Cardinal Bot

About

This Python script is a bot able to play the Flash game Cardinal by taking screenshots and inputting mouse and keyboard actions. It is widely inspired from the technique described in the article Programming a Bot to Play the "Sushi Go Round" Flash Game.

There are two versions of the bot. The first one only involves Python scripting using the pyautogui module. However this version of the program is too slow at taking screenshot and can't keep up with the game speed beyond the 80 score mark. The second version of the bot uses a custom C API for taking screenshots, based on the X11 library. This version is able to take screenshots as fast as the game framerate. It seems this second bot seems to be able to play the game indefinetely without losing. I have only waited until it reaches the 11k+ score mark though...

Usage

The Python only version is located inside the Python directory. The optimised Python and C version can be found inside the C directory, along with a Makefile for building the C API as a shared library.

In order test the scripts, you need to have an opened and visible window of the Cardinal game running. Then just launch the script from the command line and wait:

python3 cardinalbot.py

To interrupt the script, you can Ctrl+C or move the mouse far in the upper-left corner.