Want a new, weird way to play Doom? Doom in Unreal has you covered
There are plenty of strange ways to play Doom; you can slaughter demons on a calculator, a fridge and even a pregnancy test. But one programmer has come up with an entirely unexpected way to engage with id’s shooter.
Programmer Thomas Richter-Trummer has created ‘Doom in Unreal’ which… isn’t actually in Unreal, instead it’s a 3D render of an Unreal Engine area. Confused? We don’t blame you, but that’s not the point. What makes Doom in Unreal such an oddity is that it lets you play Doom on a sheet of virtual cloth and it runs entirely in-browser.
Launch Doom in Unreal and you take control of a character pottering around a 3D space. A sheet of cloth is conveniently suspended from the ceiling and, by approaching it, you can launch and play Doom’s first shareware episode.
You’ll need a reasonable amount of PC horsepower to get the most out of it (apparently it runs on mobile but I’ve not tried) but the novelty goes beyond that. The cloth still behaves like cloth so if you run into it, the ‘screen’ warps appropriately. It’s a seriously impressive effect.
On top of that, this appears to be one single shared space. Doom in Unreal isn’t what Id call a hive of activity but one other player was there, sharing the same cloth screen. Naturally, I made it our mission to disrupt their game by running back and forward through the screen. Why? Because I am just the worst.
Granted, this is essentially a tech demo – but it’s still fun just to mess around with. The fact that Doom sticks to the cloth screen, instead of staying on a single 2D plane, is fascinating. For an extra challenge, you can stand behind the screen and play Doom backwards.
You can find Doom in Unreal here and follow its creator, who is also the CTO of the 3D web platform where Doom in Unreal is hosted, on Twitter here.
