Pong#

../../../_images/pong.gif

This environment is part of the Atari environments. Please read that page first for general information.

Action Space

Discrete(6)

Observation Shape

(210, 160, 3)

Observation High

255

Observation Low

0

Import

gymnasium.make("ALE/Pong-v5")

For more Pong variants with different observation and action spaces, see the variants section.

Description#

You control the right paddle, you compete against the left paddle controlled by the computer. You each try to keep deflecting the ball away from your goal and into your opponent’s goal.

For a more detailed documentation, see the AtariAge page

Actions#

Pong has the action space Discrete(6) with the table below lists the meaning of each action’s meanings. As Pong uses a reduced set of actions for v0, v4 and v5 versions of the environment. To enable all 18 possible actions that can be performed on an Atari 2600, specify full_action_space=True during initialization or by passing full_action_space=True to gymnasium.make.

Value

Meaning

Value

Meaning

Value

Meaning

0

NOOP

1

FIRE

2

RIGHT

3

LEFT

4

RIGHTFIRE

5

LEFTFIRE

Observations#

Atari environment have two possible observation types, the observation space is listed below. See variants section for the type of observation used by each environment id.

  • obs_type="rgb" -> observation_space=Box(0, 255, (210, 160, 3), np.uint8)

  • obs_type="ram" -> observation_space=Box(0, 255, (128,), np.uint8)

Additionally, obs_type="grayscale" cause the environment return a grayscale version of the rgb array for observations with the observation space being Box(0, 255, (210, 160), np.uint8)

Rewards#

You get score points for getting the ball to pass the opponent’s paddle. You lose points if the ball passes your paddle. For a more detailed documentation, see the AtariAge page.

Variants#

Pong has the following variants of the environment id which have the following differences in observation, the number of frame-skips and the repeat action probability.

Env-id

obs_type=

frameskip=

repeat_action_probability=

Pong-v0

"rgb"

(2, 5)

0.25

Pong-ram-v0

"ram"

(2, 5)

0.25

Pong-ramDeterministic-v0

"ram"

4

0.25

Pong-ramNoFrameskip-v0

"ram"

1

0.25

PongDeterministic-v0

"rgb"

4

0.25

PongNoFrameskip-v0

"rgb"

1

0.25

Pong-v4

"rgb"

(2, 5)

0.0

Pong-ram-v4

"ram"

(2, 5)

0.0

Pong-ramDeterministic-v4

"ram"

4

0.0

Pong-ramNoFrameskip-v4

"ram"

1

0.0

PongDeterministic-v4

"rgb"

4

0.0

PongNoFrameskip-v4

"rgb"

1

0.0

ALE/Pong-v5

"rgb"

4

0.25

ALE/Pong-ram-v5

"ram"

4

0.25

Difficulty and modes#

It is possible to specify various flavors of the environment via the keyword arguments difficulty and mode. A flavor is a combination of a game mode and a difficulty setting. The table below lists the possible difficulty and mode values along with the default values.

Available Modes

Default Mode

Available Difficulties

Default Difficulty

[0, 1]

0

[0, 1, 2, 3]

0

Version History#

A thorough discussion of the intricate differences between the versions and configurations can be found in the general article on Atari environments.

  • v5: Stickiness was added back and stochastic frameskipping was removed. The environments are now in the “ALE” namespace.

  • v4: Stickiness of actions was removed

  • v0: Initial versions release