Doom's been ported to everything from toasters to refrigerators, seemingly leaving little room for truly novel platforms. However, a high school student has achieved the seemingly impossible: running Doom within a PDF file viewable in a browser.
While features like text and sound are absent, the core gameplay of E1M1 is surprisingly functional. This feat, inspired by the TetrisPDF project, was accomplished by Github user ading2210, who cleverly utilized Javascript within the browser's PDF reader.
Despite browser security limitations on PDF scripting, ading2210 leveraged Javascript's computational power. A six-color ASCII grid renders the sprites and graphics, resulting in a playable, albeit slow (80ms per frame), version of Doom.
Although it won't replace your PS5 anytime soon, the accomplishment is remarkable, especially given the clarity of the in-browser rendition. Even TetrisPDF creator Thomas Rinsma praised ading2210's "neater" implementation on Hacker News.
While not ideal for a first-time Doom experience, the ongoing trend of running Doom on unusual devices and file types, even gut bacteria, remains endlessly entertaining.
