If it’s got a chip and a screen, someone’s trying to run DOOM on it. The latest entry in this fad is from [Phil Ashby], who figured out how to get the game running on the EMFCamp Tidal Badge as seamlessly as possible.
The badge is based on the ESP32-S3. It’s the latest version of the ESP32, which can run the iconic shooter pretty easily. However, [Phil] set himself a trickier challenge. He wanted to port DOOM to the badge while having it remain compatible with the MicroPython platform already on it. Plus, he wanted to be able to distribute it easily with the TiDAL Hatchery, a platform for sharing apps for the badge.
In the end, it took some deft hacking to make the game run on a microcontroller platform that isn’t really set up for running “applications.” It took some tricks to scale the video output and get the colors right, of course, but it’s there and working.
The state of the art is now so advanced that they managed to port DOOM into DOOM so you can DOOM while you DOOM. Video after the break.
"But does the @emfcamp badge run DOOM?"
Yes. Yes it does. Amazing work by @Phlash909https://t.co/NSbLHKcBp6 pic.twitter.com/xkTpQ26ijW
— Jonty Wareing ⍼ (@jonty) July 14, 2022
Accomplishment!
Thanks :) It’s was one of those things that didn’t look too difficult, then kept throwing up new ways to fail!
I just did an update of my badge and all I see is “Hi Mum!o” Not sure the working version has been uploaded to the “app store” yet.
Apologies, I went public with a very flaky demo :)
The Hatchery build should now install, pull the WAD file from my Github and run (sometimes it needs the badge to be rebooted after the WAD download due to memory consumption) provided you have 3+MiB free on the file system (ie: nothing else large installed!). This “works for me”, YMMV!