Even Blender Icon Can Run DOOM

The competition over who can make DOOM run on the weirdest, unconventional objects and programs continues, with Alex Telford introducing a new contestant: an icon in Blender.

Of course, the performance is not something that makes the game enjoyable, but the fact that Telford could not only run it on an icon but also make it playable is impressive.

Here is how he set the whole thing up, in his words:

• You can give icons a custom scale (in this case, 12x).
• Icons don't draw immediately after they load, so we "preflight" them by displaying the latest frames under the video as tiny icons. This gives Blender a run-up before it draws the main icon.
• The main icon shows one a few frames behind, so it's already been cached by Blender.
• Updates are done with a modal operator on a timer at a set interval (FPS).
• Inputs are handled as toggle properties to simulate press/release.
• It's powered by Doomviz, which is an open-source DOOM Python API.

This, he says, is "the least intuitive way to run DOOM," but I'm sure we'll see worse. Meanwhile, you can check out the code here if you want to play with it.

Also, take a look at Telford's other projects, like this cool interactive computer made in Blender as well.

You might also want to take a look at DOOM run on the Anker Prime charging station, in Houdini, Blender's Geometry Nodes, a PDF file, an attendee's badge from a hacking conference,  Windows' Notepad, LEGO bricks, Balatro, and Fortnite.

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