ViZDoomErrorException: Could not initialize SDL video

Question

I am following this tutorial using Google Colab.

When I run the line game.init() , I get this error:

ViZDoomErrorException: Could not initialize SDL video:
No available video device

I installed vizdoom as follows:

%%bash
# Install deps from 
# https://github.com/mwydmuch/ViZDoom/blob/master/doc/Building.md#-linux

apt-get install build-essential zlib1g-dev libsdl2-dev libjpeg-dev \
nasm tar libbz2-dev libgtk2.0-dev cmake git libfluidsynth-dev libgme-dev \
libopenal-dev timidity libwildmidi-dev unzip

# Boost libraries
apt-get install libboost-all-dev

# Lua binding dependencies
apt-get install liblua5.1-dev

Answer 1

Colab is run on a machine in the cloud. It cannot send the display back to your local machine. That's why it said "no video device".

Answer 2

Add the line game.set_window_visible(False) in the Step 8 cell of the Jupyter Notebook. Unless explicitly mentioned, ViZDoom tries to launch the application, which is not supported in Colab.