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AI engineer Divyansh Agrawal built 'Qwenputer,' a modified version of Qwen 3.5 4B that has a 32-bit RISC-V CPU compiled directly into 11 additional transformer layers placed ahead of the model's own weights. The CPU uses the model's Gated DeltaNet state as RAM and can execute C and MicroPython code and arithmetic operations without calling any external tools, and has been shown running the game Doom, albeit slowly.
A hardware enthusiast who goes by Throaty Mumbo has built an experimental system called GCVHS that lets VHS tapes power playable versions of Doom and Super Mario Bros. The project draws inspiration from Worlds of Wonder's 1987 Action Max, a VHS-and-light-gun console, though the games aren't run directly off tape in the simplistic way that implies.
A writer describes running Quake's original CPU-based software renderer at 800x600 locked to 60fps on a Dell OptiPlex 380, far beyond resolutions possible in the 1990s. The piece contrasts this approach with 3D-card-accelerated versions such as GLQuake and 3dfx modes for Blood and Tomb Raider, noting software rendering draws every pixel via the CPU with no graphics card involved.
Richard "Levelord" Gray, a prominent first-person shooter level designer, died Monday at age 68, according to reports shared by Apogee Entertainment. Former colleague Joe Siegler said Gray had intermittently battled cancer. Gray's career spanned Blood, Duke Nukem 3D, SiN, Quake, Half-Life: Opposing Force and Counter-Strike: Condition Zero.
Independent researcher Radium Wang has built software that runs Doom on Hasselblad's $8,000 X2D camera, publishing the work on GitHub as part of a broader project exploring the camera's firmware. The repository, called Hasselblad-X-System-CIM-Firmware-Research-Feature-Extensions, contains source code, offline tools and research findings rather than a ready-to-install upgrade for the camera.
Developer Jason Kopp (ArcadeJason) has built a Doom demo for the 1982 Vectrex vector-graphics console, giving the shooter a Tron-like line-drawn look derived from the console's electron-beam display. The game runs via Kopp's Ultimate Vectrex Multicart 2 cartridge, which acts as a plug-in PC handling processing while the Vectrex's CRT renders the image and the cartridge outputs audio separately; the project also uses an SDK built by Daniel Ferrer Guerrero.
A tech enthusiast known as Throaty Mumbo replaced an outdated VHS gaming console with a setup using a DE1-SoC FPGA board and a Raspberry Pi RP2350 MCU. His project features a VHS-based FMV system that plays modified versions of Doom and Super Mario Bros., with overlay graphics and interactive streams. The system tracks player input and displays video overlays, creating a nostalgic yet modern gaming experience.
Lukas Vogel, creator of DoomQL, has built SQLDoom, a project that runs Doom's game logic inside the CedarDB database using 5,900 lines of SQL code. A Python frontend only handles graphics, sound and input, while all game calculations and state updates happen through SQL statements against database tables converted from Doom's original WAD files.
Newly unredacted documents in the New York Times' copyright lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI show internal Microsoft materials acknowledging that AI products were creating 'doom loops' that undermine the economic foundations of the content creators supplying their training data. One document states the company's AI content strategy threatens the performance of its models and the broader web by damaging the very suppliers it depends on.
A developer has built SQLDoom, a version of the original 1993 Doom whose game logic and renderer run inside a SQL database, producing full 320x200 frame buffers at up to 60Hz while the game loop runs at Doom's native 35 FPS. Python is used only for timing, keyboard input and displaying the returned bitmap, and the project supports multiplayer deathmatch via public EU and US servers running the shareware episode.
Lukas Vogel built SQLDoom, a project that runs the classic shooter's game logic inside a CedarDB relational database, using about 1,300 lines of SQL across 89 common table expressions to generate 35 full-color 640x480 frames per second. A small Python client handles input, timing, and on-screen display, while the database manages game geometry and state. The project improves on Vogel's earlier DoomQL effort, which only produced grayscale ASCII raycasting graphics.
A tech newsletter roundup references Meta's AI assistant Muse alongside other topics including chatbots' effect on youth loneliness, a group focused on AI risk, and an alternative to college favored by tech elites. Specific details on Muse itself were not disclosed in the roundup.