Doom's been ported to countless devices, from toasters to refrigerators, seemingly everything imaginable. The novelty of impressive Doom ports is waning, yet a high school student has achieved the seemingly impossible: running Doom within a PDF file viewable in a browser.
While lacking sound and detailed text, who needs those when you can play E1M1 while procrastinating on taxes?
Github user "ading2210," inspired by the TetrisPDF project, successfully ported Doom to a PDF using Javascript within a browser's PDF reader. 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 playable, albeit slow (80ms per frame), version of Doom. The result is remarkably legible.
While not a replacement for a PS5, the feat of running Doom within a PDF file is impressive. TetrisPDF's creator, Thomas Rinsma, even commented on Hacker News, praising ading2210's "neater" implementation.
This isn't the ideal way to experience Doom for the first time, but the ongoing trend of running Doom on bizarre platforms, from files to bacteria, remains endlessly entertaining.
