Developer makes id Software open source games playable on iOS and tvOS

A software developer has managed to get some old shooters from id Software to run on Apple’s operating systems iOS and tvOS. These include the classics Doom II and Final Doom, several titles from the Quake franchise and Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

Games like Doom and Wolfenstein 3D were available in Apple’s App Store between 2009 and 2017. That changed when Apple dropped support for 32-bit applications in iOS 10.3. id Software’s iOS games hadn’t been updated since 2014 and were eventually removed from the App Store.

Tom Kidd, a developer of mobile apps, noted at the time that both Wolfenstein 3D and Doom were available as open source software on id Software’s GitHub page, complete with the iOS versions of the engines. Kidd managed to update the games and get them working with the latest iOS versions. On his blog, the developer goes into detail about the challenges he faced during porting, such as the higher screen resolutions that had become common.

After the iOS versions, Kidd also made the games suitable for the tvOS of the Apple TV. After that, according to Ars-Technica, he spent a year working on similar ports of the other games from id Software’s open source library: Doom II and Final Doom, Quake, Quake II, Quake III: Arena, and Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Last month, Kidd also managed to transfer Doom 3 to iOS and tvOS.

The modified versions of Kidd are obviously not in Apple’s App Store, but can be downloaded via GitHub. Users still have to compile the projects themselves to an iOS or tvOS executable, and then get them on their iPhone, iPad or Apple TV. This can be done, for example, via a Mac with a copy of Xcode and an Apple developer account.

Photos: Schnapple.com