Installation

Python Interface

The Python interface ale-py supports the following configurations:

Platform	Architecture	Python Version
Linux	x64	3.8+
macOS	x64, arm64	3.8+
Windows	AMD64	3.8+

To install the Python interface from PyPi simply run:

pip install ale-py

Once installed you can import the native ALE interface as ale_py

from ale_py import ALEInterface
ale = ALEInterface()

Gymnasium API

ALE supports the Gymnasium API such that all the setup required for interacting with the emulator is complete. See the environment page for all the available ROMs and the gymnasium getting started page for how to interact.

import gymnasium as gym
import ale_py

gym.register_envs(ale_py)

env = gym.make('ALE/Breakout-v5')
obs, info = env.reset()
obs, reward, terminated, truncated, info = env.step(env.action_space.sample())
env.close()

C++ Interface

The C++ library requires:

• A C++17 compiler

• CMake 3.14+

• zlib

• (Optional) SDL 2 for display/audio support

SDL support allows for displaying the console’s screen and enabling audio output. For example, without SDL support you’ll still be able to train your agents, but you won’t be able to visualize the resulting policy. It might be preferable to disable SDL support when compiled on a cluster but enable SDL locally. Note: SDL support defaults to OFF.

You can use any package manager to install these dependencies but we recommend using vcpkg. Here’s a minimal example of installing these dependencies and building/installing the C++ library.

vcpkg install zlib sdl2

mkdir build && cd build
cmake ../ -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build . --target install

These steps will work on any platform, just make sure to specify the environment variable VCPKG_INSTALLATION_ROOT to point to your vcpkg installation so we can find the required dependencies. If you install any vcpkg dependencies using non-standard triplets you can specify the environment variable VCPKG_TARGET_TRIPLET. For more info check out the vcpkg docs on how to configure your environment.

Once the ALE is installed you can link against the library in your C++ project as follows

find_package(ale REQUIRED)
target_link_libraries(YourTarget ale::ale-lib)