation that generated the best kart for each variety of stats. The article doesn't really address that different karts suit different driving styles, so as a Mario Kart lover I was hoping there would be a list of the best karts for each of a variety of different driving styles. But this isn't _really_ about Mario Kart I suppose...

Too 2y ago

In reality, the number of dimensions will always be more than 2, often several magnitudes more. Is there a good way to visualize the Pareto front for higher dimensions?

ycombinatrix 2y ago

if racing with items, acceleration should be ranked higher than speed

Olesya000 2y ago

[dead]

ihaveajob 2y ago

Beautiful presentation. I love when visualizations serve the goal and not the other way around. Tufte would be proud.

wgx 2y ago
> would Tufte is still alive!
- ihaveajob 2y ago
  Of course, but I'm not inside his head :)
Fnoord 2y ago
Bugs out for me in Firefox at around 2/3. Works fine in Safari. My kid (6) crashes all the time, and she is naturally attracted to picking Peach. I'd say because of that, a character with high acceleration is going to be better. Though she also just likes to push the gas. Though we're playing the one from GBA on Analogue Pocket. Which is probably a lot less advanced as the one in question here (a game for Wii U from 2012), it does resemble Wacky Wheels quite a lot.
- denkmoon 2y ago
  FYI Mario Kart for the Switch has a handful of accessibility options that help less experienced/younger/elderly players stay in the game and on the course without taking away from the fun.
- djbusby 2y ago
  Gotta teach the kid about using the brake and the "poomp" slide (called boost after N64) on the corner. I race Mario but when she's on, mine (8), can get me on the 150 tracks (switch). I'm still crushing on the 200 tho (for now) ;)
- captn3m0 2y ago
  Bugged out for me around 2/3 on Firefox/iOS (which is really Safari) with Lockdown mode.

martijnarts 2y ago

Excellent article! Super approachable and relatable, making it very good at explaining a useful model. It immediately has me looking for other places to apply this. This'll be top of mind for a while!

michael-online 2y ago

This excites me to consider using it as a design tool. When trying to design a game with a more large pareto front of fun and viable builds.

bombcar 2y ago

I did not know the drivers and carts made a difference at all.

quibono 2y ago

I really like the article and the presentation! With that in mind, is this style of presentation (i.e. different elements jumping out or moving into focus as you scroll down the page) easily doable OOTB with any JS libs? Or is this pretty much a custom job?

swyx 2y ago
keyword you want is “scrollytelling”. lots of tutorials here and on youtube. easy to start hard to master like with most things.

amarshall 2y ago

One thing this should mention is what game version it uses. Updates frequently change the stats and thus what builds are “best”.

superMayo 2y ago
It's the latest version, stats are from https://www.mariowiki.com/Mario_Kart_8_Deluxe_in-game_statistics https://www.mariowiki.com/Mario_Kart_8_Deluxe_in-game_statis...
jdmarble 2y ago
The first paragraph mentions this: "In Mario Kart 8, ..." If this was more than a tool for teaching multi-objective optimization, I'd like to see how the Pareto front changes over Mario Kart releases!
- crtasm 2y ago
  Yes, but there have been many versions (updates/patches) of the game. I don't know how many changed character stats: https://www.mariowiki.com/Mario_Kart_8_Deluxe_update_history https://www.mariowiki.com/Mario_Kart_8_Deluxe_update_history
rafd 2y ago
Mario Kart 8 is now frozen, no more patches to come.

modeless 2y ago

Wait, Bowser and Wario are the fastest? I thought it was the other way around. I guess it's reversed from Mario Kart 64.

CapnCrunchie 2y ago
They have the highest top speed. It was that way in Mario Kart 64 as well. They have the worst acceleration though.
- modeless 2y ago
  This is not true. The lighter characters Yoshi and Peach and Toad had higher top speed in 64. https://tasvideos.org/GameResources/N64/MarioKart64#:~:text=310-,Top%20Speed%20(150cc),-324 https://tasvideos.org/GameResources/N64/MarioKart64#:~:text=...
xanderlewis 2y ago
I'm not sure, but it kind of makes sense as a choice, since acceleration and speed should be negatively correlated and since Bowser and Wario are both massive they should accelerate more slowly than others (given constant force). So they get to have the highest top speeds to compensate.
- cout 2y ago
  In a real kart a heavier driver would have lower top speed and acceleration, in exchange for better handling (more body weight means you can more easily shift weight to the wheels that need more traction, unlike a car where the driver's weight is insignificant). But they seem to have ignored kart physics and made it more like a car, where bigger cars might accelerate slower but can accommodate a more powerful engine.
  - xanderlewis 2y ago
    Why would the top speed be lower? Because of increased friction with the ground due to the weight? Ignoring friction, I think what I said would be true. I hadn’t actually thought about it before but as an incredibly skinny person what you said lines up with my experience in a kart. I could seemingly go slightly faster than others but more easily span off and lost control.

