DOOMQL Peter Gostev built this using GPT-5.6 Sol. This is a lot of fun: DOOMQL started with a deliberately unreasonable question: what if SQLite were the game engine, not merely the place where a game stores data? The result is a small, original Doom-like game in which SQL owns movement, collision, enemies, combat, progression and every RGB pixel on screen. It's implemented as a Python terminal script - I tried it out like this: cd /tmp git clone https://github.com/petergpt/doomql cd doomq ✦ AI generated
After the initial visualization app worked, one more short prompt added a minimap to the live game-state display.
Simon Willison: add a minimap
The rendering engine's ray tracing is accomplished via one large recursive common table expression in SQL.
Simon Willison: Here's the huge SQL query that implements a full ray tracer in SQLite using a recursive CTE.
The finished game is a small, original Doom-like where all core mechanics and rendering are driven entirely by SQL.
Simon Willison: The result is a small, original Doom-like game in which SQL owns movement, collision, enemies, combat, progression and every RGB pixel on screen.
explains mechanism · 1
The author ran the game via uv and found it produces a SQLite database at .doomql/doomql.sqlite that Datasette can open and explore.
Simon Willison: Running the above script creates a /tmp/doomql/.doomql/doomql.sqlite SQLite database, which you can explore using Datasette like this
DOOMQL was built on the deliberately unreasonable premise that SQLite itself could be the game engine, not just where a game stores its data.
Peter Gostev: DOOMQL started with a deliberately unreasonable question: what if SQLite were the game engine, not merely the place where a game stores data?
gives example · 1
The author prompted Claude to build a Datasette App that displays the game's current screen state by querying the frame_pixels view and auto-refreshing.
Simon Willison: Build an app that displays the current state of the screen using the frame_pixels view with its x, y, r, g, b columns. have it refresh once a second.