The Level Design Book
BookResources
  • The Level Design Book
  • ✨What is level design
  • Book 1, Process
    • πŸ—ΊοΈHow to make a level
    • 🧠Pre-production
      • Pacing
      • Research
      • Worldbuilding
      • Scope
    • πŸ”«Combat
      • Enemy design
      • Encounter
      • Cover
      • Map balance
    • πŸ› οΈLayout
      • Flow
        • Circulation
        • Verticality
      • Critical path
      • Parti
      • Typology
        • Gates
    • 🏠Blockout
      • Massing
        • Landscape
        • Composition
        • Prospect-refuge
      • Metrics
        • Modular kit design
        • Doom metrics
        • Quake metrics
      • Wayfinding
      • Playtesting
        • Player persona
    • πŸ“œScripting
      • (stub) Navigation
      • Doors
    • β˜€οΈLighting
      • Three point lighting
      • D6 lighting
      • Lighting for darkness
    • 🏑Environment Art
      • Shape and color psychology
      • Texturing
      • Storytelling
      • Optimization
    • 🌈Release
  • Book 2, Culture
    • 🦜Level design as culture
    • History of the level designer
    • Zero player level design
    • (unfinished pages)
      • History of architecture
      • Structural engineering primer
      • History of environment art
      • History of furniture
      • History of encounter design
  • Book 3, Studies
    • πŸ”How to study a level
    • Single player studies
      • Undead Burg (Dark Souls 1)
      • Assassins (Thief 1)
      • (STUB) The Cradle (Thief 3)
      • (STUB) Sapienza (Hitman)
      • (STUB) Silent Cartographer (Halo 1)
    • Multiplayer studies
      • Chill Out (Halo 1)
      • (STUB) de_dust2 (Counter-Strike)
    • Real world studies
      • Disneyland (California, USA)
      • (STUB) Las Vegas (Nevada, USA)
  • Book 4, Learning
    • πŸŽ’Notes for educators
    • Project plans
      • Classic Combat
      • (Unfinished WIP pages)
        • Modern Combat
        • Modern Stealth
        • Exercise: Direct Lighting
        • Exercise: Whiteboard 2D
        • Level Design Portfolio
        • Design Test: Adaptation
        • Exercise: Layout
        • Exercise: Verticality
  • Appendix
    • Tools
      • TrenchBroom
    • Assets & Resources
      • Recommended talks
      • Recommended books
      • Quake resources
        • How to package a Quake map/mod
      • File formats
        • FGD file format
        • MAP file format
        • MDL file format
    • Communities
    • About this book / authors
    • License / copyright
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On this page
  • World metrics
  • Weapon metrics
  • Monster metrics
  • Doom 1 monsters
  • Doom 2 monsters
  • Doom monster design analysis
  • Item Economy
  • Ammo pickups
  • Sources
Export as PDF
  1. Book 1, Process
  2. Blockout
  3. Metrics

Doom metrics

health and damage values, common sizes and dimensions for Doom maps

PreviousModular kit designNextQuake metrics

Last updated 1 year ago

Below are some core gameplay values and numbers that are useful for level design in Doom / Doom 2.

However, keep in mind this is an action game with aiming and dodging -- so the actual damage and damage per second (DPS) will depend heavily on enemy behavior, available cover, height changes, enemy composition, etc.

For more on what metrics are and why they're useful, see .

World metrics

Units and scale

Doom uses a grid with power-of-two numbers (e.g. 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256...) and textures are designed to work in increments of 8, 16, or 32.

Typical map structure
Width in units

Hallway (very narrow), crate, teleport pad

64

Hallway (narrow), big door, wall textures

128

Small room

256-512

Medium room

512-1024

Large room

1024-1536

Average map size from Doom 1, Episode 1

~4000

Maximum map size (recommended, minimal glitches)

32767 (+/- 16384)

Maximum map size (technical, buggy and unstable)

65535 (+/- 32768)

Weapon metrics

Doom randomly simulates damage values by rolling virtual dice with each hit. For the shotguns, there's an additional buckshot spread simulation where each pellet must connect with the hitbox for full damage.

The damage per second (DPS) is a rough estimate based on the fire rate multiplied by the average damage per shot.

Weapon
Type
Range
Fire rate / sec
Damage / shot
DPS

Fist

Melee

0-32

2 punches

2-20

22

Berserk Fist

Melee

0-32

2 punches

20-200

220

Chainsaw

Melee

0-33

9 revolutions

2-20

90

Pistol

Hitscan

0-512?

2.5 bullets

5-15

25

Shotgun

Near

0-192?

1 shot (7 pellets)

5-15 * 7 =

35-105

70

Super Shotgun

Close

0-128?

1 shot (20 pellets)

5-15 * 20 =

100-300

150

Chaingun

Hitscan

0-512?

9 bullets

5-15

90

Rocket Launcher

Mid / Long

128-512?

