Doom Gets Played Using a Piano

By Marcus Yam
published

This takes keyboard control to a whole new level.

The id Software classic Doom started to separate the men from the boys with who were incorporating the mouse and those still playing with just keyboard. Now, two decades later, there's yet another way to play Doom: the piano.

Set up in the Virgin Media Game Space is the Doom Piano, which is composed of a £30 old piano, and a "load of wiring."

The piano doesn't add any sort of musical element to the game (aside from making noise while playing), but rather it just maps keyboard controls to keys on the keyboard. It may not be the most efficient way to play the game, but we all have a soft spot in our hearts for one of the most influential shooters of all time.

Check out this Vine clip for a quick video.

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Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
Topics
Gaming
6 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Jim_L9
    Couldn't the sound from the piano be fed into an audio processor to control the game? It just seems easier to me than wiring up a piano.
    Reply
  • iam2thecrowe
    11554854 said:
    Couldn't the sound from the piano be fed into an audio processor to control the game? It just seems easier to me than wiring up a piano.
    maybe the piano didn't actually work. It would make for a rather dramatic composition though...
    Reply
  • rwinches
    Yeah, in the vine vid the piano plays and it's pretty annoying.
    Reply
  • brandonjclark
    WWWWHHHHHYYYYYYYYYY?
    Reply
  • cypeq
    Doom was terrible with mouse... I think author meant Quake, mysts of times long in the past can be confusing.
    Reply
  • christexan
    If you have any inexpensive digital keyboard with a "midi-out" port (most have them), and a (now) cheap midi interface for the computer, you could very simply write a midi-keystroke mapping program, simpler than audio analysis. middle c is "shoot", etc. Only restriction (at least with old midi standards, I'm behind the times though) is I believe a max of around 256 signals per second, but check me on that. No matter though, should be more than enough for controlling doom.
    Reply