Doom Now Playable in PDF: Toasters Out!

Doom, the iconic first-person shooter, has been adapted to run on everything from toasters to fridges, pushing the boundaries of what devices can handle this classic game. However, the frontier for truly remarkable ports is becoming increasingly challenging to expand. Enter a high school student who has ingeniously ported Doom into a PDF file, playable directly in your browser. While this version lacks traditional elements like text and sound, it offers a unique way to enjoy the game's first level, E1M1, perhaps while procrastinating on those overdue 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 the Javascript capabilities within PDF readers to achieve this feat. Despite security restrictions in browsers limiting the full potential of PDF scripting, the student managed to create a functional port of Doom.

Using a six-color ASCII grid to represent sprites and graphics, ading2210's version of Doom in a PDF file delivers a surprisingly legible experience, albeit with a response time of 80ms per frame. While it may not replace your PS5, the novelty of running Doom within a PDF file is undeniably impressive.

Thomas Rinsma, the creator of TetrisPDF, acknowledged ading2210's work on Hacker News, noting that while he had also developed his own version of PDF Doom, ading2210's was "neater in many ways." Although this PDF version of Doom might not be the ideal introduction to the game, the continuous innovation in porting Doom to unconventional platforms, including files and even living gut bacteria, remains endlessly entertaining.