Fixed OpenAI ROM Missing Error: "Exception: ROM is missing for pong" - Lab 3

[ryanboldi]

Exception 
Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-2-7af2597d0a5a> in <module>()
      1 def create_pong_env():
      2   return gym.make("Pong-v0", frameskip=5)
----> 3 env = create_pong_env()
      4 env.seed(1); # for reproducibility

5 frames
/usr/local/lib/python3.7/dist-packages/atari_py/games.py in get_game_path(game_name)
     18     path = os.path.join(_games_dir, game_name) + ".bin"
     19     if not os.path.exists(path):
---> 20         raise Exception('ROM is missing for %s, see https://github.com/openai/atari-py#roms for instructions' % (game_name,))
     21     return path
     22 

Exception: ROM is missing for pong, see https://github.com/openai/atari-py#roms for instructions

To fix this error, the Atari ROMs were added to the repository as .zip files, and the ipython files were updated to include importing these files into the current running google colab instance.

Here is the added code:

from google.colab import files
# The following command will open an upload window. 
# To load the pong ROMs, please upload both HC_ROMS.zip and ROMS.zip to this window.
uploaded = files.upload()

!pip install atari_py

!python -m atari_py.import_roms .

def create_pong_env(): 
  return gym.make("Pong-v0", frameskip=5)
env = create_pong_env()
env.seed(1); # for reproducibility

The upload procedure takes about a minute to complete, but considering the fact that the penultimate code block takes a couple hours, I think that should be fine in the grand scheme of things.

I'm sure there is a better way to fix this error, but this workaround works sufficiently well for the task.