DOOMQL
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13th July 2026 - Link Blog
DOOMQL (via) 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 doomql uv run host/doomql.py
Here's the huge SQL query that implements a full ray tracer in SQLite using a recursive CTE.
Running the above script creates a /tmp/doomql/.doomql/doomql.sqlite SQLite database, which you can explore using Datasette like this:
uvx --prerelease=allow --with datasette-apps datasette \ /tmp/doomql/.doomql/doomql.sqlite \ -p 4444 --root --secret 1 --internal internal.db
The --with datasette-apps option installs the new Datasette Apps plugin, which supports creating custom HTML+JavaScript apps that can run SQL queries directly within the Datasette interface.
I created a new app, pasted the copy-paste prompt into Claude chat (Fable 5) and told it:
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.
This got me a working HTML+JavaScript app inside Datasette that could reflect the current state while I played the game in my terminal. Then I added:
add a minimap
And now my Datasette App looks like this:
Here's the HTML app code - paste that into your own Datasette instance (using the uvx --with datasette-apps recipe from above) to try it yourself.
Recent articles
The new GPT-5.6 family: Luna, Terra, Sol - 9th July 2026
sqlite-utils 4.0, now with database schema migrations - 7th July 2026
sqlite-utils 4.0rc2, mostly written by Claude Fable (for about $149.25) - 5th July 2026
This is a link post by Simon Willison, posted on 13th July 2026.
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