AI-TEM: Artificial Intelligence Testbed in EMulator

AI-TEM is a testbed, an environment created for the purpose of testing game AI. AI-TEM allows developed AI to be tested on actual commercial games. It is created from VisualBoyAdvance (VBA), an emulator of Nintendo Gameboy Advance game system (GBA).  Commercial games can be played on VBA using the games' roms. By reading and manipulating the emulator's memory, game states can be controlled. Therefore researchers can manipulate each game state at will and use it to test their AI. Testing AI on real games eliminates the time consuming process of creating a reliable game environment for testing. Furthermore, researchers can be assured about the quality of thier developed AI since it is tested on real commercial game.

Further details on AI-TEM can be found here.

In our research, we use AI-TEM as an environment for testing our developed AI and use Street Fighter Zero 3 upper (also known as Street Fighter Alpha 3 upper in North America) of GBA as a test game.

Picture below shows screen shot from AI-TEM showing various menus which have been created for controlling game environment and characters' behavior.