• maffydub 5 hours ago

    Cool hack, but I thought this was actually going to be using phone calls!

    A few years back, I built TeleDoom (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3-pje0PpfU) for the TADHack hackathon (http://tadhack.com/).

    This allowed you to play Doom by calling a phone number, which connected via a VoIP trunk to an Asterisk server, which read your button presses and translated them into actions in Doom, and then streamed the result back over Twitch - trying to recreate the vibe of 80s/90s TV phone-in games! (These were a thing on Saturday morning TV in the UK.)

    I never tested whether it would work with pulse-dial (i.e. rotary) phones - I think that would come down to the VoIP trunk provider!

    This involved a VoIP trunk connected ot

    • lisper 4 hours ago

      > I thought this was actually going to be using phone calls!

      Next year.

      • oneshtein 3 hours ago

        You can join army and practice Doom by phone or radio today!

      • bbarnett 3 hours ago

        vibe of 80s/90s TV phone-in games!

        Well that brings back memories. I recall "Ranger Bob" in Northern New York, Rochester I think, who used to host skits, and other things around cartoons. And they had a TV game where you'd yell 'POW' over and over to shoot things.

        As a Canuck I'd watch US TV, and it's neat to know that the UK had such cultural similarities too.

      • Dwedit 4 hours ago

        Before anyone tries to bring it up, Doom never ran on a pregnancy test. That was a case mod, no original parts were used besides the plastic case.

        • rob74 2 hours ago

          Well, it was still more "on" the pregnancy test than "on" the rotary phone - in this case, the phone is just a (really really bad) controller, Doom is still running on whatever the phone is connected to.

          • bbarnett 3 hours ago

            While Doom many not have, I assure you many felt doom when waiting for the result.

          • Razengan 16 minutes ago

            If you dream about Doom then Doom is running on you.

            • yapyap 23 minutes ago

              Not really “on” the phone right? or did I misunderstand the clip, cause it seemed like he was merely controlling it with the phone

              • Brajeshwar 4 hours ago

                Anyone know what electronic devices are left for Doom to conquer?

                • jansan 4 hours ago

                  Not really electronic devices, but how about facades of high rise buildings. I remember playing pong in Berlin on the Blinkenlights installation[1], why not play doom on one of those insane new Chinese skyscrapers?

                  Edit: I was also thinking about the Favicon, but this has been done already: https://github.com/VidFerris/FaviconDoom

                  [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Blinkenlights

                  • Brajeshwar 4 hours ago

                    Let's remember this comment when this is done. I'm sure someone will do it soon, even if it meant just controlling the lights in the windows.

                • DaoVeles 4 hours ago

                  Can we just appreciate the 3rd grader humor of the name.

                  Like a calculator app a friend made called the 'Crapulator'. It lived up to the name but not in the same fashion as the 'wrongulator'.

                  • erickhill 5 hours ago

                    It's like when your joystick seems to be on the fritz, yet you keep going for way too long before deciding to do something else entirely.

                    • throwup238 5 hours ago

                      The trick is to stop before you rub your joystick raw.

                    • nullhole 4 hours ago

                      Now I want to see a doom UI that does speech-to-mouse, so you shout "turn left!", "move forward!", "fire!", etc, into a telephone handset to run the game.

                      • _joel 3 hours ago

                        Reminds me of a 90's gameshow back here in the UK, Nightmare. One player would be blindfolded whilst the other team member tried to guide them around a grid avoiding being captured.. "Left, no, my left, no I mean your left, no!!!"|

                        Also https://www.voicebot.net/ or https://voiceattack.com/ is what you might want, from a quick google. Add an rj11 to 3.5mm connection, hey presto ;)

                        • anthk 2 hours ago

                          You can play text adventures over the phone with Asterisk, CMU-sphinx and some tweaked up dfrotz.

                          Also, Frotz has been ported to more devices than Doom.

                        • m4rc3lv 4 hours ago

                          I liked the story about the hackathon. Too bad something like this does not exist in my country.

                          • stevage 4 hours ago

                            It's cool, but I object to the misleading language. This isn't playing Doom on a phone, it's playing Doom using a phone as a controller.

                            • grujicd 4 hours ago

                              Title of original article is "play Doom on rotary phone", not "Doom on rotary phone", so it's a problem with a shortened HN title.

                              When describing playing a game in Serbian we use "on a controller" instead of "with a controller". It may be the same in Lithuanian.

                              • stevage 4 hours ago

                                Sounds like more of a translation issue than a shortening issue then.

                            • optimalsolver 5 hours ago