Yep, December’s not out quite yet, and another weird DOOM-related software has shown up to blow your mind. Well, that is if you have a Roomba. You know, those robot vacuums that people buy to freak out the dog? Well, coder Rich Whitehouse has another use for that contraption: Making your own DOOM maps.
Enter DOOMBA, a script for Whitehouse’s Noesis software, which is used for “previewing and converting between hundreds of model, image, and animation formats”. The script tracks and stores your Roomba’s movement data via the robot’s Clean Map reporting system, which can be imported into Noesis and then finally be converted into a DOOM map.
Currently, the script has only been tested with the Roomba 980. Plus, you’ll have to do the work of installing the software, the script itself, as well as figure out your Roomba’s IP. But once that’s done, you simply grab the Roomba’s movement data, throw it into the Noesis application, and you have a DOOM map of your living room/bedroom/kitchen.
Well, part of it. You’ll have to fiddle around with values, and according to Whitehouse, he hasn’t tested it extensively, and that could result in the map attempting to do things that DOOM can’t handle. Still, it’s a neat little something you can try over the holidays if you’re up to the challenge.
Or, you could always wait for John Romero to finish up and release SIGIL, but that’s entirely up to you.
