Another example that Doom runs on everything

[geekmarine]

Just saw this story and figured I had to share. Guy gets Doom to run on a printer. Of course. Really, it's only a matter of time before someone releases a port of Doom for the Antikythera mechanism.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29203776?ocid=socialflow_twitter

[Maes]

The printer has a 32-bit Arm processor, 10 meg of memory and even the screen is the right size

Any device with the necessary computrons can run Doom, it's no big news. The real challenges start when you are starting to come close or even below the original's spec limits (32-bit CPU with about 25 MIPS of available processing power, 4 MB of addressable memory). The display is another point.

I've yet to see a proper port running with significantly less than that, unless cuts were done to the engine/resources (which is how the first-gen licensed console ports of Doom were made, BTW).

[geekmarine]

Maes, anyone ever tell you that you're a killjoy? Yeah, I know virtually any computer system under the sun nowadays has enough computing power to run Doom, it's just amusing that someone would hack a printer, of all things, to do it.

[Xaser]

The fact Maes pointed out always amazes me for the reverse reason: We're making printers now that are powerful enough to run a complex video game. Beejus Crisp.

Next up: Doom on roadside light-grid signs.

[Patrol1985]

Cool find geekmarine!

In the recent video featuring John Carmack (the one from 2014 at some university - there was a thread about it on the forum some time ago) he said that he's wiser now and could do all things he did back in the day (he meant Doom), but now he would be more efficient about it, make features less demanding etc.

I wonder what he meant and what's the absolute minimum he could run the proper Doom on (so fully resembling vanilla, no compromises).

[Doominator2]

Now lets make Doom from the windshield of a car.

[geekmarine]

Doominator2 said:

Now lets make Doom from the windshields of a car.

Hey, with those new smart windshield that give you your instrument readouts right on the windshield, it's only a matter of time. Just don't Doom and drive.

[VGA]

Awww the palette is screwy. Anyway it'd be cool if it printed your stats after beating a level :-)

[Doomkid]

..This thread got me thinking, back in the day, we used to buy Tiger handheld games... You know, those games that are basically like 'playing' a digital watch. Tiger could totally make a comeback by releasing just-as-cheap devices these days that play the actual Doom / Street Fighter / Sonic / all the other games they were deperately trying to clone in their heyday. I mean, it'd be an enourmous waste of plastic, but not as badly as the 90's ones..

Anyway, totally off on a tangent, but seeing as computers that can run old games are a dime a dozen, why the hell not?

[Zed]

OK, so far we know that Doom runs on:

an ATM
a LED billboard
a calculator
a piano

...and now this.

Anyone wants to guess what's next?

[Doominator2]

VGA said:

Awww the palette is screwy. Anyway it'd be cool if it printed your stats after beating a level :-)

Lol, it would just print out the intermission background with your stats, you could play a whole playthrough and at the end see your stats for each level.

[VGA]

Maybe you could also scan a photo of yours and it would use it as doomguy's face :-)

[Maes]

Doomkid said:

..This thread got me thinking, back in the day, we used to buy Tiger handheld games... You know, those games that are basically like 'playing' a digital watch. Tiger could totally make a comeback by releasing just-as-cheap devices these days that play the actual Doom / Street Fighter / Sonic / all the other games they were deperately trying to clone in their heyday. I mean, it'd be an enourmous waste of plastic, but not as badly as the 90's ones

They already sort of exist, but the problem is that a platform which

1. is portable
   
2. can play all the things you mentioned in their original form (under emulation)
   

would boil down to a GP32 or other similar console, and that's not particularly cheap, nor easy to use/setup.

If you narrow down the selection to e.g. NES or Mega Drive/Genesis games, then yeah, there are some VERY cheap and easy-to-use options based on single-chip solutions (SoaC, System-on-a-Chip), like "NES on a chip" or "FireCore" (Mega Drive SoaC) portable consoles, which really do have a retail price of under $30, including a built-in color TFT screen (finding games for them is another matter).

A portable x86 PC compatible console (say, one made to run just DOS games) would require more R&D than either of those solutions (some chinese lab would need to develop a cheap enough "PC on a chip" for one), so it would be more expensive to market and with a more limited selection of games/more compatibility problems, so a GP32-like solution or a dedicated single-console system would be preferable.

Others said:

Windscreen Doom and other stuff

This really depends. If the application requires using a 32-bit ARM CPU with more than 4 MB of RAM and more than 40 MIPS to spare, then it can run Doom, but there are embedded applications, even today, that don't have use for so much power. 8-bit and 16-bit microcontrollers with tiny amounts of RAM (in the order of a few KBs) are still in use (including the most basic versions of the Arduino board), and much more likely to be used in something like a standalone sensor in an automotive environment.

Printers are another beast though....Laser printers in particular pretty much have ALWAYS been their own independent system due to the required Postscript processing. Even a dime-a-dozen inkjet HP PSC I got back in 2006 has a 32-bit VLIW CPU and 16 MB of RAM built in (!).

[Havoc Crow]

Next up, Doom on an abacus (the controls make your hands really hurt after a while).

[Maes]

We all know that the ultimate, esoteric porting goal is Doom on Boom.

[ducon]

Got this link in another forum:
http://www.polygon.com/2014/9/15/6152713/doom-engine-building-construction-dirtt

[reality 2.0]

A printer. wow. next thing you know we'll be having doom in our cars and you gotta drive around to move the marine.

[Creaphis]

I came here to post this (in case nobody had already). You're welcome, Doomworld.

Zed said:

a piano

This one is new to me. I was all like "Cool, so the PC listens for specific frequency ranges and then parses them as inputs!" Then I kept reading the article and found out I was wrong, it's all just a bunch of hidden wires, which is boring. It seems like it'd be trivial to program an app to translate pitches to keys, and then play Doom by playing any arbitrary instrument, which would amuse me for entire minutes.

[Maes]

reality 2.0 said:

A printer. wow. next thing you know we'll be having doom in our cars and you gotta drive around to move the marine.

Well, in that case you'd have Quarantine:

Let alone that the marine already moves around as if he was driving/driven....

Now, if you want a professional perspective on "Doom on a car": Doom could run with no problem on most modern car "navigation computers", which are practically ARM-based tablets (the ones you keep in the confy passenger cabin, to be precise). It would have a tough time running on actual "car computers" though, aka the ECUs (Electronic Control Units) found under the hood. Those are ruggedized embedded systems often based on outdated 16/32 bit architectures with at most a few MB of RAM. The tradeoff is robustness vs sophistication.

[Sqrrt121]

Apparently some hackers got doom on an atm.

[Maes]

Cool story, bro.

[Sqrrt121]

pcworld.com/article/2458058/watch-doom-being-played-on-a-hacked-atm.html

[GreyGhost]

Like Maes said - cool story, bro.

[VGA]

Has this been posted?

Doom on Android Wear :-D

[Zed]

http://itrunsdoom.tumblr.com/

[Toxie Rocks]

Zed said:

http://itrunsdoom.tumblr.com/

Interesting blog there. I got Doom for my iPod Touch. Actually works pretty well. Now if only they'll release Doom II and Final Doom...

[joe-ilya]

Doom runs on a toaster.
Put demon shaped toasts there and ; you've just toasted one! And saved earth by donating those for the poor! The end.