Doom's been ported to everything from toasters to refrigerators, seemingly exhausting the possibilities. Yet, a high school student has achieved the seemingly impossible: a playable Doom port within a PDF file, runnable in your browser.
While lacking sound and detailed text, this version lets you conquer E1M1 while (pretending to) tackle those overdue taxes.
Github user ading2210, inspired by the TetrisPDF project, leveraged Javascript within a browser's PDF reader to accomplish this feat. Browser security limitations restrict the full potential of PDF scripting, but it proved sufficient.
Using a six-color ASCII grid for visuals, ading2210 created a surprisingly readable Doom experience, albeit with an 80ms per-frame rendering delay. It's not a PS5 replacement, but the achievement of running Doom inside a PDF is undeniably impressive.
TetrisPDF's creator, Thomas Rinsma, acknowledged ading2210's superior implementation on Hacker News.
While not ideal for a first-time Doom experience, the continued porting of Doom to unusual platforms, files, and even living organisms remains endlessly fascinating.
