Experience Doom in a PDF: A Mind-Blowing Throwback to Gaming History!

The classic first-person shooter, Doom, has once again proven its legendary status by being made playable in an unconventional format: a custom PDF file! This remarkable feat adds another chapter to Doom's history of being played on nearly every platform imaginable.

Created by a budding programmer named ading2210—who identifies as a high school student with passions for programming, web development, and cybersecurity—this innovative Doom PDF project cleverly utilizes the PDF format’s Javascript capabilities. While gameplay may not be smooth and the graphics leave much to be desired, the very existence of this project is a testament to the creativity of the gaming community.

On ading2210’s GitHub page, they detailed their unique approach: “Previous interactive PDF projects I’ve seen use individual text fields that are toggled on/off to make individual pixels. However, Doom’s resolution is 320x200, which would mean thousands of text fields would have to be toggled every frame—definitely not feasible. Instead, I’ve opted for a separate text field for each row on the screen, which allows me to set their contents to various ASCII characters. This technique has enabled me to achieve a 6-color monochrome output, rendering the game quite legibly.”

For those eager to try this out, it’s essential to note that the Doom PDF only functions in Chromium-based browsers such as Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and Opera. Additionally, it supports custom WAD files (which are modded iterations of Doom including updates like the recent Gallery Experience), but you must have the original Doom WAD to get everything running.

This creative convergence of classic gaming and modern web technology opens up exciting possibilities—who knows what other retro experiences could be reimagined in the future? Don’t miss out on this quirky revival of gaming’s roots! Jump into the PDF and relive the thrills of battling demons straight from the pages of a digital book!