Building a Game Boy to Teach an AI Tetris
The author is building a Game Boy emulator from scratch in Python to gain a deeper understanding of CPU functionality and computer architecture. The project serves as a foundation for a future phase where an AI will be trained to play Tetris using reinforcement learning. The Game Boy was chosen due to its manageable complexity, extensive documentation, and suitability as a real-world system for experimentation.
- ▪The Game Boy uses a Sharp SM83 CPU running at approximately 4.19 MHz with 8-bit registers and a 16-bit address bus.
- ▪The system has 64KB of addressable memory space mapped to various components including ROM, video RAM, work RAM, and I/O registers.
- ▪The emulator project is intended to enable an AI agent to play Tetris by treating the Game Boy environment as a reinforcement learning platform.
- ▪The CPU interacts with hardware components like the PPU and audio chips indirectly through memory-mapped I/O rather than direct communication.
- ▪Comprehensive documentation, such as the Pan Docs, details the Game Boy's hardware behavior, including undocumented features and timing quirks.
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try { if(localStorage) { let currentUser = localStorage.getItem('current_user'); if (currentUser) { currentUser = JSON.parse(currentUser); if (currentUser.id === 862957) { document.getElementById('article-show-container').classList.add('current-user-is-article-author'); } } } } catch (e) { console.error(e); } Thiago Silva Posted on May 1 Building a Game Boy to Teach an AI Tetris #machinelearning #emulator #gamedev Why I'm Building a Game Boy Emulator (in Python, from Scratch) A few months ago I asked myself: do I actually understand how a CPU works, or do I just think I do? I've been writing software for years. I know what a CPU is, roughly. I've heard the words: registers, opcodes, clock cycles.
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