Coder Forces Graphing Calculator to Run Doom

[Tom Goldman]

Coder Forces Graphing Calculator to Run Doom


They might just want to calculate your hyperbolae, but now graphing calculators will also be forced to play Doom.

A programmer has figured out how to get the original version of Doom running on a graphing calculator. The productivity of the world's students is officially doomed. Yup.

DJOmnimaga demonstrates the game running on a TI-Nspire [http://www.amazon.com/Texas-Instruments-TI-NSpire-Handheld-Calculator/dp/B000QSZD44/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1298147333&sr=1-4] graphing calculator. This is an actual port of Doom called nDoom, and not a clone.

Unfortunately, it only runs for 20-60 seconds before a problem typically occurs, so the project is still a work in progress. According to DJOmnimaga, sometimes the graphics will get distorted, the screen will turn black, or the game will totally freeze. For a machine designed to calculate y = a sin(bx + c), I'm still impressed.

I feel really bad for math teachers though. Now when they think they're getting through to students that are deeply engrossed in their graphing calculators, they're really just losing them to a life of fragging demons.

Source: Game Informer [http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=0ee7fa8ea9e1dfd4c51bd6641b6923c0&topic=6637.0]


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[rokkolpo]

Holy yes!

Looks like someone managed to divide by zero.

 

[Jonluw]

Okay, that's pretty awesome now.

 

[hittite]

Okay, I'm impressed. That's likely the most awesome thing I'll see today.

 

[Irridium]

Well, DOOM was really well optimized, but holy shit getting it to run on a calculator? Thats impressive.

 

[Lord Beautiful]

This dude is my new lord and savior. He'll be my god when he figures out how to program enemy AI on it.

 

[AceAngel]

Ace: Argh, now I wish that calculators could have Active-Screens rather then Passive-Screens with a 0.45ms delays. Life sucks.

Angel: Oh boy, that's is rather impressive, I just hope they do well in school as well play games. Balance my child.

Luigi: OH WOW! That's good! I mean really good. Impressive to get that game running on that. Congrats to the kiddo and kuddos.

 

[fisk0]

Wait, what - hasn't this been done for at least a decade now? I remember hearing stories of people making Doom run (at very low FPS and resolutions even lower than the SNES port) on graphical calculators in the late 90's - or was it only the Wolfenstein 3D engine games?

 

[Gxas]

Umm... Not to be an ass, but I've been able to run Doom on my calculator for a while now. Probably five, maybe six years now. As well as Pokémon, sans a working pokedex, and a fan-made Legend of Zelda.

I don't see how this is new.

 

[Psycho Cat Industries]

Sweet,now if only I could play chrono trigger while solving pi

 

[manythings]

Ha, I doubt any teacher could tell the difference. I've yet to encounter one that didn't just run out the clock for their weekly pay.

 

[Reed Spacer]

Someone has a bit too much time on their hands.

Okay, impressive, but still...

 

[therandombear]

Until Doom theme is added to the clip, I shall hold my applause...

Good job though :>

 

[DonTsetsi]

Related:

Computer engineers are a strange bunch. I should know, i'm becoming one.

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2158#comic
Here's the link if anyone is interested.

 

[Jfswift]

Related:

Computer engineers are a strange bunch. I should know, i'm becoming one.

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2158#comic
Here's the link if anyone is interested.

*smirks* that is awesome

 

[MrPop]

That's pretty awesome.

Shame I've just got some random Sharp graphical calculator. It has 8kb RAM I think. Don't think that'll be enough. =P

 

[Assassin Xaero]

Damn, and all I have on mine is Super Mario...

 

[Enigmers]

My friends and I joke about running Starcraft on a graphing calculator (which I think spawned from an old joke I made when someone asked if Starcraft would run on their computer; this was before SC2); I never thought you could run a game like Doom and a graphing calculator.

They're still not worth the 80$ or whatever the school charges you to replace them.

 

[Stammer]

Holy crap that's awesome! Though I remember the difference in my poor TI-83's battery life between using it normally and playing games on it. Normally the batteries lasted almost 3 years, but when just playing simple games it only lasted a couple of months.

I'm just trying to imagine running Doom on it now and how it's probably last only a couple of days! haha