[GameSpot] - You Can Play Doom On Twitter Now

[343iBot]

Doom is "playable" on Twitter now thanks to a bot called Tweet2Doom created by Georgi Gerganov. Here's how it works: You send the bot a series of keyboard commands, and the bot spits out a video with corresponding Doom gameplay.

For example, you can start a new game by replying to the bot with the text, "/play x,,e,,e,,e,,50-,50-u,15-f." That translates to getting past the main menu, waiting for 50 frames for the screen wipe to finish, walking forward for 50 frames, and shooting for 15 frames. For more information on keyboard inputs and how the bot works, check out Tweet2Doom's pinned guide.

⠀
ROOT node for Doom Shareware 1.9
Read the instructions in the images below.
⠀ pic.twitter.com/YszpiKnXEE

— Tweet2Doom (@tweet2doom) October 2, 2021

Since the bot only outputs a tiny bit of gameplay for each user reply, it's basically a collaborative effort to get to the end of a level--or for the ambitious, the end of the game. And due to the inherent trial and error nature of inputting keyboard commands, seeing what gameplay results, and repeating until successful progress is made--it looks like it will be quite a while before anybody reaches the finish line. There's a record of every user input over at GitHub, which is pretty cool. You get to see all the stopped and started games, as well as the more successful attempts.

It's a meme at this point to get Doom to work on non-traditional "consoles like Ikea light bulbs, old phones, karaoke machines, thermostats, and more. The better question at this point is: What can't Doom run on? (There does indeed exist an itrunsdoom Tumblr tag that answers the question, if you're curious.)

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