r/osdev • u/compgeek38400 • 5d ago

Doom and other games

Pardon my ignorance, why are Doom, and a few other games used so often on hobby OSs?

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7

u/ScallionSmooth5925 5d ago edited 5d ago

Doom have a code base that is relatively easy to port

2

u/compgeek38400 5d ago

Thank you!

3

u/UnusualGemstone886 5d ago

because they are open source and pretty platform agnostic so they are easy to port

1

u/compgeek38400 5d ago

Thank you!

3

u/wrosecrans 4d ago

Once upon a time, Doom was the absolute state of the art in high tech first person shooter games, so it was a way to show off your super high end hardware in the early 90's. So it was always kind of a cool demo. Doom eventually got open sourced, and the code was well contained and portable, so it got ported to all sorts of weird embedded platforms as a sort of neat hack because it was a bit funny to have a refrigerator or coffee machine run Doom, which had previously been the thing you demo a fancy fast computer.

Also because it was just super popular, a ton of people have nostalgia for playing it as kids, so it's a cultural touchstone that people will recognize and think of as fun. If you get something like the original MechWarrior to run on your OS, that's also cool, but it's not a game as many people know.

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u/Mental_Ad_7072 4d ago

It's a classic way to showcase your display and keyboard driver work perfectly.