xanderlewis 2y ago

Well... that was a seriously impressive presentation. I already knew about Pareto efficiency/the Pareto frontier, but now I'll never be able to forget it. And I'll think of Mario Kart (and poor Koopa being dominated) every time.

teekert 2y ago
Playing with Koopa is MK on hard mode, and you can feel better about winning. You'll be like Piccolo or Rock Lee keeping their weights on while training ;)
laborcontract 2y ago
These are the sorts of articles that a lot of news sites and digital publications dream of when pitching venture capitalists to cultivate this as a new sort of medium. But I've always found that the most compelling stuff, the most compelling digital presentations are often emergent. I think designing around it as a goal is impossible and often comes off as contrived and annoying. However, there are a times like this where it's just stunning as in, "yes, please hijack my scroll, go ahead".
- georgesimon 2y ago
  From what I understand of Svelte, it was built by a working data journalist with the dream of enabling these type of rich media articles. So yeah, 'emergent' and 'uncontrived' are in the DNA of this article and the tech beneath it.
redman25 2y ago
I wonder if Koopa does better with different customization?
- dwringer 2y ago
  One thing I noticed is if you set the graph axes to "Speed" and "handling" and the weight slider about 3/4 toward "handling" then Koopa becomes the only member of that 2D slice of pareto front. I suppose this could be a benefit depending on the course design. At least, it's an example of how looking at only 2 dimensions can be limiting.

jbjbjbjb 2y ago

I was disappointed by the lack of a radar chart

fredsmith219 2y ago

My 9 yo is better than me at Mario Kart but not by much. This knowledge may make the difference for me. Thank you!

sph 2y ago
In summary: the difference between raw talent and experience. Your kid has likely better reflexes and motor skills than you have, but on your side you have experience and wisdom accumulated over the years :)
wheelinsupial 2y ago
In case you aren't aware, you can select a few builds and quickly compare the stats using: https://mk8dxbuilder.com/ https://mk8dxbuilder.com/ Another thing is the coins. Collecting them gives you a speed boost for each coin you collect.
- brrrrrm 2y ago
  this one groups the characters/cars by identical stats: https://www.bettermk8dxbuilder.com https://www.bettermk8dxbuilder.com

0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago

Do professionals use different builds per map? For example, a map has long straightaways (favoring top speed) vs a map with more sharp turns (preferring acceleration)?

prmoustache 2y ago
"professionals"? This is Mario Kart we are speaking about, not formula 1 or counter strike.
- CameronAavik 2y ago
  Mario Kart has a large and flourishing competitive scene[1][2], including numerous competitions with prize money. In 10 days, Nintendo is hosting the Mario Kart World Championships where they are flying in the best players across the world to Tokyo for it. Obviously, not on the same level as F1 or CS, but there absolutely is a competitive scene for this with dedicated players. [1] https://www.mariokartcentral.com/ https://www.mariokartcentral.com/ [2] https://www.mk8dx-lounge.com/ https://www.mk8dx-lounge.com/
  - prmoustache 2y ago
    This is not the point. How many players are making a living competing mario karts? Taking part in competitions with prize money doesn't make you a professionnal player. When I was a road racing cyclist in the upper amateur echelon I was making a decent amount of money in finish prizes, was sponsored, was given a high end bike, clothing and enough tires to last a season, and the mechanic wouldn't charge me for his work, all non local travels were paid. Yet I wasn't a professionnal cyclist as I didn't have a salary nor would I have made enough yearly money to support a family and leave a job. So what are the highest, median and average income of those so called 'Mario Kart pros"?
Laremere 2y ago
If you look at the first place (after clear cheaters) time trials for different tracks, you'll see different choices but clear patterns. The main mode of the game has you race a set of four different tracks, and the online mode throws in all of the tracks; So in those modes the choices are going to be more constrained towards an average good. For my part, I got the best rank in single player on all pre-DLC tracks with only toad and the default kart, so it's a part of the game you can entirely ignore if you're not competing against other humans.

throwawayk7h 2y ago

Something not mentioned in this analysis is that after summing the stats from the different components, the value is rounded down, giving 7 possible outcomes per stat.

rvba 2y ago
Why is it rounded down?
- throwawayk7h 2y ago
  That's just something the game does. I don't know why. But it shows you the little ticks in the stat bar that it rounds down to.

jeffbee 2y ago

Missed a unique opportunity to title the article: It's-a-me, Vilfredo!

