Doomba Transforms Your Roomba's Cleaning Maps Into Hellish Doom Levels
We all have our demons, though for most of us, they're internal minions that torture our thoughts—that's to say, we don't have actual demons following us around. Or do we? Programmer and designer Rich Whitehouse has built a script for iRobot's Roomba vacuum cleaner that will turn your living space into a playable Doom map.
It's called Doomba, and it alters the vacuum's sensors so that it detect real-life demons in your home. Wait, that's not right. Or at least we hope it isn't. These are just computer generated maps based on our living rooms, kitchens, bedrooms, and everywhere else, right? Right!? Oh god, we hope so.
"It would've been nice to get this done in time for Doom's 25th anniversary, but as it came and went, I was still waiting to grab a Roomba 980 on eBay. I had the idea sometime back in November, as my wife and I were researching robot vacuums. I discovered that the newer Roombas are making use of a pretty respectable SLAM implementation, which led to wondering about what kind of data I could get out of it and what I could do with that data," Whitehouse explains
"I soon realized that there was a clear opportunity to serve the Dark Lord by conceiving a plethora of unholy algorithms in service to one of the finest works ever created in his name," Whitehouse added.
He also used the opportunity to "unleash a truly terrible pun to plague humankind," or at least those who own a Roomba. And of course what better time to release something like this than during the holy holiday season.
There are two ways to turn your living space into a hellish map. One is to buy your kid a set of Lego blocks, which will inevitably get left on the floor and stepped on in the middle of the night when raiding the fridge. The other is to download the latest version of Noesis, and then letting your robotic vacuum do the dirty deed.
"Go into optionalplugins\python, and copy the tool_roomba.py file in there over to plugins\python. Under the Tools menu in Noesis, you'll have a new 'Roomba Tracker' item. Activate it to bring up the Roomba Tracker interface," Whitehouse explains.
Further directions can be found by click on the link in the Via field below. What you unleash, though, is on you.
