Unreal developer manages to make Doom 1993 run inside Fortnite

This week, Unreal Engine developer Jackson Clayton shared a video that looked like Doom 1993 at first. The graphics aren’t great, but the UI, weapons, and enemies are all there. Then, out of nowhere, Doom Guy starts building platforms and stairs like he’s in Fortnite. That’s because he is.

This isn’t a new port of Doom 1993 running on some made piece of hardware like an electric toothbrush or a sex toy. It’s the classic FPS built to run inside Fortnite using Unreal Engine for Fortnite. Clayton’s message alongside the video explains, “But can #Fortnite run DOOM? Obviously, I can’t publish this, but it was a great way to learn more about Materials and PostProcessing in #UEFN.” While it’s not another device in the growing list of them that can run Doom 1993, it’s certainly one of the most unique ways to get it running.

Yes, Fortnite has been Doomed

The original post from Jackson Clayton shows just over a minute of Doom 1993 gameplay inside Fortnite. It honestly blew my mind because I truly thought I was just watching the original FPS and was shocked when I saw Fortnite’s building mechanics in action.

I first saw this engineering feat through Digital Trends in its report. As per that article, Clayton had actually already spoken to Kotaku on the matter. He told the site that at first, he exported E1M1 as a 3D model from Ultimate Doom Builder and ported it into UEFN.

Apparently, Doom 1993 looked too good in UEFN, so Clayton employed some “creative” techniques to pixellate it and get it running to make it look like the original game. Luckily, he’s released a few games on Steam that replicate the game’s look and feel, so he has plenty of experience in making games run that way.

This project shows that it’s entirely possible to get Doom 1993 to run inside Fortnite. However, you won’t be able to download and run Clayton’s version because he doesn’t have the IP rights. Instead, this was a fun exercise in learning UEFN.

Part of the reason this video is so great is that Clayton was using it to deliberately trick his friends. He told Kotaku, “I wanted to put together a video to trick my friends, so I ported the map and created the post-process materials, and they really liked it.” As I mentioned above, I was totally fooled, so Clayton achieved his goal as far as I’m concerned.

This isn’t even the first port of Doom 1993 in an unexpected place that I’ve seen this week, and I know it won’t be the last. One of my favorite software ports in the game was Wolfenstein: The New Order, and I’d love to see more in other games if anyone can pull the ports off.