Years ago I slapped together a way to run DOOM on Apple devices by wrapping doomgeneric with SpriteKit. The task was relatively straightforward, and I shared some technical details in the original post. What was most exciting to me about the weekend project was witnessing a game that took every bit of my ’90s home computer now running effortlessly on my wrist. It would’ve been even cooler if it had sound on the Watch, but I learned that wasn’t going to come easily and needed more of my time and attention than I had to spare. A common theme with having so many side projects.
Then AI coding tools arrived and they’re the side project game changer. For this particular case I wasn’t in it for the academic exercise – I just wanted to point and get what I wanted, so I did just that.
Presenting DarwinDOOM, formerly known as AppleGenericDoom!
Now with:
- Sound on the Apple Watch
- Keyboard and touch controls
- A signed and notarized Mac app that you can run instantly
- The ability to run DOOM in your macOS Dock
- The ability to control DOOM Guy’s face with your face via your camera
- An iOS / iPadOS app that also supports a connected keyboard
- MIDI music (except on the Watch, for now)
- All Apple frameworks, no SDL dependencies
- Nifty icons
and more!
What a time for software and side projects. 😎