🔥 GORE 🔥

A Minimal Go Port of doomgeneric

    ██████╗  ██████╗  ██████╗ ███╗   ███╗
    ██╔══██╗██╔═══██╗██╔═══██╗████╗ ████║
    ██║  ██║██║   ██║██║   ██║██╔████╔██║
    ██║  ██║██║   ██║██║   ██║██║╚██╔╝██║
    ██████╔╝╚██████╔╝╚██████╔╝██║ ╚═╝ ██║
    ╚═════╝  ╚═════╝  ╚═════╝ ╚═╝     ╚═╝
                    .GO

TLDR

Tired of reading already?

wget https://distro.ibiblio.org/slitaz/sources/packages/d/doom1.wad
go run github.com/AndreRenaud/gore/example/termdoom@latest

💀 WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS?

This is a minimal, platform-agnostic Go port of the legendary DOOM engine, transpiled from the doomgeneric codebase. No CGo. No platform dependencies. Just pure, unadulterated demon-slaying action powered by the glory of Go's cross-compilation.

The original C code was converted to Go using (modernc.org/ccgo/v4), by cznic (https://gitlab.com/cznic/doomgeneric.git). This was then manually cleaned up to remove a lot of manual pointer manipulation, and make things more Go-ish, whilst still maintaining compatibility with the original Doom, and its overall structure.

🔫 FEATURES

• ✅ Platform Agnostic: Runs anywhere Go runs
• ✅ Minimal Dependencies: Only requires Go standard library
• ✅ Multiple DOOM Versions: Supports DOOM, DOOM II, Ultimate DOOM, Final DOOM
• ✅ WAD File Support: Bring your own demons via WAD files
• ✅ Memory Safe: Go's GC protects you from buffer overflows (but not from Cacodemons) (WIP - 95% complete)
• ✅ Cross Compilation: Build for any target from any platform

Missing Features

• One instance per process: Still has a lot of the original global variables, which prevent multiple instances from running
• Random exported consts: The original C code used the standard convention of all upper case for const/enum values. This results in the Go code assuming these are exported values, when really they're internal state info
• Nice external API for state inspection: It would be good to be able to change the running state externally, without exposing everything in such a raw way
• unsafe: There are still some instances of unsafe in the code. It would be good to get rid of these to have better bounds access guarantees

🚀 INSTALLATION

Prerequisites

• Go 1.24+
• A WAD file

Running the examples

These examples are both very minimal, and whilst technically run the game, they are not really fully complete games in their own right (ie: Missing key bindings etc...). They all assume that a Doom wad is available in the current directory. The shareware Doom wad is available at https://www.doomworld.com/classicdoom/info/shareware.php, or bring your own from a commercial copy.

git clone https://github.com/AndreRenaud/gore
cd gore

Terminal based

This example renders the Doom output using ANSI color codes suitable for a 256-bit color capable terminal. It has very limited input support, as terminals typically do not support key-up events, or control-key support. So fire has been remapped to ,, and it is necessary to repeatedly tap keys to get them to continue, as opposed to press & hold.

go run ./example/termdoom -iwad doom1.wad

Web based

go run ./example/webserver

Now browse to http://localhost:8080 to play

Ebitengine

go run ./example/ebitengine

The window should pop up to run Doom

Getting WAD Files

You need the game data files (WAD) to run DOOM:

• Shareware: Download doom1.wad (free)
• Retail: Use your legally owned copy of DOOM.WAD or doom2.wad
• Ultimate DOOM: doom.wad from Ultimate DOOM
• Final DOOM: tnt.wad or plutonia.wad

🔧 PLATFORM IMPLEMENTATION

Similar to doomgeneric, the actual input/output is provided externally. The following interface is required:

type DoomFrontend interface {
    DrawFrame(img *image.RGBA)
    SetTitle(title string)
    GetEvent(event *DoomEvent) bool
    CacheSound(name string, data []byte)
    PlaySound(name string, channel, vol, sep int)
}

Only DrawFrame and GetEvent are vital to implement to get a functioning game. The others can be left blank, and things will still basically function fine.

📜 LICENSE

DOOM source code is released under the GNU General Public License.
This Go port maintains the same licensing terms.