Doom in PDF: What Else Do You Need to Know?

Created by a talented individual known as ading2210, who is a high school student passionate about programming, web development, and cybersecurity, the Doom PDF project is a fascinating endeavor that brings the legendary first-person shooter to life within a text document using the PDF format’s built-in JavaScript capabilities. While its performance isn’t the smoothest and the gameplay leaves much to be desired, witnessing this project in motion is nothing short of amazing.

Reflecting on the technical challenges, ading2210 explained on the game’s GitHub page, “Other interactive PDF projects I’ve come across typically rely on toggling individual text fields on and off to create pixels. But given that Doom’s resolution is 320×200, we would need thousands of text fields changing each frame, which is simply not practical. Instead, I’ve assigned a text field to each row on the screen, filling them with various ASCII characters. With this method, I achieved a six-color monochrome display, which makes everything in the game somewhat readable.”

Currently, Doom PDF is compatible only with Chromium-based browsers such as Chrome, Edge, and Opera. It even supports custom WADs, which are modded Doom files like the fresh Gallery Experience. However, to run these modifications, you’ll require the original Doom WAD.