{"slug": "behind-their-simplistic-behavior-is-a-fairly-elegant-system", "title": "“Behind their simplistic behavior is a fairly elegant system.”", "summary": "A 17-minute video by YouTuber decino explains the movement and attack algorithms of Doom's monsters using annotated source code from the officially released and open-sourced Doom engine, demonstrating the game's underlying AI systems. The video is highlighted as an exemplary case of 'show, don't tell' in technical explanation.", "body_md": "For all these times we [talked about Super Mario](https://unsung.aresluna.org/tags/super-mario-bros/), we never covered another important game, Doom.\n\n[Here’s a 17-minute video from decino](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3O9P9x1eCE) explaining how the Doom monsters move and attack the player (the “AI” in the old sense of the word):\n\nWhat’s really fun about this video is how it uses annotated source code (in contrast to Super Mario, the Doom source code was officially released and [open sourced](https://github.com/id-software/doom)), and particularly how it tasks the engine with explaining itself, setting sometimes elaborate stages just to show a principle or an algorithm – an absolutely perfect example of “show, don’t tell.”\n\ndecino has tons more of [these kinds of videos](https://www.youtube.com/@decino/videos) (click on Popular!), distinguishable by their yellow covers, if you want to pick another aspect of Doom that interests you.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/behind-their-simplistic-behavior-is-a-fairly-elegant-system", "canonical_source": "https://unsung.aresluna.org/behind-their-simplistic-behavior-is-a-fairly-elegant-system", "published_at": "2026-08-17 15:23:57+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-17 15:43:04.453959+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence"], "entities": ["decino", "Doom", "id Software"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/behind-their-simplistic-behavior-is-a-fairly-elegant-system", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/behind-their-simplistic-behavior-is-a-fairly-elegant-system.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/behind-their-simplistic-behavior-is-a-fairly-elegant-system.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/behind-their-simplistic-behavior-is-a-fairly-elegant-system.jsonld"}}