does it run doom

17 Articles

DOOM Runs On Husqvarna’s Robot Lawnmower

March 1, 2024 by 26 Comments

DOOM has been ported to a lot of platforms — to the point where the joke is kind of getting old now. Evidence of that is available in the fact that brands are now getting in on the action. Yes, as reported by The Register, you can now officially play DOOM on your Husqvarna’s Automower.

Nice, right? Speedrun it on this interface.

We had to check if this was some kind of joke; indeed, the April release date had us looking at the calendar. However, it seems to be legit. You’ll be able to download a version of DOOM via the Husqvarna Automower Connect App, and play it on the tiny screen of your robot lawnmower. Hilariously, due to the size of the game, Husqvarna notes it “may take up to a week before the game is playable” due to the time it takes the mower to download it, along with a necessary software update.

Controls are simple. The knob on the robot is used for turning left and right, while pressing start lets you run forward. Firing weapons is done by pressing the control knob.

We’ve seen some quality ports before, including an arcade port that was particularly cool. Really, though, at this stage, you have to work harder to impress. Show us DOOM running on a Minuteman launch console or something. Continue reading “DOOM Runs On Husqvarna’s Robot Lawnmower” →

Hyundai Is Doomed: Porting The 1993 Classic To A Hyundai Head Unit

June 11, 2023 by 6 Comments

In the natural order of the world, porting DOOM to any newly unlocked computing system is an absolute given. This a rule which [greenluigi1] understands all too well, leading to presumably the first Hyundai to be equipped with this all-time classic on its infotainment system. This follows hot on the trail of re-hacking said infotainment system and a gaggle of basic apps being developed for and run on said head unit (being the part of the infotainment system on the front dashboard). Although it is a Linux-based system, this doesn’t mean that you can just recompile DOOM for it, mostly because of the rather proprietary system environment.

To make life easy, [greenluigi1] picked doomgeneric as the version to port. The main selling point of this project is that it only requires the developer to implement five functions to support a new platform, which then ‘just’ left figuring out how to do this on a head unit. Two of these (DG_SleepMs() and DG_GetTicksMS()) could be copied verbatim from the X11/xlib port, but the remaining three required a bit of sleuthing.

Where things go sideways is with keeping the head unit’s Helix window manager happy, and stick to the limited ways a GUI application can be launched, including the way arguments are passed. For the PoC, it was decided to just hardcode these arguments and only register the game with Helix using an .appconf configuration file. When it came to drawing pretty graphics on the screen, this was decidedly easier since the system uses Qt5 and thus offers the usual ways to draw to a QPixmap, which in this case maps to the framebuffer.

After a few playful sessions with the head unit’s watchdog timer, [greenluigi1] found himself staring at a blank screen, despite everything appearing to work. This turned out to be due to the alpha channel value of 0 that was being set by default, along with the need for an explicit refresh of the QPixmap. Up popped DOOM, which left just the implementation of the controls.

In order to start the game, you have to literally buckle up, and the steering wheel plus media control buttons are your inputs, which makes for a creative way to play, and perhaps wear some bald spots onto your tires if you’re not careful. If you’d like to give it a shot on your own ride, you can get the project files on GitHub.

Continue reading “Hyundai Is Doomed: Porting The 1993 Classic To A Hyundai Head Unit” →

A picture showing acupuncture needles wedged into the inside of the payment terminal

Aaron Christophel Brings DOOM To Payment Terminal

March 1, 2023 by 9 Comments

Payment terminals might feel intimidating — they’re generally manufactured with security in mind, with all manner of anti-tamper protections in place to prevent you from poking around in the hardware too much. But [Aaron Christophel] thinks that level of security isn’t aren’t always in practice however, and on his journey towards repurposing devices of all kinds, has stumbled upon just the terminal that will give up its secrets easily. The device in question is Sumup Solo terminal, a small handheld with a battery, LTE connection and a payment card slot – helping you accept card payments even if you’re on the go.

Now, this terminal has security features like the anti-tamper shield over the crucial parts of the device, leading to payment processing-related keys being erased when lifted. However, acupuncture needles, a tool firmly in [Aaron]’s arsenal, helped him reach two UART testpoints that were meant to be located under that shield, and they turned out to be all that a hacker needed to access the Linux system powering this terminal. Not just that, but the UART drops you right into the root shell, which [Aaron] dutifully explored — and after some cross–compilation and Linux tinkering, he got the terminal to, naturally, run Doom.

The video shows you even more, including the responsible disclosure process that he went through with Sumup, resulting in some patches and, we hope, even hardware improvements down the line. Now, the payment processing keys aren’t accessible from the Linux environment — however, [Aaron] notes that this doesn’t exclude attacks like changing the amount of money displayed while the customer is using such a terminal to pay.

If you’d like to take a closer look at some of the hardware tricks used in these secure devices, we did a teardown on one back in 2019 that should prove interesting.

Continue reading “Aaron Christophel Brings DOOM To Payment Terminal” →

A Tiny RISC-V Emulator Runs Linux With No MMU. And Yes, It Runs DOOM!

December 7, 2022 by 28 Comments

It’s something of an article of faith, that to run Linux your computer must include a hardware memory management unit, or MMU. To an extent it’s true, in that for a Linux-based system to shine it must have that hardware, but in fact there has been support for MMU-less Linux for many years now. Prolific hacker [cnlohr] has created an emulated simple RISCV processor without an MMU, and not only does it run Linux, it also runs DOOM.

