Programmer runs Doom on DNS, with each game tick taking seconds
A programmer has made a version of Doom run using DNS as its memory and arithmetic system, turning the domain name database into an extremely slow computer. The project is a playful demonstration of how DNS can store and return data, rather than a practical way to play the game.
The first attempt took 577 seconds to process a press of the right key; optimisations cut that to 54.4 seconds, a 10.6-fold improvement. Even under an unrealistic best case, the game would take about 14 seconds per tick, compared with Doom’s target of 28.6 milliseconds. The author says each state update uses DNS UPDATE and only succeeds if the previous state is unchanged.
- Doom can run with DNS acting as its memory and arithmetic.
- Optimisations cut a key press from 577 to 54.4 seconds.
- The game remains about three orders of magnitude too slow.
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Doom is a landmark 1993 video game that remains culturally significant for pioneering 3D graphics and first-person gameplay. DNS is the internet's domain name system, which translates website addresses like bbc.co.uk into the numerical addresses computers use to find them. Neither system was designed for gaming or general computation.
A programmer has demonstrated that Doom can technically run using DNS, which normally translates web addresses but here serves as both memory and processor. The game operates entirely through DNS requests and responses rather than using a device's normal processor and memory. The project demonstrates an unusual capability of existing technology rather than providing a practical way to play.
The resulting gameplay is extraordinarily slow. Each player action, such as pressing a direction key, initially took over nine minutes to register; optimisation reduced this to under a minute. Standard Doom updates over thirty times per second, so this DNS version would require many hours to complete even basic gameplay.
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Originally published by The Register as “No shame in the Domain Name game: DNS is doomed, literally”.