Doom On Your Wrist

For years programmers have honed their skills by shoehorning Doom onto the most absurd devices imaginable. The latest installment in this ongoing saga was probably inevitable: playing Doom on your wrist, courtesy of the Apple Watch. A group of enterprising Israeli hackers ported Doom (and it appears to actually really be Doom, not some half-done clone engine) to watchOS as part of a hackathon, as well as joining the illustrious group of those who make Doom run in a ridiculous, unplayable place it does not really belong. In a similar vein, they also ported Doom to the new Apple TV, where with the touchpad-enabled remote control it actually looks downright usable.

Cool, although I saw some strange buggy vertical trails on the pistol's and the 2nd Zombieman's sprites. Also the controls suck, which was probably inevitable though.

Yknow, this reflects poorly on Apple. Means the Apple Watch is as fast as a 386.

Cool. Of course it's just a proof of concept, there's no way it could be playable with that configuration.

GhostlyDeath said:

Yknow, this reflects poorly on Apple. Means the Apple Watch is as fast as a 386.

Throw some Duke Nukem 3D in there and you have a sale.

I just wondering how it could be easy to navigate with Doom on a watch...

Gentlepoke said:

Throw some Duke Nukem 3D in there and you have a sale.

Get out. :P

GhostlyDeath said:

Yknow, this reflects poorly on Apple. Means the Apple Watch is as fast as a 386.

Hey! I played original DOOM on 386s! Even at 10 Mhz, in monochrome, and no sound card!

ant said:

Get out. :P

Got to add some diversity for the Apple Watch because with Duke Nukem 3D, Quake might follow.

Hey! I played original DOOM on 386s! Even at 10 Mhz, in monochrome, and no sound card!

I played at 20 mhz with color but no sound either.

Gentlepoke said:

Got to add some diversity for the Apple Watch because with Duke Nukem 3D, Quake might follow.

But we care not for those DOOM competitors. ;)

ant said:

Hey! I played original DOOM on 386s! Even at 10 Mhz, in monochrome, and no sound card!

Me too! Oh, it was painful... well, now everyone who missed the privilege of DOOM on a bottom-end 386 can experience it!

Rez said:

Me too! Oh, it was painful... well, now everyone who missed the privilege of DOOM on a bottom-end 386 can experience it!

Haha. Yep, it was sure but better than nothing!

I remember playing on a 386, color screen without a sound card.

Those beeps were amazing.

Actually I wonder if you could integrate the Apple Watch with Doom in an interesting way...

The Apple Watch has a feature where it will guide your walking by giving you subtle vibrations for "turn left" and "turn right" when you get to an intersection. What if you could use that while playing a map? Doom doesn't really have a concept of "waypoints" or anything, of course, but maybe you could do something with map markers. Imagine playing through some gigantic map like those in KDIZD and being confronted with backtracking through the entire level to get back to a locked door or something. Tag the door with a map marker, and your wrist will give you on-the-fly directions to get back there.

I don't think this is super feasible in a generic way due to the difficulty of programmatically computing a path through a level but since we're in dreamland anyway the mapper could manually lay out a path with a special invisible waypoint thing (similar to how some Doom bots worked).

david_a said:

The Apple Watch has a feature where it will guide your walking by giving you subtle vibrations for "turn left" and "turn right" when you get to an intersection. What if you could use that while playing a map?

It could be used to notify the player from which side he has just received damage, like the HUD face already does (looks to the left or right) when the player receives damage. Implementation of this should be straightforward in theory.

scifista42 said:

It could be used to notify the player from which side he has just received damage, like the HUD face already does (looks to the left or right) when the player receives damage. Implementation of this should be straightforward in theory.

That's another neat use, especially since the face is hidden for most players in full screen. I wonder if your mind can parse the different signals fast enough in a frantic battle to get use out of them - it would probably be way easier with a tapper on each wrist.

I'm trying to think of an existing device that could do this cheaper/easier than a smart watch (which would be really impractical) but I can't really think of anything. There's those vibrating seat cushions to simulate low bass notes but I don't think they're programmable.

Well obviously you wouldn't be able to play while wearing it.

GhostlyDeath said:

I remember playing on a 386, color screen without a sound card.

Those beeps were amazing.

I don't remember the beeps. :P