Notes

Doom is Literally Playing in this Article

We've covered all sorts of Doom ports here, from Minecraft to McDonald's cash registers, and this might be the most bizarre. Someone has managed to get the FPS game to run in gif form and you can see the game in action below.



It operates in a straightforward way. On this page you will see a continually evolving Gif of Doom with a set of clickable controls below. Much like the Twitch plays series of crowd-controlled play-throughs, every input that is clicked by anyone who is browsing the page is put into a queue and the server runs through them in order, sending back the latest images. The gif can be a bit unstable due to the continuous loading and the stress placed on the server by people wanting to see it.



Andrew Sillers, a software developer, is the person who is the source of all the magic. He provided a talk explaining what's happening at BangBangCon. Whenever websites load an image, it's doing this by using a piece code that's asking for that image. Gifs can be used to build loops in which new frames are added every frame that is received. With this basic concept and a few commands, you can play a videogame such as a narrative adventure, or a roguelike game or Doom.
Free Forums


Here's the Doom gif itself, motoring away. The ao3 link above gives you access to all controls, and you might need to refresh to get it to load properly:



This build is Freedoom an alternative that is free built from Doom's source code. You can learn more about it here.



Sillers' talk can be found here:



On GitHub, you can find more information, and the WAD files for Doom version 3.0. Where will Doom end up next: drone controllers, digital cameras, and GIFs


Here's my website: https://free-forums.tv/