October 2nd, 2024

A Vector Database Plays Mario Kart 64

Qdrant Kart is an innovative application that enhances Mario Kart 64 using a Vector Database. The article details its architecture, data collection, embedding generation, and emulator integration, with a video demonstration included.

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A Vector Database Plays Mario Kart 64

The article introduces an innovative application called Qdrant Kart, which utilizes a Vector Database (Qdrant) to enhance the experience of playing Mario Kart 64. The author, Miguel Otero Pedrido, outlines the architecture of the application and breaks down the development process into several key sections: the architecture of Qdrant Kart, data collection methods, embedding generation, the process of inserting embeddings into Qdrant, and integration with the Mupen64Plus emulator. The article aims to engage readers who are interested in machine learning and gaming by providing insights into how vector databases can be applied in a gaming context. A video demonstration of the application is also mentioned, showcasing its functionality. The article serves as both an introduction to the project and a guide for those looking to replicate or learn from the development of Qdrant Kart.

- Qdrant Kart is an application that combines image search with playing Mario Kart 64.

- The project utilizes a Vector Database (Qdrant) for enhanced gaming experience.

- The article is structured into sections covering architecture, data collection, embedding generation, and emulator integration.

- A video demonstration of the application is included to illustrate its functionality.

- The author aims to engage readers interested in machine learning and gaming development.

Link Icon 2 comments
By @HanClinto - 6 months
This is not as ridiculous as it looks.

Using an enterprise-scale vector search database might feel a bit... silly? Overkill?

But this is actually a brilliant illustration and application of some very fundamental concepts in machine learning and AI applications.

"Vectorization" is the key concept here -- turning ones' input data (whether images or sales or service records or whatever) into a numerical representation such that meaningfully similar input data is converted into numerically similar vectors.

Once you do that, all that's left is to do a nearest neighbor search, process or filter a bit, and voila -- now you're using AI and ML to build collectible card scanners or recommendation systems or heck -- even self driving cars (which is essentially what has been built here).

Overall this example is elegant in its simplicity, and useful in that it showcases that -- if you can turn your input data into a decent vector somehow, that the rest is pretty straightforward.

I've built several ML-based systems for commercial applications, and they all used vectorization + vector search in almost the exact same way as what is described here. Fantastic illustration for communicating such a powerful idea that can be applied in so many different ways.

Well done!!

By @mtrofficus - 7 months
This is a funny project I made one evening: applying Image Search in Qdrant to play Mario Kart 64 using mupen64plus.