[wwlapaki310]

Summary

Add a configuration that plays NXDoom on a Spresense with an ILI9340 display attached to the extension board, and document it.

Depends-On: apache/nuttx-apps/pull/3869

Please merge apache/nuttx-apps#3869 first. This configuration uses the option it adds (CONFIG_GAMES_NXDOOM_UARTKBD); without it the option is silently ignored and the game cannot be controlled.

Getting NXDoom to run on the Spresense took three steps:

1. Run on the board (this pull request). The display is used as a frame buffer through CONFIG_LCD_FRAMEBUFFER at 320x240 in landscape; up_fbinitialize() already calls board_lcd_initialize(), so no driver code is needed. The WAD file is kept in the on-board SPI flash (/mnt/spif) and sent over the console with rz.
2. Make it playable. The Spresense has no keyboard, so the keys are read from the serial console (CONFIG_GAMES_NXDOOM_UARTKBD, added to nuttx-apps by a separate pull request).
3. Keep it from stopping. With 1.5 MB of RAM the game stopped after about a minute, when the screen wipe asked for two more 64000 byte buffers. The wipe can now be disabled (CONFIG_GAMES_NXDOOM_NOWIPE, added by the memory improvements in games/NXDoom: memory improvements nuttx-apps#3860, a separate pull request by another author that is already merged).

Other boards that play NXDoom, for example linum-stm32h753bi, have a keyboard driver and enough RAM, so they did not need steps 2 and 3.

The configuration is spresense:lcd plus the NXDoom settings, with the screen wipe disabled, the render buffer in .bss, and rz enabled. The console UART receive buffer is raised from 256 bytes to 8 KB, because the default overruns while rz writes to the flash. The rz error limit, buffer sizes and connect time were raised together with it when the transfer failed; I did not test which of these changes are strictly needed.

Documentation is in two commits: the serial terminal keys option on the NXDoom page, and the procedure (getting a WAD, sending it, starting the game) on the Spresense page.

Related nuttx-apps pull requests: serial terminal keys (apache/nuttx-apps#3869, not merged yet) and the memory improvements with the screen wipe option (apache/nuttx-apps#3860, merged). Reviews of the configuration and the documentation are welcome while #3869 waits to be merged.

Impact

• Users: new configuration only. No existing configuration is changed.
• Build: none outside the new configuration.
• Hardware: Spresense only. No driver or board code changes.
• Documentation: the Spresense page gains an nxdoom section; the NXDoom page describes the new serial terminal keys option.
• Compatibility: none.
• Security: none.

Testing

Result: the game starts on a Spresense, is shown on the display and is played with keys sent over the serial console, at about 19 to 20 frames per second. Demo video: https://youtu.be/ikh1EEGco8Q

Host: Windows 11, build in a Docker container (Ubuntu 24.04), arm-none-eabi-gcc 13.2.1, on the current nuttx and nuttx-apps master (which includes apache/nuttx-apps#3860) with apache/nuttx-apps#3869 applied.
Board: Spresense main board with the extension board and an ILI9340 display, with the Sony loader v3.4.3 installed.

Built from scratch with ./tools/configure.sh spresense:nxdoom && make, flashed with flash_writer, and the one-level Squashware IWAD (672906 bytes) sent with rz -p /mnt/spif:

nsh> ls -l /mnt/spif
/mnt/spif:
 -rw-r--r--      672906 doom1.wad
nsh> nxdoom -iwad /mnt/spif/doom1.wad
                             NXDoom v0.0.0
...
hu_init: Setting up heads up display.
st_init: Init status bar.

The game is shown on the display. From keys sent over the console, a new game was started, and the player could move, turn, fire and use. The frame rate was about 19 to 20 frames per second while playing, measured with a temporary counter. The documentation was built with Sphinx and the new sections render.

The flash area that holds the WAD is 4 MB, so the shareware DOOM1.WAD (about 4.2 MB) does not fit in it; only the one-level Squashware IWAD was tried.

PR verification Self-Check

• This PR introduces only one functional change.
• I have updated all required description fields above.
• My PR adheres to Contributing Guidelines and Documentation (git commit title and message, coding standard, etc).
• My PR is still work in progress (not ready for review).
• My PR is ready for review and can be safely merged into a codebase.

[wwlapaki310]

Updated the dependencies: the screen wipe PR (#3870) is closed in favour of apache/nuttx-apps#3860. This needs #3860 and apache/nuttx-apps#3869 merged first.

[github-actions]

MemBrowse Memory Report · Explore what changed →

No memory changes detected for:

• arduino-mega2560
• esp32-devkitc
• hifive1-revb
• mirtoo
• qemu-armv8a
• qemu-intel64
• rx65n-rsk2mb
• s698pm-dkit
• stm32-nucleo-f103rb

---

_{Catch memory regressions in CI with MemBrowse. Free for open source.}

[linguini1]

Awesome! Was super cool to see you get this working at Community over Code!

[xiaoxiang781216]

@wwlapaki310 please run ./tools/refresh.sh --silent spresense/nxdoom to fix the style issue:

====================================================================================
Configuration/Tool: spresense/nxdoom,CONFIG_ARM_TOOLCHAIN_GNU_EABI
2026-10-18 15:27:15
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Cleaning...
  Configuring...
  Disabling CONFIG_ARM_TOOLCHAIN_GNU_EABI
  Enabling CONFIG_ARM_TOOLCHAIN_GNU_EABI
  Building NuttX...
  [1/1] Normalize spresense/nxdoom
52d51
< CONFIG_GAMES_NXDOOM_NOWIPE=y
56d54
< CONFIG_GAMES_NXDOOM_UARTKBD=y
Saving the new configuration file
HEAD detached at pull/20774/merge
Changes not staged for commit:
  (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
  (use "git restore <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
	modified:   boards/arm/cxd56xx/spresense/configs/nxdoom/defconfig

[wwlapaki310]

@xiaoxiang781216 Ran it: no diff with apache/nuttx-apps#3869 applied. Without it only CONFIG_GAMES_NXDOOM_UARTKBD is dropped, since that option comes with #3869. I added a Depends-On: line for the CI.

[wwlapaki310]

Thanks for the review! Updated as above.

[github-actions]

🔗 Cross-repo PR dependencies

The read-only Build run reported the following dependent PR(s) and fetched head SHA(s):

• games/NXDoom: Add an option to read the keys from a serial terminal. nuttx-apps#3869 @ 24a4c265f7

CI run: https://github.com/apache/nuttx/actions/runs/39269037885