Mario Kart DD on Rails
Friday, June 6th, 2008
Even though I’ve been playing Mario Kart Wii for several weeks now, my friends and I will always have a special place in our heart for Mario Kart Double Dash. I know, I know, this game was a major departure from the franchise, but we still love the multi-player battle mode. So much, in fact, that in February I built a stats-keeping mini-app for us.
The premise was simple: We loved battling, and did it almost weekly, but were always disappointed that there was no way outside of a lame spreadsheet for us to keep track of our stats. At the same time, I was just starting to learn Ruby on Rails, and I needed a real project to help me learn. I finished up a beta of the project, which was just good enough for our personal use.
Basically, while battling it out Mario-Kart-style, we would fill out a form after each match, with the winner and stage, as well as how many balloons the winner had left. From this, the stats engine I built would calculate a series of statistics that we came up with. Of our stats, my personal favorite is “Balloon Error Ratio,” because it is a statistic that reflects not only wins, but also the amount of balloons you lose in battles. As you can see from the screenshot, I hold my own against my friends. Of course, the same wouldn’t necessarily be true against the video game overlords out there.
This app is based on Rails 1.2.6, and still has some bugs. If you’re interested in the source, hit me up in the comments.