Doom Now Playable in PDF Format: Toasters Outdated

Doom, the iconic video game, has been adapted to run on an astonishing variety of devices, from toasters to fridges, pushing the boundaries of what's possible. However, the frontier for truly unique Doom ports is becoming increasingly narrow. Enter a high school student who has ingeniously managed to port Doom into a PDF file, playable directly in your browser.

While this version of Doom lacks elements like text and sound, it still offers the thrill of playing the classic E1M1 level, perhaps as a welcome distraction from those neglected tax returns.

Github user and high school student ading2210 drew inspiration from the TetrisPDF project, a PDF-based version of Tetris, and set out to bring one of the world's most celebrated shooters to a Chromium-based browser.

ading2210 leveraged the Javascript capabilities within a browser's PDF reader to achieve this feat. Despite the official PDF specifications allowing for more advanced scripting, browser security concerns limit these capabilities. Nevertheless, ading2210 found enough room to maneuver and successfully ported Doom to the PDF format.

The Javascript within the PDF allowed for flexible computation, resulting in a remarkable outcome. Using a six-color ASCII grid to represent sprites and graphics, ading2210 created a surprisingly legible version of Doom, albeit with a response time of 80ms per frame.

Although you might not want to replace your PS5 with this PDF version of Doom, the ingenuity behind such a port is undeniable and truly impressive.

Thomas Rinsma, the creator of TetrisPDF, posted on Hacker News about his own PDF Doom project, praising ading2210's version as "neater in many ways."

While this PDF version of Doom may not be the ideal introduction to the game, the novelty of seeing Doom run on everything from unconventional devices to files, and even living gut bacteria, continues to captivate and entertain fans worldwide.