Doom (1993) in a PDF
I made a Doom source port that runs within a PDF file. I was inspired by the recent HN post about Tetris in a PDF (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42645218) and I wondered if I could get Doom to run using a similar method. It turns out that old versions of Emscripten can compile C to asm.js code that will happily run inside the limited JS runtime of the PDF engine. I used the doomgeneric (https://github.com/ozkl/doomgeneric) fork of the original Doom source, as that made writing the IO fairly easy. All I had to do was implement a framebuffer and…
Doom (1993) in a PDF launched on January 13, 2025 with 369 votes, #71 of 6,142 launches that month and more than 99% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 1 year on.
In plain words
Doom (1993) in a PDF is a source port of the classic 1993 game that runs entirely within a PDF file. It uses Emscripten to compile the original Doom C code to JavaScript and renders the game using ASCII characters in PDF text fields, creating a six-color monochrome display. The project was inspired by similar experiments embedding other games in PDFs and leverages the limited JavaScript runtime available in PDF engines to achieve playability.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
I made a Doom source port that runs within a PDF file. I was inspired by the recent HN post about Tetris in a PDF (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42645218) and I wondered if I could get Doom to run using a similar method. It turns out that old versions of Emscripten can compile C to asm.js code…
Does a similar job
all alternatives →- TITetris in a PDF2025 · th0mas.nl · ▲1,289
I realized that the PDF engines of modern desktop browsers (PDFium and PDF.js) support JavaScript with enough I/O primitives to make a basic game like Tetris. It was a bit tricky to find a union of features that work in both engines, but in the end it turns out that showing/hiding annotation "fields" works well to make monochrome pixels, and keyboard input can be achieved by typing in a text input box. All in all it's quite janky but a nice reminder of how general purpose PDF scripting can be. The linked PDF is all ASCII so you can just open it in a text editor, or have a look at…
I made a Doom-like game fit inside a QR code2025 · github.com · ▲531I sometimes pick up random projects just because I can, this was one of those times. I made it as a week long project a while back this year but never shared here, so thought to go for it haha. I created a game inspired by Doom and the backrooms called The Backdooms under 2.4kb in minified html. (for reference, this entire post would be around 1.8kB haha) I had to use a not popular way of using GZip with Zlib headers (had to write my own script for compressing it, also in the repo) to eventually convert it a size 40 QR code that works right in your browser using Decompressionstream API. This…
Doom port to pure Go – Gore2025 · github.com · ▲148Hi HN, I’ve been working on Gore – a port of the classic Doom engine written in pure Go, based on a ccgo C-to-Go translation of Doom Generic. It loads original WAD files, uses a software renderer (no SDL or CGO, or Go dependencies outside the standard library). Still has a bit of unsafe code that I'm trying to get rid of, and various other caveats. In the examples is a terminal-based renderer, which is entertaining, even though it's very hard to play with terminal-style input/output. The goal is a clean, cross-platform, Go-native take on the Doom engine – fun to hack on, easy to read,…
Quake ported to safe Rust, playable in browser13d ago · quake-srp.pages.dev · ▲241Quake (1996), faithfully ported to dependency-free safe Rust and compiled to WebAssembly — play the shareware episode in your browser.
- DIDoom Inside an SVG2024 · chrisdalke.com · ▲69
- OCOnramp Can Compile Doom2024 · ludocode.com · ▲79
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I realized that the PDF engines of modern desktop browsers (PDFium and PDF.js) support JavaScript with enough I/O primitives to make a basic game like Tetris. It was a bit tricky to find a union of features that work in both engines, but in the end it turns out that showing/hiding annotation "fields" works well to make monochrome pixels, and keyboard input can be achieved by typing in a text input box. All in all it's quite janky but a nice reminder of how general purpose PDF scripting can be. The linked PDF is all ASCII so you can just open it in a text editor, or have a look at…
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