As I was playing Mario Kart with my family during Thanksgiving, we realized that the racing game wasn't chaotic enough for our tastes. Having control over selecting your character/kart combination, the tracks, and game settings gave players who were good at the game an unfair advantage. Removing any and all control was the only solution.
I created this with Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and VS races in mind. If there's interest, I'm open to adding functionality for other titles or game modes in the series. I'd like to experiment with creating a GUI to make it more accessible, as well.
The characters, karts, tracks, and items are all copyrighted by Nintendo, and I do not claim ownership over their work. This is a free aid intended as a supplement to the game, and I do not profit off of it.
The kart.py script handles character and kart creation, as well as team assignment if desired. See usage below:
python3 kart.py --help
usage: kart.py [-h] [--players PLAYERS] [--team] [--characters CHARACTERS] [--bodies BODIES] [--wheels WHEELS] [--gliders GLIDERS]
Get random Mario Kart 8 character and kart combinations from the command line
options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--players PLAYERS Number of players
--team If players are assigned a team
--characters CHARACTERS Path of the character json file
--bodies BODIES Path of the bodies json file
--wheels WHEELS Path of the wheels json file
--gliders GLIDERS Path of the gliders json file
I've provided the option to specify custom json files for different characters, bodies, wheels, and gliders. The default json files in the base_game/ directory contain all non-DLC content for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, but you may not have unlocked all of the customization options yet, or perhaps you have more. In that case, you can modify the json in base_game/ with the stuff you have on your copy of the game. This is helpful if you play with both Player A and Player B and want to be able to switch between them.
JSON files are also useful, as they make it simple to add different properties to the characters or kart components.
You can also select tracks at random. While Mario Kart does have a random track selection, we found it often chose tracks we had just played awhile earlier. By default, the script won't choose a track more than once, though you can disable this behavior with the --replace flag below. See usage below:
python3 track.py -h
usage: track.py [-h] [--number NUMBER] [--tracks TRACKS] [--replace]
Get a random Mario Kart 8 Deluxe track from the command line
options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--number NUMBER Number of tracks to select
--tracks TRACKS Path of the tracks json
--replace If the track should be replaced upon selection
Again, I've created an optional parameter to specify the path of a custom track json file. The one I've included doesn't have the new DLC tracks (yet), so you may want to expand on that.
We wanted to be able to randomize factors like the speed and item types, so this script was born. Usage below:
python3 versus.py -h
usage: versus.py [-h] [--cc] [--teams] [--items] [--com] [--vehicles] [--courses] [--count]
Randomly set versus race settings
options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--cc If cc speed selection is randomized
--teams If teams selection is randomized
--items If item type selection is randomized
--com If computer difficulty selection is randomized
--vehicles If computer vehicle selection is randomized
--courses If course selection is randomized
--count If race count selection is randomized