[HN Gopher] Doom-htop: The classic DOOM game over htop
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       Doom-htop: The classic DOOM game over htop
        
       Author : thunderbong
       Score  : 245 points
       Date   : 2024-04-21 09:53 UTC (13 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | VelesDude wrote:
       | Yet another example of "it is so stupid it just had to be done.".
       | I love it!
        
       | codetiger wrote:
       | I can't imagine, where-else this game is going to run in future.
        
       | playingalong wrote:
       | If you think about it, rendering the "video" into ASCII and then
       | putting them into process names seems kind of easy. Nothing
       | special. Similar to these toys over DNS, etc. Especially that as
       | the readme says the majority of the work was done by the other
       | project.
       | 
       | On the other hand, I would never think of htop as a rendering
       | engine for anything. Totally mind-blowing and impressive.
       | Software hacking at its finest! Kudos!
        
         | ngcazz wrote:
         | This might be conceptually easy to grasp, but it does sound
         | hard to implement.
        
           | rrr_oh_man wrote:
           | That exactly! The Dunning-Kruger trap (not bashing GP, I've
           | fallen into it often enough)
        
         | jylam wrote:
         | "If you think about it, rendering the "video" into ASCII and
         | then putting them into process names seems kind of easy. "
         | 
         | It is easy if you don't really think about it, actually.
         | Otherwise, it is not that trivial to get a good contrast and
         | good performances. See libaa or libcaca for instance, hundreds
         | of hours on this very subject.
        
       | MPSimmons wrote:
       | Pure, wonderful insanity. A+
        
       | 0x0mer wrote:
       | Loll thanks for sharing dude :)
        
       | endgame wrote:
       | Excellent hack. It makes me happy to see that the hacker spirit
       | is still alive.
        
       | _davide_ wrote:
       | After this, I completely lost faith in humanity :'D
        
         | mwcz wrote:
         | You didn't lose it, it just wafted over to me. Faith in
         | humanity restored!
        
       | thih9 wrote:
       | A reverse PSDoom[1], eh?
       | 
       | This submission is about using a process manager to play Doom,
       | while PSDoom is about using Doom to perform process management.
       | 
       | [1]: https://psdoom.sourceforge.net
        
         | em-bee wrote:
         | i was going to comment how i would like to see the reverse, and
         | i am not surprised to find that it already exists. here is a
         | video on someone porting it to run on current linux:
         | https://youtu.be/Pf7rpde49NU
         | 
         | except i'd like to see it somewhat more actually useful as a
         | top replacement: size of the monster should be based on memory
         | usage, and aggressiveness should be based on CPU usage.
         | different rooms can be different users, and threads could also
         | be shown as related somehow as could parent and child
         | processes. sleeping processes should be sleeping obviously and
         | zombie processes be frozen in space, maybe transparent, able to
         | pass through? then a selection of weapons corresponding to the
         | kill signals.
         | 
         | there are more things that could be added but then it gets
         | further away from doom.
        
           | seba_dos1 wrote:
           | psdoom-ng already works on "current Linux", no need to "port"
           | it.
           | 
           | It's also extensible - you can easily replace the commands
           | used by it to gather the process list and to kill processes,
           | so you can make variations of it using different kind of data
           | without even recompiling the game. Once at a game jam I made
           | "fsdoom" this way - a file manager utility that let you
           | delete files from your $HOME by killing monsters.
        
             | em-bee wrote:
             | well, in the video there was talk about making it work on
             | fedora 36. not sure what he had to do or if it was him who
             | created psdoom-ng...
             | 
             | but that configurability is cool. fsdoom sounds like a
             | great idea. but here too i'd like monster size be based on
             | filesize, rooms based on folders...
        
         | rrr_oh_man wrote:
         | That would be fun with rm -rf
        
       | anste wrote:
       | I feel like we're reaching completion with the "integrating doom
       | into things" arc - it's now time to start integrating everyday
       | things into Doom.
       | 
       | Just imagine a Todo List or a Calendar in Doom.
        
