Doom is playable in a PDF file, internet reacts

Doom is one of the most iconic games in video game history, which revolutionized the first-person shooter genre. Released in 1993, it features a fast-paced combat system and immersive level design that set it apart from the majority of the games at that time. Recently, @CultureCrave shared a post on X, showcasing a video of running the classic Doom (1993) inside a PDF file.

This feat has left the fans in awe for blending modern tech creativity with nostalgia. The post is going viral, having garnered over 600,000 views and 30,000 likes within a few hours. Hundreds of people expressed their views in the comment section, with the majority being simply amazed by it. The post's caption reads:

"#DOOM is now playable in a PDF file"

The post features a PDF file that is coded and uploaded by ading2210 on GitHub. As you can see in the video, the upper half works as the game while the lower half has the controls.

Users @HomieSanto and @VitthalG17 were really amazed by the video. Meanwhile, @Nuerni0 jokingly commented that Doom has the most platforms supported. Meanwhile, @OdiuosOne claimed that the developer of the PDF has gone too far.

Comments from the community (Image via X || @CultureCrave)

On the other hand, there were also some users who criticised the developer's efforts. User @GodofPs5 questioned the logic behind this feat, while @Cobra_The_One asked about the lack of color in the PDF. @SwissDreamer_ found the experiment cool but also useless.

More comments from the community (Image via X || @CultureCrave)

If you are interested, you can give it a try here:

• Play Doom.pdf

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Running Doom inside a PDF: How it works

Playing Doom in PDF (Image via ading2210)

The user ading2210 has given a detailed description of the GitHub project about how they made the PDF. The PDF format surprisingly supports JavaScript with its own standard library, enabling a variety of computational possibilities. The developer utilized these capabilities to port Doom into a PDF by compiling its C code with an older version of Emscripten.

To render the game’s visuals, they adopted a method of using ASCII characters for the display. Each row of the screen is represented by a text field that dynamically keeps updating to run the game on a 320x200 resolution, at around 80ms per frame.

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