[AI] Tempest played by an AI @Prog61
[AI] Tempest played by an AI  @Prog61
Uploaded March 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
[AI] Tempest AI reaching black levels with 3 credits.

This is a video of an AI playing Tempest in real time.

This setup was created by David W. Plummer — you should check out his YouTube channel at: youtube.com/@DavesGarage
Dave has already posted a video of Tempest on his second channel youtube.com/@davepl, but I wanted to record a video played at normal speed to better appreciate the AI's moves.

If you are interested in this project, Dave has posted 3 videos on his channel covering it:
-Starting the project and explanation of all the steps: youtube.com/watch?v=tM3j_qjTPXg
-Working on the expert system: youtube.com/watch?v=3l2mbKLqeZw
-Improving the project: youtube.com/watch?v=TdbpoDjIvPk&t=1s

All the code is available on Dave's GitHub: github.com/davepl/tempest_ai

Settings:
Lives: 5
Bonus Life at: 10,000
Difficulty: Medium 1

I set the bonus life at 10,000 to give the AI a small advantage, though it doesn't have a big impact — once you reach 5 lives, you won't earn any more.
I know Dave has reached higher levels on his setup, but I couldn't get a better score than this after about 10 tries.
I will post a new video if the AI manages to reach a higher score.

By the way, Dave is now working on Robotron — I'm really looking forward to seeing that in action!

The basic idea is to feed the AI information about the state of the game — such as the position of the enemies every frame — rather than feeding it the raw game screen, then wait for the AI's response to determine how to move the knob or press a button.
-A Lua script runs inside MAME
-The script sends game info to a server via TCP every frame
-The server feeds that info to the AI
-The AI generates a response that is sent back to MAME

In the end, it works much better than I expected. The AI is definitely better at the game than I am!
I hope you enjoy watching this video as much as I did. I look forward to your comments.

0:00 Start
0:08 Blue
3:11 Red
9:55 Yellow
16:21 Cyan
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[AI] Tempest played by an AI

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