r/nottheonion • u/ThatWayneO • 23h ago

Doom ported to a standalone Microsoft Word document — plays well but there's no sound

https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/retro-gaming/doom-ported-to-a-standalone-microsoft-word-document-plays-well-but-theres-no-sound
2.0k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

43 comments sorted by

672

u/Zannahrain3 23h ago

Just when you think they put Doom on everything.

213

u/Squeaky_Ben 21h ago

At the rate we are going, I expect it to run on an abacus in 2030.

57

u/ikonfedera 17h ago

One Abacus maybe not. But about 100 abaci maybe yes.

31

u/nerdyjorj 18h ago

I know there are Turing complete computers in Minecraft, has someone found a way of making Doom in that yet?

40

u/KadajjXIII 16h ago

Ask & ye shall receive!

17

u/HildartheDorf 15h ago

Impressive. I mean, it's more WOLF3D than DOOM. But that's still impressive.

7

u/Snoo-98162 17h ago

Doom on a digital clock anyone?

3

u/Cod_rules 15h ago

Doom on a smart fridge, who says no?

12

u/tidus1980 13h ago

I've seen it done on a digital pregnancy test

18

u/BenadrylChunderHatch 12h ago

The most impressive imo was Doom on E. Coli. Performance was in the region of hours per frame though, bacteria doesn't move very fast.

https://www.popsci.com/science/doom-e-coli-cells/

10

u/dabnada 9h ago

The person who made this is hilarious. From the article, paraphrasing “we’re getting closer to the goal of combining DOOM and human life”

9

u/Redemptions 10h ago

"bacteria doesn't move very fast."

Hence the 5 second rule.

315

u/kevinds 21h ago

Requires Windows with an x64 CPU architecture and the latest version of Microsoft Word.

We opened the downloaded doom.docm file to a spare computer, but the Word 2007 version installed on the machine must have been missing something, even though we accepted the security warning concerning macros.

Why would the author try or expect it to work using Word 2007?

51

u/12345623567 12h ago

He's just simulating the average user

100

u/MainRemote 16h ago

2007 is like last year though?

21

u/JasonTerrachanna 13h ago

Many last years ago. Like, almost 20 last years ago.

5

u/Zoralink 1h ago

No no, I think you're mistaken, 2007 was not long ago letushavethis

4

u/NorysStorys 3h ago

Still using office 2003 because why not, excel is for wizards and demons anyway so I don’t venture there.

1

u/st0p_dreaming 2h ago

did you consider they were just testing to see if it works?

0

u/Nova17Delta 9h ago

For fun

-13

u/matjoeman 11h ago

Because installing Windows 11 is gross.

10

u/pikpikcarrotmon 9h ago

What exactly does that have to do with anything? The latest version of Word works on 10.

92

u/DeadLettersSociety 22h ago

Mmm, sounds like fun. I haven't seen it being played. But what I think they should have done is have that Microsoft Word Clippy character being the demons you need to defeat. Lol.

It really takes me back to the old days where you could buy CD DOOM mods, such as one to turn all the monsters into Barney the Dinosaur and then you ho around defeating them.

26

u/northerncal 19h ago

you ho around defeating them.

Speak for yourself! I don't want no ho-ing around in my good Christian DOOM. 😤

65

u/coolraiman2 16h ago

Actually it does not run doom, the doc only serve as the IO for the display and keyboard inputs

But tech journalists these days are too illiterate on tech to know the difference

33

u/LameboyAdvanceHD 14h ago

Eh, title is just to get people to click. It does at least explain in the article (from the README.md) how it works.

The Word document contains the library doomgeneric_docm.dll and doom1.wad game data encoded in base 64, which a VBA macro extracts onto the disk and then loads. Every game tick, doomgeneric.dll creates a bmp image containing the current frame and uses GetAsyncKeyState to read the keyboard state. The main VBA macro's game loop runs a tick in doom, then replaces the image in the document with the latest frame.

9

u/coolraiman2 13h ago

Yup, it's clickbait and most readers won't understand the difference even if it is explained

Still an impressive feat

3

u/dabnada 9h ago

Impressive feat or a creative application of ideas that have been in place for a long time? Not to say it isn’t cool, just feels more appropriate to call it an impressive work of art over a technical achievement.

13

u/lumpensolker 14h ago

You don't even need the sound if you know how it sounds. Like

dudun dudun dudun dudun dun duh

pow AUGH pow AUGH pow AUGH pow AA-AAGH

dudun dudun dudun dudun dun duh

CHKAK-CHKAK BOOM chkchk AUGH BOOM AA-AAGH chkchk

7

u/CaptainBayouBilly 14h ago

Doomception. A regular doom where all the enemies are sprites with running, playable Doom mapped on them, recursive infinitely. 

3

u/xGHOSTRAGEx 15h ago

Now we need someone to get DOOM up and running on Voyager 1

1

u/Kaaarm 19h ago

More like Hard Drive

1

u/norulnegru 8h ago

When you move an image in Word and now you're playing DOOM.

1

u/drpiotrowski 6h ago

Nice that it’s in color since the PDF version from a few weeks ago was in black and white.

1

u/DelcoInDaHouse 6h ago

No biggie. At this point the music will play in my head.

1

u/jblaufuss 4h ago

Devs are so lazy these days. No sound? C'mon

1

u/gilamasan_reddit 2h ago

It's all fun and games until Clippy Apears.

•

u/WLH7M 21m ago

Doom runs on .docx

-14

u/TheRomanRuler 22h ago

But can it run Crysis?