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VileSlay

doom to real world heights

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is there any info on how the heights in doom relate to real world height? like how "tall" would a wall with a sector height of 128 be? I wanted to make a perimeter wall that was thirty feet tall and the perfectionist in me is curious.

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According to this page:
http://cres1.lancs.ac.uk/~esasb1/doom/metrics.txt
Doomguy is 56 game units high. Assume an average height in feet for Doomguy of 6 feet would come out to about 9.3 game units per foot.

Your 30 foot wall could be about 279 units hight.

Note that according to the site, since Doomguy runs much faster than physically possible in such a scale, it would scale closer to about 15 units per foot on an x\y axis.

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Jehar said:

Doomguy runs much faster than physically possible

He can also run backwards carrying 400 bullets, 100 shotgun shells, 100 rockets, 600 plasma cells, a chainsaw, pistol, shotgun, super shotgun, chaingun, rocketlauncher, plasma rifle, bfg while wearing armor. (it's really no wonder he can't jump in the original game).
The doomguy is more than physically fit.

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Heights aren't quite acurate in Doom, and his height checking is off to make believably realistic environments. A true desk should be about 24 units high... maybe 22... yet you can walk atop 24 units as though it were a step in your house. If the Viewing height of the player were raised say 10 units... then the game could have convincing sizes, but as it stands, the doomguy is only convinving if he's, say, 1.5 meters tall.

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That's a really interesting question. I usually just assume that 128 pixels is about 10 feet (near average height of an actual room). It makes sense, and what Jehar said seems to back it up. I'd say make the wall 288 just to get a relatively clean number for textures (if that's a big concern)

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TheHighestTree said:
128 pixels is about 10 feet (near average height of an actual room).

Midget DOOM! The marine would be about 4' 4" tall.

DOOM's probably pretty skewed in the different dimensions, but 9 pixels per foot would be a good measure if the marine is 56 units high.

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Actually, my strategy for building real-world stuff it to get basic dimensions first. Build literally, i.e. 100 inches=100 units. Then resize by however much it takes to get that feeling right and not way too small (around 1.5 i think). Then build everything else so it feels right with that real-world scale, screw dimensions.

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64 to 72. the average H for a bedroom kind of H.
12 is the average step.
i once made an insanely realistic wad of my apartment. the doom guy was the size of gary coleman.

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Scuba Steve said:

If the Viewing height of the player were raised say 10 units... then the game could have convincing sizes, but as it stands, the doomguy is only convinving if he's, say, 1.5 meters tall.


Yes, at the moment DoomGuy's eyes would appear to be in his chest with a default viewheight of 41. 51 would be right in the middle of the helmet visor, good guess.

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Since the marine doesn't look up or down, it's not so unreasonable that his perspective is lower than normal; when walking you generally have to pay more attention to the ground than to the ceiling.

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I'm using 32 units being one meter. Then Doom guy is 1,75 meters tall... just couple centimeters shorter than me. 24 units would be 75 centimeters and that height can be easily climbed without using arms.

Recently I noticed on a 96*96 unit door, the height looking like 112 units.

If 32 Z units is one meter, then 37,3 XY units is one meter. Doomguy is now 1,75 meters tall.

If 32 XY units is one meter, then 27,4 Z units is one meter. Doomguy is now 2,04 meters tall. Not a midget anymore...

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Jimi said:
I'm using 32 units being one meter.

Yeah, more of less. For non-metric system users 3' per 32 graphic pixels is just fine.

Recently I noticed on a 96*96 unit door, the height looking like 112 units.

Approximately. If you compare the screen pixel ratio of 320x200 with the screen size you'll notice the difference. My screen is more or less 11" by 8.25", which gave 29.090909 pixels per inch by 24.242424 pixels per inch... a ratio of 1.2.

You'll also see that the pixels are a bit tall if you get really close to a wall (e.g., with idspispopd.)

So a good way to determine sizes is 6' per 64 graphic pixels, x1.2 for heights. The marine will be 6.3 feet tall, and the tallest possible step 2.7' high.

If we consider DOOM is a game with a fixed perspective and no vertical jumping the player's viewpoint and maximum stepping height aren't unreasonable.

Using the Player height as a basis for the scale is a good idea because humanoid figures are the easiest to gauge for size in the "DOOM world." From there room dimensions are easier to see, especially when you note the distance to a humanoid's head from the ceiling.

VileSlay said:
like how "tall" would a wall with a sector height of 128 be?

It would be 14.4 feet. (128*1.2/64*6 = 14.4)

I wanted to make a perimeter wall that was thirty feet tall and the perfectionist in me is curious.

For 10' sections:

10' = 106.666 pixels wide
10' = 88.888 pixels high

So it would be almost 267; but not really recommended unless you use a texture that cuts off well at any height.

P.S. As shown in the link above Scott Ampoker speculated 16 graphic pixels per foot for width and depth, and 10 graphic pixels for the same height, but it seems too arbitrary and not consistent with the proportions of humanoid characters viewed ingame. He was probably confused by the lower than expected viewpoint height, and in my opinion should have trusted the simple actor sizes. Jacob Berendes explored structure proportions using Ampoker's metrics as a base.

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its hard to get the real world demensions from doom, its too messed up. But if you want to make it in actual size, try to alter the code to raise his eye level to what a real world hieght would be then you can make acurate demensions. It seems easier than trying to mathematiclly measure and scale everything when altering some code can help you with most of your problem.

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