1 rocket (+ 128 range splash)

20-160 +

0-128

150

Plasma Gun

Mid

0-384?

12 cells

5-40

270

BFG 9000

Mid

0-384?

1 shot (+ 40 tracers, 1024 range)

100-800 +

49-87

~1200

Most maps begin with players killing low health enemies with the pistol and shotgun. Eventually the player relies more on the chaingun, super shotgun, and rocket launcher, while occasionally switching to the plasma gun for tougher enemies.

Monster metrics

Monster sight and hearing

If set to "ambush" mode, monsters have a 360 degree sight cone and ignore sounds.

Monster movement

Minimum hallway size is given as (monster width + 2) x (monster height + 2) but in practice, your hallways should usually be much wider since monsters might "step" in larger increments, and monsters block other monsters. Narrow off-angle hallways will force monsters into slower zig-zag movements, because remember, they can only turn and move in 45 degree increments.

To simplify building for monsters, we generally recommend:

  • Minimum hallway size: 128 wide x 128 tall, mostly built orthogonally at 90 degree angles to align with the grid with occasional 45 degree angles.

  • Stairway step size: 16 high x 64 deep (15 degree rise, 1:4 ratio) or 8 high x 32 deep.

Monster combat

Monsters will use melee attacks within 64 units of their target, though the Revenant will attempt to use a melee attack within 196 units even if the target is too far. If further than 64 units, then monsters with ranged attacks are more likely to use attack the closer they are to the player, up to a maximum distance of 2048 units. But the Arch-vile has a particularly dangerous ranged attack, so it will only attack within 896 units.

Doom 1 monsters

Monster
Health
Pain chance
Min. hallway size (w x h)
Min. step depth (24u high step)

Player

100

--

33 x 58

1

20

80%

42 x 58

33

30

68%

42 x 58

33

60

80%

42 x 58

33

100

100%

34 x 58

--

150

71%

62 x 58

51

400

50%

64 x 58

--

1000

17%

50 x 66

41

3000

13%

258 x 102

254?

4000 (+50% rocket resist)

5%

82 x 112

74?

Doom 2 monsters

Doom 2 includes all the Doom 1 monsters, and added more mid tier monsters designed to survive longer and interact with other monsters.

Monster
Health
Pain chance
Min. hallway size (w x h)
Min. step depth(24u high step)

70

68%

42 x 58

33

300

40%

42 x 58

33

400

50%

64 x 58

--

500

50%

130 x 66

124?

500

17%

50 x 66

41

600

31%

98 x 66

90?

700

3%

42 x 58

33

Doom monster design analysis

An influential Doomworld poster Linguica offers these helpful design thoughts on Doom monster design:

... Doom 2 monsters are great. They nearly all enhance the gameplay along one or more of three axes:

  • time awareness - what is happening that I need to immediately address?

  • immediate spatial awareness - what is in my close vicinity right now?

  • general spatial awareness - what is the architectural layout, like walls, buildings, etc, in my area?

Doom 1 enemies were designed by what we would consider today to be novice FPS players, for whom basic movement and avoidance were challenging enough, without monsters making it much more difficult. However, as a more advanced FPS player, what tactical problems do you end up having while fighting them? Beyond getting boxed into a dead end, there is practically nothing preventing you from kiting Doom monsters indefinitely with little challenge. The only problems you would run into are being progressively plinked by shotgunners (troopers aren't even worth mentioning) or splash damage from a Cyberdemon's rockets (I'm discounting the Spiderdemon as a "normal" enemy here, but it is basically a giant rapid fire shotgunner in practice anyway, so whatever).

Now let's look at the new Doom 2 monsters and what they bring to the table:

  • The Chaingunner is a "low-level" enemy that even a more advanced player needs to worry about, because especially en masse, they can really wreck you quickly. There is a time awareness factor because if you don't take care of them quickly, your health will be severely eroded. There is also an element of general spatial awareness in case you need to retreat behind cover.

  • The Mancubus's offset fireballs mean you can't just rely on mindless strafing around projectiles and actually need to pay attention to them, or else you can end up running into one. This implicates your immediate spatial awareness. (Did you end up learning the "Mancubus dance" of strafing left-right-center? Then congratulations, the game taught you a new behavior.)

  • The Arachnotron's rapid-fire plasma also implicates immediate spatial awareness because if you're doing any strafing back and forth, you have to watch out for "crossing the stream" and being hit in the process. Do you think it's a coincidence the Mancubus and Arachnotron are introduced in quick succession on the same level, which also includes no other enemies? I don't think so. Both enemies make you do more than the Doom 1 hallmark of simple strafing around a single fireball. The game is telling you, in case you haven't gotten the point yet, that this is not going to work anymore.

  • The Pain Elemental is a annoying enemy, yes, but it is there purely to implicate your time awareness - it can't even hurt you directly! Its danger to you is directly proportional to how long you let it stick around.