SrslyJosh 2y ago

Couple points: 1. Skill absolutely matters, more than the kart, etc. that you pick. Watch some expert players on YouTube playing with weird builds and you'll see that they are still able to do well even when playing with significant disadvantages. 2. In practice, you don't really need to know the value of the hidden mini-turbo stat because higher acceleration == higher mini turbo. For 99% of players, acceleration can just be used as a proxy for mini-turbo.

SignalM 2y ago

Very cool love the design of the site and now I know which cart to win with

rozab 2y ago

This is all very webdesign-y and might be good for a less techy audience, but tbh I think the original article with its notebook format provides a lot more useful information https://hinnefe2.github.io/python/tools/2015/09/21/mario-kart.html https://hinnefe2.github.io/python/tools/2015/09/21/mario-kar...

brrrrrm 2y ago
that one doesn't have mini-turbo, which has largely superseded acceleration as a stat (it correlates but isn't 1:1)
- mikepurvis 2y ago
  Indeed. MK8 courses are absolutely loaded with mini turbo opportunities— every drift, jump, or bump in the road is a chance to get that little boost. I’m not at all surprised it can make the difference in competitive play.
sequoia 2y ago
I don't think it's fair to disparage this article. The other one is perhaps good for a "deeper dive" but I'd say TFA is better overall at illustrating the concept.

hansonpeter 2y ago

[dead]

jmholla 2y ago

I always knew those little red tires were the best. Sadly, this misses the most important thing to me: style. And my love of Zelda. So I'm afraid I'll personally have to disregard all of this.

aidenn0 2y ago
In the original MK8, the Triforce tires and Hylean gliders were pretty good, but the stats in MK8 Deluxe for them are not nearly as good.
- pushedx 2y ago
  Also keep in mind that the 3.0.0 patch for Deluxe changed a bunch of stats.
bovermyer 2y ago
You're just optimizing for a different outcome. You could still apply this thinking, just with "Zelda adjacency" as the primary metric.
kzzzznot 2y ago
Well I always pick Koopa, who is apparently the worst. Although in my group of friends I win the most by far… I’ll keep with him to keep it fair :)
VelesDude 2y ago
There are no grounds on which I can disagree with you.
- hypercube33 2y ago
  But you can add that as a dimension to the chart!
  - sspiff 2y ago
    Hard to quantify into numbers, no? I like Luigi more than Mario. But do I love Mario like a 6 and Luigi like an 8?

dluan 2y ago

Now this is ~~pod racing~~, uh, game theory

Buttons840 2y ago

How to calculate a Pareto front world take me some thought. I wonder, in practice, does defining my preferences and weights and then using a genetic algorithm find the optional solution? That would take me less thought, because I already know exactly how to define a score function and use a random API.

eggdaft 2y ago
If by “optional” you mean “optimal” then no, a GA is not guaranteed to find the optimal solution in the general case.
swaits 2y ago
Yes, indeed. There are quite a few “nature inspired metaheuristic algorithms” which do exactly this. When I say “quite a few”, I mean countless. Look up NSGA and NSGA-II for a good starting point. Then Kagi your way deeper into the rabbit hole.

non-chalad 2y ago

How would this mesh with Halo Kart (2)? 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K0IcawLpCE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K0IcawLpCE

petesergeant 2y ago

This is great, but like many casual players I’m very wedded to my character but not their build. Be great to pin the character and then get the best build for them.

superMayo 2y ago
I hope your character is not Koopa

jhatemyjob 2y ago

God I am so disappointed, I thought he disassembled Mario Kart 64 into C and refactored the codebase. Fuck my life

keithalewis 2y ago
No, just go get one. Don't be a PL obsessing over a video game.
superMayo 2y ago
So sorry I've disappointed you, but don't fuck your life plz
- jhatemyjob 2y ago
  It's too late. I already fucked it.

y1zhou 2y ago

This is so neat! MOO has been a integral part of my work yet it has never occurred to be that Pareto optimization could be applied in kart picking.

edisondotme 2y ago

I just partook in a finance class not too long ago and learned about the concept of an "efficient portfolio". => https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient_frontier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient_frontier While reading this article, I saw those graphs and thought, "Where have I seen this before?"