It would appear nothing gives PC hackers more enjoyment than getting Doom running on or in objects where Doom really shouldn’t be running. Programmer kgsws has taken this philosophy in stride and has successfully managed to run Doom… in Doom itself.
The original DOS-based Doom 2 has an exploit within its code that allows someone with the correct technical acumen to execute their own code within the game itself.
The video, released on the creator’s YouTube channel, documents the technical process of getting this mod up and running. At around 8 minutes into the video, the magic starts happening.
The latter half of the video showcases a playable version of Doom running in Doom itself. It’s not just a slideshow either, kgsws is able to press F12 in order to control the alternate version of Doom. As he explains, both instances of Doom are running independently of each other.
kgsws also shows off that this exploit is not limited to Doom within Doom, but rather it can be used with different games as well. He showcases this by running Heretic using the same hack.
This is playable using the Steam version of Doom 2 with the DOSBox emulator and the did-v1.zip from kgsws’s GitHub. To run Doom in Doom, copy kgdid.wad into the directory where doom2.exe is stored and then run it in DOSBox using “doom2 -file kgdid.wad”. Follow these steps and you too could be playing Doom, in Doom.
Coding magicians have got Doom running on everything imaginable, whether it be a lego brick, a fridge or a pregnancy test. Now with Doom successfully running in Doom itself, have we reached critical mass on Doom running in nonsensical places? Something tells us this coding trend will get even wilder before it’s finished.