It's not often I'm blown away by something.
Actually, no, that's a lie.
I'm usually amazed by pretty much everything I see.
But this is a little different, because this is me being amazed via.
the medium of ASCII.
I should also note that it was brought to my attention from fellow Tweeter, and frankly
incredible artist @Bhaal_Spawn otherwise known as idspispopd... and if you want to know the
meaning behind idspispopd, well, then you can check out my video on it.
Right, let's just cover off what ASCII is first.
So, ASCII was actually developed from telegraph code, which relied on morse code to send the
digits 0 through to 9, and all letters of the alphabet.
In a computing sense, binary is used, to create encode 128 characters into a 7 bit string.
Using this chart, we can see for example that a capital A is represented by 1000001.
Really this is the basis which allows us to interact with this technology, and it's a
character set we would have used on early systems running a command line interface for
operation.
So how do we create the world of DOOM, simply using these characters.
Well, it's a little bit like this.
Isn't it wondrous?
It's like an aggressive and more fun version of the Matrix feed.
Although it uses the Doom WAD, 1337d00m (or Leet Doom if you like, which although generally
standing for Elite, is also used to describe a language where other ASCII characters are
used to represent actual letters) is actually written using the Unity engine.
I had a brief catch up with Croatian creator Dario Zubovic, to find out his inspiration,
and apparently it all goes back to Rogue-Likes, which, incidentally, I've actually made a
video about as well!
Now, this makes sense, Rogue-Likes were build entire around ASCII, and so Dario wanted to
know if it could be applied to create a 3D perspective.
I mean, there are other DOOM ASCII variants out there.
There are even libraries which convert images to ASCII art, but this creation works just
a little bit better.
By using a post-processing shader, Dario was able to refine it's look to create something,
which actually works.
Originally he was going to make a bespoke game based on it, but after knackering himself
out with the shader, he decided to plump with Doom, and to be honest, it's a good thing,
because most people know there way around Doom.
And if you were to hike up the difficulty to impossible - essentially by decreasing
the number of text columns, then you REALLY, REALLY need to know your way around the game.
Technically it's using a set of monospaced characters, divided in groups by density of
the character.
So in effect, the denser (or darker) a set of pixels are interpreted, the denser the
corresponding character will be used in their place.
If you use more columns, you have more pixels symbolised by each character, and therefore,
it's a lot harder to work out what's what, even with your brain trying to fill in the
gaps.
Interestingly, it's one of those things which works better if you're short sighted.
Like me.
I remember reading an article in a Sega magazine in the 90s about how Mega Drive graphics actually
look better if you're short sighted.
That's really because being short sighted creates an anti-aliasing effect, which blurs
edges together, removing jagged edges, and in this situation, actually helping to form
a more coherent image.
Even so, there's no way I can tackle it on impossible mode, or even hard mode.
To make things worse, you can even put it into black and white mode.
Which is... just, no.
Higher resolutions - or more columns, are however, much easier, and look a lot more
like Doom.
You can play away like this for hours, being lured into the changing characters, like an
audience member into Paul McKenner's clutches.
It's also helped by the soothing, yet somewhat tense stoner rock music provided by Sydney
based Turtle Skull.
Which actually works nicely, within Doom.
Usually I have outrage for anything that's not the original Doom soundtrack, so this
was a pleasant surprise.
Anyway, that's 1337D00m.
I'll leave some links below so you can go and try it yourself.
Thanks for watching.