Created by ading2210, who describes themselves as a “high school student fascinated with programming, web development, and cybersecurity,” the Doom PDF project brings a unique twist to the classic first-person shooter, Doom, by utilizing the PDF file format’s Javascript capabilities to replicate it in text form. Admittedly, it doesn’t perform well and plays even worse, but the mere sight of it in operation is truly something to behold.
On the game’s GitHub page, ading2210 shares insights into the creative process, stating, “In other interactive PDF projects I’ve come across, they usually toggle individual text fields to create pixels. But with Doom’s 320×200 resolution, that would require flipping thousands of text fields for each frame, which just wouldn’t work. So, for this version, each screen row has its own text field, filled with a variety of ASCII characters. This method allowed for a 6-color monochrome output, which surprisingly keeps everything visible while playing.”
Doom PDF is compatible only with Chromium-based browsers like Chrome, Edge, and Opera. It also supports custom WADs, which are modified Doom files similar to the recently released Gallery Experience mod. However, you will need the original Doom WAD file to make these mods operational.
