You can now play Doom 1993 from within a PDF file

If you are an avid gamer or just love playing shooter titles like Doom, you’d know that the game has been ported to toasters, a fridge, and a microwave. And if you thought that it ends here, you were wrong.

Doom is now playable inside a PDF! Yes, as weird as it sounds, it’s still possible and a high-schooler has managed to do it. But how and why? Here’s everything you need to know about Doom’s latest port for PDF files.

Doom inside a PDF: How and why?

A high schooler who goes by the name ading2210 on Github, managed to port 1993’s Doom, allowing him to run it inside a PDF file. He apparently got inspired by a recent port of Tetris, named TetrisPDF, which is another game that you play inside a PDF.

For those unaware, the PDF file format is popular for being compatible with different programming languages, including Javascripts. And if you are a long-time gamer, you’d remember how popular Javascript-based games were back in the day.

Hence, the user harnessed the way Javascript is used inside a browser’s PDF reader and made Doom playable without the need of any gear or hardware. Having said that, ading2210 used a computation along with six-colour ASCII grid to represent sprites and graphics.

All of that resulted in a playable game inside a PDF. However, you’d have to open the game in a browser to be able to play it properly, instead of a PDF reader. We tried it and it works perfectly on Chrome or Chromium based browsers.

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Since it’s a PDF file,  don’t expect fast response times, as the response time per frame is 80ms, which is terribly slow. Still, it’s both interesting and fascinating to see a game like Doom running from within a single file.

While the game runs just fine, you miss out on text and sound, which is still great as you can quietly play the title while others think that you are managing taxes!

While playing a shooter title inside a PDF may not want you to ditch your PCs and consoles, like the PlayStation 5, it’s still fun to casually hang out on the E1M1 Hangar. What are your thoughts about this? Do let us know in the comments below.