mattbierner / two-seconds-super-mario-bros-3

Scripts and data used to generate the Two Seconds of Super Mario Bros. 3 book

Two Seconds of Super Mario Bros. 3

Scripts and data used for a book containing every operation executed during two seconds of Super Mario Bros. 3 for NES

Repo Contents

• mario-book/: Files for the 2 second Mario trace book.
• mario-data/: Raw screenshots and data for the Mario trace book.
• lordtim,mitjitsu,tompa-supermariobros3.fm2: Speed run gameplay movie used for the book.
• fceux-screenshot-per-frame.lua: FCEUX script that takes a screenshot per frame of gameplay.
• *.py: Python scripts used to generate the book.

Capturing data from an NES game

This project uses the FCEUX emulator. To capture your own trace:

• Use the FCEUX trace logger to capture the executed operations. Be sure to disable all logging fields except Log frame count and To the left of dissasembly.

• Use the fceux-screenshot-per-frame.lua Lua script to capture a screenshot of each frame of gameplay.

You should run the Lua script and the trace logger at the same time. Since the trace logger generates a lot of data and slows down the emulator quite a bit, you may need to use a pre-recorded gameplay movie instead of playing the game live.

Converting captured data to a book

The split_frame_data python3 script splits a large trace file from the FCEUX trace logger into a one file per frame. To use it with the included example data:

$ unzip ./mario-data/speed/trace.log.zip -d ./mario-data/speed/

$ python split_frame_data.py \
    --trace-file=./mario-data/speed/trace.log \
    --out-dir=./scratch

The frames_to_html python3 script converts the frame data into an html page

$ python frames_to_html.py \
    --trace-files=./scratch/ \
    --out=./two-seconds-mario.html \
    --start=410 \
    --end=530 \
    --images-path=./mario-data/speed/

From here, you can open the html page or convert it to a PDF. Be aware the if you include a lot of frames, your browser may become unresponsive if you try viewing the generated html or try printing it. You can use headless chrome to convert the page to a pdf:

/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome --headless --disable-gpu --no-margins --print-to-pdf=out.pdf ./out.html

Example

• pdf
• html