Running DOOM On…a TrueType Font?

Over the years, DOOM has been ported to many things; think of any arbitrary device and chances are it can run the classic shooter. But what about something more esoteric like [Artem]’s DOOM in a TrueType font?

Okay, it’s not technically a port of DOOM, but it’s still very cool. TrueType actually has a bytecode used for hints to the render and, while not made for this, it’s just complete enough for this demo to run. Either to increase the over-engineering, or just to make it all a bit easier, [Artem] makes a simple DSL and a matching compiler written in Python.

All of this allows the byte code intended to implement serifs run arbitrary code, in this case, ray casting the walls for a DOOM demo. The final bytecode is 6,580 in size and, assuming your font renderer implements this, is very playable.

While this project’s implementation of the game is a bit abstract, the version of DOOM that you can run over DNS is the real deal.

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