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Show HN: I made a Doom-like game fit inside a QR code

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531 points kuberwastaken | 4 comments | 18 Apr 25 16:40 UTC | HN request time: 0.425s | source

I sometimes pick up random projects just because I can, this was one of those times. I made it as a week long project a while back this year but never shared here, so thought to go for it haha.

I created a game inspired by Doom and the backrooms called The Backdooms under 2.4kb in minified html. (for reference, this entire post would be around 1.8kB haha) I had to use a not popular way of using GZip with Zlib headers (had to write my own script for compressing it, also in the repo) to eventually convert it a size 40 QR code that works right in your browser using Decompressionstream API.

This is of course a very oversimplified description of it, using a lot of the same technologies that DOOM had but combining it with infinite seed based map generation in 2.4kb (QR codes can only store 3kb, which includes changing formats) was pretty hard.

Here are some links about it if you want to nerd out and read more:

Repository Link (MIT License): https://github.com/Kuberwastaken/backdooms

A Hosted (slightly improved) version of The Backdooms: https://kuberwastaken.github.io/backdooms/

Game Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/QWPr10cAuGc

My Linkedin post about it: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7295667...

(PS: You'd need something like https://qrscanner.org/ or something that can scan bigger QR codes and put the text data onto your browser to play it)

My Blogs documenting the process and development in detail:

https://kuberwastaken.github.io/blog/Projects/How-I-Managed-... https://kuberwastaken.github.io/blog/Projects/How-I-Managed-...

1. Lerc ◴[18 Apr 25 18:53 UTC] No.43730873[source]▶
I don't want to take away from the achievement because it really is awesome, and should be celebrated.

...but...

It seems like a fundamental design issue to make a QR code game that isn't designed for the platform where QR codes are most used.

replies(2): >>43730892 #>>43731372 #
2. kuberwastaken ◴[18 Apr 25 18:55 UTC] No.43730892[source]▶
Totally understandable, I can make a snake game inside it fully compatible with mobile but mobile controls just take up a lot of space due to the sheer nature of them haha.

But the compression algorithm is up, feel free to make what you think is awesome and compatible, I'd love to see if you find out hacky solutions to make that work too :P

replies(1): >>43731226 #
3. Lerc ◴[18 Apr 25 19:36 UTC] No.43731226[source]▶
I might just do something like that. Although I inevitably get caught up in designing some minor tech part.

Last time I attempted something like that I made stack machine texture maker, then embedded it inside a version of TTT that minifies+gzips to under 1500bytes. After a few years of pondering I think there are a few more enhancements to be had.

For reference, This URL has a bunch of textures in it.

https://fingswotidun.com/ttt/#W1s2NCw2NCwxMzExOV0sWzY0LDY0LD...

4. kuberwastaken ◴[18 Apr 25 19:58 UTC] No.43731372[source]▶
Hey just wanted to update, I Managed to add kind of some mobile touch support here thanks to an awesome PR to further reduce the size, so if you get a chromium based browser, you can put in the URI to play on mobile too!