The videos below the break go into significant depth on writing and debugging an emulator not to mention the inner workings of DOOM, but fear not if it’s not your thing. Everything can be found in a GitHub repository, and there are straightforward instructions should you wish to try it yourself.

All this is entertaining stuff, but it becomes of much more interest when viewed as part of an ongoing chain of projects working on no-MMU Linux for low-end RISC-V microcontrollers. Imagine the prospect of running Linux on a CPU costing relative pennies, and you can see why that’s an interesting prospect. Even if it’s not the most unexpected way to run Linux without an MMU.

Continue reading “A Tiny RISC-V Emulator Runs Linux With No MMU. And Yes, It Runs DOOM!” →

A smartphone-sized PCB is in a person's hand. A large blue chip package houses a 486 and the board has a SoundBlaster card and a 40 PIN Raspberry Pi Connector along one edge for attaching a Raspberry Pi Zero.

TinyLlama Is A 486 In Your Pocket

November 20, 2022 by 39 Comments

We love retrocomputing and tiny computers here at Hackaday, so it’s always nice to see projects that combine the two. [Eivind]’s TinyLlama lets you play DOS games on a board that fits in your hand.

Using the 486 SOM from the 86Duino, the TinyLlama adds an integrated Crystal Semiconductor audio chip for AdLib and SoundBlaster support. If you populate the 40 PIN Raspberry Pi connector, you can also use a Pi Zero 2 to give the system MIDI capabilities when coupled with a GY-PCM5102 I²S DAC module.

Audio has been one of the trickier things to get running on these small 486s, so its nice to see a simple, integrated solution available. [Eivind] shows the machine running DOOM (in the video below the break) and starts up Monkey Island at the end. There is a breakout board for serial and PS/2 mouse/keyboard, but he says that USB peripherals work well if you don’t want to drag your Model M out of the closet.

Looking for more projects using the 86Duino? Checkout ISA Sound Cards on 86Duino or Using an 86Duino with a Graphics Card.

Continue reading “TinyLlama Is A 486 In Your Pocket” →

Screenshot of the EFI shell, showing doom.wad and doom.efi in 'ls' command output, and then doom.efi being loaded

DOOM? In Your BIOS? More Likely Than You Think!

June 12, 2022 by 25 Comments

We’ve seen hackers run DOOM on a variety of appliances, from desk phones to pregnancy tests. Now, the final frontier has been conquered – we got DOOM to run on an x86 machine. Of course, making sure we utilize your PC hardware to its fullest, we have to forego an OS. Here are two ways you can run the classic shooter without the burden of gigabytes of bloated code in the background.

[nic3-14159] implemented this first version as a payload for coreboot, which is an open-source BIOS/UEFI replacement for x86 machines. Some might say it’s imperfect — it has no sound support, only works with PS/2 keyboards, and exiting the game makes your computer freeze. However, it’s playable, and it fits into your BIOS flash chip.

But what if your computer hasn’t yet been blessed with a free BIOS replacement? You might like this UEFI module DOOM port instead, originally made by [Warfish] and then built upon by [Cacodemon345]. To play this, you only need to compile the binary and an UEFI shell, then use the “Load EFI Shell” option in your UEFI menu – something that’s widely encountered nowadays. This version also lacks sound, but is a bit more fully featured due to all the facilities that UEFI provides for its payloads.

Of course there’s far more efficient ways to slay demons on your computer, but even if they aren’t necessarily practical from a gaming standpoint, these two projects serve as decent examples of Coreboot and UEFI payloads. BIOS replacements like coreboot take up so little space, we’ve even seen Windows 3.1 fit alongside coreboot in the BIOS chip. Wondering what UEFI is, even? Here’s a primer for you. And, if you don’t mind the exceptional bloat of a stripped-down Linux install, here’s a Linux image built from the ground up to run DOOM specifically.

Continue reading “DOOM? In Your BIOS? More Likely Than You Think!” →

Ray-Traced Doom Really Shines!

April 18, 2022 by 13 Comments

We’re huge fans of taking retro games and adding new graphics features to them, so you had to know that when [Sultim Tsyrendashiev] released his ray-traced Doom engine, we would have to cover it. Now this does break with tradition — instead of running Doom on every conceivable platform, this version requires an AMD or Nvidia ray tracing capable card. On the other hand, the spirit of Doom is certainly alive, as ray-traced Doom has already been demonstrated on the Steam Deck. Check out the video below for a demo, and come back after the break for more info.

The most exciting part of this graphical feat may be the RayTracedGL1 library that “simplifies the process of porting applications with fixed-function pipeline to real-time path tracing.” Besides Doom, there’s also been demos made of Serious Sam and Half-Life 1. There’s even experimental Linux support! We managed to compile and test it on our system, running a 6700 XT and Fedora 35 with bleeding edge Mesa. There are a few visual glitches to work out, but it’s an outstanding project so far. The only complaint we have is that it’s based on prboom, not the still-maintained GZDoom, though with enough attention who knows where the project will go. If this leaves you hungry for more, check out more retro-upgrades, or Doom on more devices.

Continue reading “Ray-Traced Doom Really Shines!” →