StackRabbit

An AI that plays NES Tetris at a high level. Primarily based on search & heuristic, with high-quality board eval through value iteration.

Due to the logistics of playing NES Tetris, there are two different clients for interacting with the main AI backend:

• fceux contains a Lua client for playing in the FCEUX emulator (primary client)
• console_client contains a python client that runs on Raspberry Pi to play on a real console.
• TetrisTrainer is a public web client (try it live!) that lets users draw a board and ask AI about the best placements.

Then there are two components of the backend:

• server contains the primary server, written in Node.js. It handles the request parsing, and the delegation to worker threads. It also contains lots of deprecated AI code, since the initial implmentation was entirely in JS (oops).
• cpp_modules contains modules that perform the core AI computation at literally 100x the speed of the original JS implementation. The main flow involves a Node server thread sending a game state to the C++ module, which returns the value of each possible move as an encoded JSON map.

How to Set Up

Requirements

• Node.js: Download here
• FCEUX: Download here
• Python3: Download here
• node-gyp: Install with npm i node-gyp nan
• Visual Studio Build Tools

Steps

1. Clone or Extract:

   • Clone this repository or extract the zip file from the releases page.

2. Obtain NES Tetris ROM:

   • Legally acquire the ROM for NES Tetris. You can use TetrisGYM.

3. Open Command Line:

   • Press Win + R, type cmd, and press Enter.
   • Navigate to the folder for Stackrabbit using cd path/to/stackrabbit.

4. Install Dependencies:

   • Run npm i in the command line.

5. Start the Application:

   • If the previous command runs without errors, execute npm start.

6. Setup FCEUX:

   • Open the FCEUX folder.
   • Add all .lua files (excluding itn12.lua, mime.lua, and socket.lua, put them in C:/path/to/fceux/lua) from the Luasocket repository to C:/path/to/fceux/lua/socket/. (if there is no lua folder, create it and the socket folder inside)

7. Load Tetris ROM:

   • In FCEUX, click File > Open and select the Tetris ROM.

8. Run Stackrabbit Script:

   • In the FCEUX window, go to File > Lua > New Lua Script Window.
   • In the new window, browse and run path/to/stackrabbit/src/fceux/stackrabbit.lua.
   • Open level 19 and let it start!