  • The Revenant's homing missiles, again, mean you can't just rely on mindless strafing around projectiles and actually need to pay attention to them, which involves your immediate spatial awareness, and you also need to keep mindful of available cover so you can get rid of the homing fireball, which involves general spatial awareness. You could even argue it involves your time awareness, since if you let a large number of homing fireballs accumulate, they could end up killing you instantly. (Or, perhaps, another enemy??)

  • The Archvile's fire attack strongly implicates your general spatial awareness and time awareness - you need to know where cover is, and you need to get there immediately. Furthermore, its secondary behavior of resurrecting dead enemies involves yet more time awareness - if you leave it alone too long, it's going to being back all those enemies you already went to the effort to kill.

  • The Hell Knight is the only new enemy that doesn't make the game tactically deeper along one of these axes. It's just a Baron of Hell without being quite so tedious to fight as a real Baron. This does give mappers a new option for when and how to use the Baron, though, which is a good thing.

Item Economy

Ammo pickups

Small
Large
Default ammo
Monster drop

Bullets

Zombieman (5, or 10 on Hard+)

Shells

Rockets

Cells

Sources

stretched vertically by 20% with non-square pixels for a 4:3 display. Today, this results in a lot of its art assets to appear vertically "squished". It also distorts any attempt at a coherent real world scale for Doom, which we can guess at: 16 horizontal Doom units = 10 vertical Doom units = 1 foot = 0.6 meters.

Maximum map size: to calculate distances, Doom uses 16-bit signed integers which have a maximum value of +/- 32767. However, if you actually built a map that stretched from -32767 to +32767 (across 65535 units!) and somehow tricked the engine into running it, then it would still break other distance calculations like a monster's line of sight, because a value of 65535 would past +32767 to become 0. For best results, keep all map geometry within 16384 units of the (0, 0, 0) origin.

The rocket launcher, plasma gun, and BFG are usually less effective at very long range because of the lag built into their projectiles' travel time. At long distances, a monster can move out of the way before getting hit. Doom's and randomized monster movement also means it can be tricky to lead shots. You can balance long range encounters toward the player's favor by placing monsters on pillars with no cover, limiting their ability to dodge the player's projectiles.

Monsters can look in cardinal (N, E, S, W) and ordinal (NE, SE, SW, NW) directions, essentially in 45 degree increments. They have a 180 degree sight cone based on their initial facing, and can hear combat sounds based on areas bounded by set to block sound.

Stairs are tricky for monsters. In general, steps with long depths and shallow rises are always more dependable. Step height must always be 24 units or less (or else the monster won't cross) and minimum step depth / maximum slope is proportional to the monster width. For example, for a step that is 24u high, a trooper requires a step that is 33u deep (35 degree rise, 2:3 ratio) while a demon is wider so it requires 51u deep (25 degrees, 1:2 ratio). If you want to see the bounding box calculations yourself, see the PCheckPosition() and PTryMove() functions in of the Doom source code.

When hit, monsters have a random chance to be stunned in a -- weapons with fast fire rates (chain gun, plasma gun) or multiple projectiles (shotgun, super shotgun) are particularly good at stunlocking monsters and interrupting their attacks.

For much more on monster behavior and debugging, see .

(trooper)

(shotgun guy)

(fireball demon)

(flying skull)

/ (fast pig)

(big flyer)

(hunky goat)

(boss)

(final boss)

(chaingunner)

(skeleton with missiles)

(big flyer, spawns Lost Souls)

(baby spiderdemon)

(weaker Baron of Hell)

(big flamethrower monster)

(flame zombie, resurrects monsters)

-- Linguica on

(10)

(50)

, (20)

(4)

(20)

(8), (8) (in )

(1)

(5)

(2)

(20)

(100)

(40), (40)

This page uses data from , under CC-BY-SA 4.0 International license.

by Scott Ampoker

🏠
Doom's graphics were designed for a 16:10 aspect ratio
overflow
autoaiming
linedefs
p_map.c
pain state
"Monster behavior" on The Doom Wiki
28 August 2014 in thread "Doom 1 or Doom 2?" on Doomworld
the Doom Wiki
Map unit - The Doom Wiki
Doom Metrics
Zombieman
Sergeant
Imp
Lost Soul
Demon
Spectre
Cacodemon
Baron of Hell
Spiderdemon
Cyberdemon
Heavy weapon dude
Revenant
Pain Elemental
Arachnotron
Hell Knight
Mancubus
Arch-vile
Clip
Box of bullets
Pistol
chaingun
4 shotgun shells
Box of shotgun shells
Shotgun
super shotgun
Doom II
Rocket
Box of rockets
Rocket launcher
Energy cell
Energy cell pack
Plasma rifle
BFG9000
Metrics
MAP07 "Dead Simple" from Doom 2, by American McGee and Sandy Petersen
venn diagram comparing "awareness" metrics for various Doom 2 monsters; by Linguica ()
via Doomworld