DOOM
Yes, it runs DOOM. E1M1 — Knee-Deep in the Dead — renders on the badge’s e-paper panel at a couple of frames per second, in four levels of grey, with the level’s music picked out on the piezo buzzer.
It is a slideshow, and it is genuinely playable.
DOOM replaces the badge firmware
This is a separate firmware image, not an app inside the normal one. While DOOM is installed there is no BornPets, no mesh, no clock — flash the standard firmware again from the Flash page to get the badge back. Nothing is lost by switching; your pet and settings live in flash and survive.How to install it
Getting DOOM running takes two steps, because the game data is far too big to sit on the badge’s little USB drive. The firmware goes into the badge’s program memory over USB; the game data goes into the separate 2 MB QSPI flash chip over a serial connection.
- Flash the DOOM firmware on the Flash page, the same way as any other image, then power-cycle the badge.
- Upload a WAD with the loader below.
Flashing wipes the game data
Writing any firmware over USB reformats the QSPI region where the WAD lives, so you need to upload the WAD again after every reflash. Once it is there a normal boot never touches it, so it survives ordinary power-cycles indefinitely.Upload a WAD
sb or lrzsz.1 Choose a WAD
No WAD chosen yet.
2 Put the badge in upload mode
Reset the badge while holding Cancel. It does this on its own too, whenever no WAD has been uploaded yet. The screen says it is waiting for a transfer.
Pick the badge's serial port when the browser asks — on Linux it is
usually /dev/ttyACM0, on macOS a usbmodem
entry, on Windows a COM port.
3 Upload
Nearly two megabytes over a serial line takes a few minutes. Leave the tab in the foreground and do not unplug the badge.
Diagnostics
Controls
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| Joystick | Move, strafe and turn |
| Joystick press (Fire) | Shoot |
| Execute | Use / open doors |
| Cancel | Cycle weapon — and, held at boot, enter WAD upload mode |
| Execute + Cancel | Toggle the music |
If something goes wrong
The browser never shows a serial port. The badge only presents its serial console in WAD upload mode. Reset it while holding Cancel and try again.
“Timed out waiting for the badge to ask for data”. The badge is connected but not in upload mode, so nothing is asking for a transfer. Reset holding Cancel.
The upload fails part-way. Nothing is damaged — the badge simply has no usable WAD and drops back into upload mode. Reconnect and send it again.
DOOM boots but complains about missing game data. The firmware is installed and the WAD is not, which is exactly what you get after a fresh flash. Upload it above.
Firefox or Safari show no Connect button. Neither ships Web Serial. Use a Chromium-family browser, or send the blob from a terminal with a YMODEM tool:
sb --ymodem-1k e1m1.blob < /dev/ttyACM0 > /dev/ttyACM0
About the game data
Only one level fits: the blob offered above is about 1.8 MiB, roughly 92% of the
badge’s QSPI flash. It is built from the freely distributable shareware
doom1.wad, trimmed and compressed by the asset pipeline in the
cyberaegg-doom repository. DOOM and
its game data remain the property of id Software.
To build your own from a copy of doom1.wad you already have:
bash tools/build_assets.sh # doom1.wad -> build/e1m1.blob
Then pick that file in the loader instead of the prepared one.
Source
The port lives at rarenerd/cyberaegg-doom. It is a fork of next-hack/nRF52840Doom (of prBoom and GBADoom lineage), re-fitted to the badge’s e-paper display, buttons and power budget. The DOOM engine is licensed under the GPL.