Doom, the iconic first-person shooter, has been famously ported to everything from toasters to fridges, pushing the boundaries of what can host this classic game. However, the frontier for truly groundbreaking platforms is narrowing. Enter a high school student who has ingeniously ported Doom into a PDF file, playable directly in your browser. Sure, it lacks minor elements like text and sound, but who needs those when you can play E1M1 while procrastinating on your taxes?
The mastermind behind this project, Github user and high school student ading2210, drew inspiration from the TetrisPDF project. Motivated to bring one of the world's most celebrated shooters to a Chromium-based browser, ading2210 utilized Javascript within the browser's PDF reader. Although the official PDF specifications support advanced scripting, browser security restrictions limited the capabilities. Nevertheless, these constraints were sufficient for ading2210 to port Doom into a PDF.
Leveraging the computational power of Javascript within PDFs, ading2210 achieved a remarkable feat. Using a six-color ASCII grid to represent sprites and graphics, they created a legible version of Doom, albeit with a response time of 80ms per frame. While you might not want to ditch your PS5 just yet, the ability to run Doom inside a PDF file is a testament to the game's versatility and the ingenuity of its fans.
Thomas Rinsma, the creator of TetrisPDF, acknowledged ading2210's work on Hacker News, noting that while he had also made a version of PDF Doom, ading2210's was "neater in many ways." Although this version of Doom might not be your first choice for experiencing the game, the novelty of seeing it run on everything from unusual devices to files, and even living gut bacteria, continues to captivate and entertain enthusiasts worldwide.
