How many times have you caught yourself vacuuming and thought “this would make an amazing map in Doom!” Well, if you have then you’re in luck because Doomba is a Christmas treat thought up by programmer and designer Rich Whitehouse. The program lets players track Roombas and then turn their routes into playable Doom maps from 1993.
For those of you who don’t know what a Roomba is, it’s a self-driving vacuum robot that doesn’t so much clean as it does transport small, household animals or just bang into walls. But freelance programmer and designer Rich Whitehouse noticed that he was able to track the routes of his Roomba and see that route as visual data. From there he used the data with his conversion tool, Noesis, where he was able to recreate the Roomba route into a map for the original Doom.
Whitehouse has given detailed instructions for how you lucky few with your own Roomba can recreate its cleaning routes and turn them into Doom maps of your own. The conversion program, Noesis, is free to use, as is everything that Whitehouse has created. When you look at the catalog of Whitehouse’s work understanding how he thought up Doomba makes a bit more sense. Back in 2014, he released a third-person RPG that follows the AVALANCHE group from Final Fantasy 7, and he’s also released a Triple Triad game based on the mini-game in Final Fantasy 8.
Roombas are still fairly pricey, ranging from just under $200 and some of the most recent models setting you back almost $500. Still, with a fairly long wait to go until Doom Eternal finally gets here, investing in a Roomba simply to turn your home into a Doom map for the 1993 classic is probably the best use of all your Christmas money. Otherwise, you can just use the Snap Map feature in 2016’s Doom. Whatever’s easiest, right?
