The problem of getting Id Software program’s traditional first-person shooter Doom operating on uncommon gadgets has reached an controversial peak, as Wojciech Graj will get it operating in a method no one has ever finished earlier than: over audio alone.
“The sport is displayed by producing an audio sign that may be considered as a spectrogram,” Graj explains of the weird undertaking, which makes use of audio for each output and enter, “whereas enter is taken from the microphone, with particular frequencies being mapped to particular keys. It took vital effort to get Doom to run on this method, and it’s being performed in a method which clearly wasn’t supposed, though it isn’t a {hardware} system that’s operating Doom.”
Graj’s remark refers back to the conventional hacker recreation of porting Doom, launched in 1993 to essential acclaim, to ever extra uncommon {hardware}. We have seen Doom operating on GPS receivers, thermostats, in-car leisure methods, the Nintendo Leisure System, the Raspberry Pi Pico, and even Doom operating in Doom itself. Generally it isn’t the bottom {hardware} that differs, although, however the show system — as with this undertaking to make a playable model of Doom streamed by way of Teletext to an acceptable TV set.
It is this method which Graj has taken along with his port: the precise recreation of Doom is operating on an ordinary pc, but it surely’s not drawing its graphics to the monitor. As a substitute, it is producing a continuing audio sign that, when considered as a spectrogram, makes up an image — then beginning once more with the following body. Audio inputs can be utilized to regulate the sport, although its framerate is understandably poor — but it surely’s technically playable, which meets the definition of a real Doom port.
Graj has uploaded the supply code for the undertaking to GitHub underneath the GNU Common Public License 2, with further data accessible in his Reddit submit.