Acquiring DOOM to operate on a personal computer it was never ever meant to run on is a entertaining trope in the entire world of esoteric retro pcs. By now we have observed it run on every thing from old NES devices to microwaves, treadmills, and generally anything with a computer system within of it. What we don’t frequently see are the displays on their own getting established up exclusively to operate the common shooter. This establish could operate the game itself on common components, but the spectacular section is that it’s capable to be shown on this seven-segment screen.
This create can make extensive use of multiplexers to travel sufficient seven-phase shows to use as a passable screen. There are 1152 seven phase digits arranged in a 48 by 24 array, run by a network of daisy-chained MAX7219 chips. A Python script operating on a Raspberry Pi correlates true impression info with the digit to be displayed on each of the segments, and the Raspberry Pi sends all of that information and facts out to the monitor. The remaining final result is a show which is rapidly sufficient and exact sufficient to participate in DOOM in a genuinely distinctive way.
There is a lot much more data offered about this undertaking on their task page, and they have made anything open resource for these who desire to adhere to together as nicely. The job consists of additional than just the ability to play DOOM, too. There is a designed-in movie player and a couple arcade programs programmed specially to make use of this show. Probably one working day we will also see one thing like this ported to sixteen-section displays as an alternative of the far more frequent seven-phase.