[adyus]

Congrats on finishing the project! As you've already linked at the bottom of your post, it's possible that OpenAI could've solved most of your I/O issues.

One thing I'd suggest is exploring a reward function, instead of using only pre-recorded training data. That is, give the AI a goal to complete (in this case, finish the race) and let it learn by itself!

[Drdrdrq]

I would love to learn how to do that - any suggestions?

EDIT: to clarify: what should I google for?

[adyus]

Here's what I could find in a couple minutes:

https://github.com/openai/universe-starter-agent

OpenAI's example universe agent. Remember that while their goal is an agent that works in any and all environments (read: games), you could certainly optimize yours just for MarioKart.

[Drdrdrq]

Thanks, looks promising! Can't wait to try it! :)

[paulbaumgart]

Reinforcement Learning. Here's a good intro: http://www0.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/d.silver/web/Teaching.html

[Drdrdrq]

Perfect, thank you!!! You made my day. :-D

[Drdrdrq]

...later found this nice explanation of RL concepts if it helps someone: https://www.nervanasys.com/demystifying-deep-reinforcement-l...