         | thih9 wrote:
         | > Just imagine a Todo List or a Calendar in Doom.
         | 
         | Nitpick: This is not a todo list or a calendar in Doom; this is
         | Doom _running in_ a todo list or a calendar. About a todo app -
         | we already have a doom rendered using checkboxes [1],
         | integrating that into a todo app is left as an exercise for the
         | reader.
         | 
         | [1]: https://healeycodes.github.io/doom-checkboxes/
        
         | jylam wrote:
         | > "I feel like we're reaching completion with the "integrating
         | doom into things" arc"
         | 
         | Ho you are new to the craft aren't you.
        
         | mwcz wrote:
         | I thought the same with "algae plays DOOM"...
        
       | OddMerlin wrote:
       | I'm genuinely curious how people have time to do this. I feel
       | less and less sure of my abilities the more I see wonderful stuff
       | like.
       | 
       | I can't imagine the effort involved in this. Someone did mention
       | this takes advantage of prior work just rerendering in ascii and
       | mapping to procs but that's not a negligible amount of work. How
       | long did this take? I feel like I know nothing and I've been in
       | this industry for more than I'd like to say.
       | 
       | This is awesome but I feel incredibly stupid.
        
         | 0x0mer wrote:
         | First of all, thank you for the kind words :) Secondly, don't
         | feel bad! I'm sure you know much much more than you give
         | yourself credit for. This took about a full weekend plus
         | another day, and a few more days of working here and there when
         | I have time. But as was written somewhere else in the comments
         | and as I wrote myself in the README, the hard work of making
         | Doom more portable was done by the incredible project doom-
         | generic which I forked: https://github.com/ozkl/doomgeneric
        
         | jylam wrote:
         | "I'm genuinely curious how people have time to do this."
         | 
         | Let's say you work 8 hours per day, 1 hour commuting. That's 15
         | hours left, you need to eat and sleep and bath and whatever.
         | That leaves 15 hours because who cares about eating or sleeping
         | or taking a bath. More than enough time to do this in 3 years.
         | 
         | Alright, enough time there, I need to finish my raycaster on
         | 6502.
        
         | simonjgreen wrote:
         | I look at these things, and remember a time before I had
         | children
        
           | mjfisher wrote:
           | I kind of do, but the lack of sleep has killed my short term,
           | long term and working memory. The time before is hazy.
        
         | mwcz wrote:
         | Boy is that a familiar feeling. It's the programmer version of
         | shaving away at one's self-worth by looking at friends'
         | Instagram-perfect home photos. I think most of us feel it from
         | time to time. There are ways to combat it, but it's a totally
         | normal side effect of hanging around smart people.
        
       | magnio wrote:
       | Reminds me of Bad Apple on Windows Task Manager.
       | 
       | https://youtu.be/sBeI30ccb6g
        
       | p4bl0 wrote:
       | I stumbled upon this project approximately a week ago and
       | submitted it here but it didn't get any traction. Glad to see it
       | has made the front page. I like it when some hacky for-the-fun-
       | of-it projects like this one make it here :).
        
       | major505 wrote:
       | Sometimes people take tech too far... this is not one of this
       | times.
        
       | ChoGGi wrote:
       | That's awesome, but I don't think Doom is considered a cult video
       | game?
        
         | jasongill wrote:
         | cult classic is defined as "something such as a movie or book
         | that is considered to be one of the best of its kind by a small
         | group of people." which I would say is pretty accurate
        
       | noufalibrahim wrote:
       | > Ever wondered whether htop could be used to render the graphics
       | of cult video games?
       | 
       | Not really but I'm glad that someone did.
        
       | nextaccountic wrote:
       | It would be nice to have some screenshots or even a video (maybe
       | with asciinema)
        
         | simcop2387 wrote:
         | It's got that in the readme, a more direct link though is
         | https://github.com/0x0mer/doom-htop/blob/master/screenshots/...
        
         | nolok wrote:
         | It's right there at the top of the github page
        
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       (page generated 2024-04-21 23:01 UTC)