Summary
- Doom was successfully rendered within a TXT file.
- The process involved ASCII screenshots converted to characters
- Rendering in the TXT file makes the game playable without a VGA card.
You know, I really like checking out what kind of stuff people get Doom running on as many things as possible. Enthusiasts have pulled some pretty amazing tricks to get Doom running on things it really shouldn't, such as a PDF document. Now, someone has worked out a way to render Doom within a TXT file, and while it's not pretty, it's definitely very impressive.
A quantum computer can’t play Doom (yet), but we're getting closer
A quantum computer version of Doom exists, but the quantum computer that can handle it does not.
Someone got a TXT file to render Doom
This clever trick was performed by HughMann, who uploaded a video of them playing Doom on a TXT document to YouTube. The graphics aren't exactly the best, but when you're working with no color and can only render graphics using ASCII, I guess you can only use what's available to you.
So, how does HughMann do it? They don't reveal the code running in the background, but they do describe their process in the description:
I got DOOM running in a .txt file. By taking a screenshot of every frame from DOSBox, converting that screenshot into ASCII characters, then writing the ASCII frame to a .txt file, I was able to display every frame in said file. I was able to reach the file's updates using the tail -f command.
All that refreshing takes a little bit of a toll on the framerate, as the TXT version is a little choppier than the regular game. However, it does mean that the game doesn't need a VGA graphics card to play, so that's a bonus. And if you'd like more of this, check out the coolest things to run Doom.