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Betcha

doom guy movement speed

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Ok, so I lied. I do have another concern about implementing the new Doom tech which may or may not have been mentioned. In the original Doom the player seemed to run at around 30mph. That obviously worked very well in Doom/ Doom2, but can you imagine a near photorealistic Doom Guy making tracks that fast? Might it look odd given the detailed surroundings to have some character that obviously does not suffer from inertia? Personally I could live with cyborg legs in Doom3...but what about id or people here?

The simple solution is to slow the Doom character speed to more everyday levels...but would that work for the game? Personally I really liked being able to out pace the hell spawn and nearly outrun the rockets. If the Doom Guy is slower we may be stuck with a Serious Sam senario where the monster are always in you face, no matter how hard you backpeddle. Personally I found that aspect of SS trying as it gets repetitive having one of those square dudes forever picking his nose with your shotgun barrel.

Or you could slow the monsters still further in the game so they propagate at the speed of smell....but no, then you could see them coming like that steam roller scene in Austin Powers. Obviously some monsters classes will move faster than others, but it seems likely to me that the fastest variety will at least keep pace with Doom Guy. Maybe this is OK, but it will mean very different gameplay, and given that the Doom gameplay is so good, does it make sense to depart from it substantally? Having said all that, maybe it won't be a real problem? In Quake1/2/3 the character moves at a fair clip and id seemed to be able to pull that off gameplay wise (some will disagree). Thoughts?


"It's a test, designed to provoke an emotional response."

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It's a fact that the player will move to more human like speeds. Carmack already stated this in QuakeCon.

About the relation between your speed and the speed of monsters. It's all a matter of balance and AI. The hunter type of creatures should be able to outclass you in the physical challenge of running all the time. Frankly what's the point of having creatures like the Fiend of Quake 1 if you can just backpedal till it's death?

If this was a little repetitive in SS, is because the whole gameplay was repetitive.

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steam roller scene in Austin Powers


That scene was hilarious...

Ok well maybe I'd prefer not to have the guy move as fast as in Doom. It would possibly be cool if the player wouldn't just float around with legs wagging about just for the fuck of it, but would move in steps defined by the animation. It might be too jerky movement tho, I dunno.

This brings in mind another subject, is the game going to have those wacky weapon view models? It could be nice if the players view would be where the eyes are in the model, and the weapon you'd see would be the same as held by the actual player model. Also of course when looking down and stuff you could see your body too.

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Hey, it would be cool if the DooMguy could stumble about something like a chair or so...
Imagine...you're running backwards through a small corridor, only 4 shells left, a big enemy is approaching you...but you forgot that step behind you...you're falling and possibly loosing your gun...bla bla bla

hmm, maybe something like that is a little bit out of place in a game like doom...

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As a matter of fact, the doomguy runs faster than 30mph.

64 units = ~2 meters.

Player speed, running = ~570 units/second. (This comes from a test I made and might not be precise, you could get an exact value from the source code).

Meters per second = 570 / 64 * 2 = ~18.

18 meters per second = 65kph.

And this doesn't include straferunning. With straferunning, the doomguy runs at speeds around 90kph.

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Nope. Isn't it weird? :)

The doomguy is 56 units tall, so obviously 64 units must equal 2 meters approximately.

But the dimensions in DOOM are fucked up, yes. For example, a standard switch is 32x32 units, which equals 1 square meter.

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I just did some testing.

Apparently the doomguy's almost 64 pixel's tall, and he looks like a 1,8m to 1,9m tall person.

Oh, Fredrik beat me. :P

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But the dimensions in DOOM are fucked up, yes. For example, a standard switch is 32x32 units, which equals 1 square meter.

Hah, that's the famous Fischer-Price Switches cliché :)

Apparently Thief's the only game were the switches and buttons have real dimensions.

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Lemme say what I want to see in the field of player movements.

Walking/running: shouldnt running through a pool of toxic muck slow somebody down?

Jumping/ducking: I think even with a ton of weapons on your back you could still jump, and bending your knees isnt hard either.

Looking up and down: oooh looky, its a pretty design up there, do I walk backwards untill I can see it without moving my head or do I look up? Oooh is that a shiny quarter on the ground...you get the idea

Swiming: even Marines need to take a dip to cool off once and a while

Strafing: well duh, of course strafing is gonna be in DooM 3

Climbing: hmm...I have to go up there...A LADDER? What do I do now?

Grabbing onto things: I have to cross this pit...hmm...there are bars over it, I think I can grab them and climb across *holsters weapon*

Pain and punishment: ARG!!! I've been shot in the leg...*limps*

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Actually, the z and x/y directions have different scales in Doom. If you want to make a 32 units wide object square it should be 24 units high (or so it seems on screen at least). So a 180-185 cm doomguy => 64 units = 1.5 m

570 units per second => 13.4 m/s => ~30mph. With strafe(50) running this becomes ~42 mph. This is of course not realistic in any way and should be changed in the new game or it will only seem ridiculous in the photorealistic surroundings.

Edit: Uhm, the scale factor should of course be 20/24 not 24/32. This increases the doomguys run speed to ~33mph and ~47 mph with strafe50.

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They'll slow him down to realistic human speed, but they need to make it seem like you're a damn fast human nonetheless.

When playing Doom (in sp) the player speed actually seems quite realistic (especially compared to Wolf3d). I once ran as fast as I could, keeping Doom's player speed in mind, and I daresay that it seemed like I could run almost as fast as the Doomguy, but once you whatch him run in multiplayer games, he runs far too fast - as if he had wheels under his boots or something. Maybe its because of flawed diminsions (the Doomguy is surprisingly small compared to what you'd think judging from the ingame view)? I don't know, but if Id somehow makes it seem like the player is a fast runner, I wouldn't give a rat's arse about actually slowing him down to human movement speed.

I hope I made my point clear enough.

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Yes, everything in Doom is quite big compared to the doomguy (i.e 32x32 switches, 16 units high steps) This lessens the impression of superhuman speed.

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