Measurement Units
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Bethesda developed the Morrowind game prior to the gaming industry started to settle on the 1 unit = 1 meter convention. The true length of a meter in game units is actually 69.99104. This research was contributed by community member, Uradamus. Information extracted from member's forum posts: Useful Measurement Values
Exterior
- Exterior cells are 8192 game units per side or 128 yards (this is specific to Morrowind, later games used 4096 game units per side or 64 yards).
- Exterior terrain meshes are made with 32 edges per side, so each triangulated quad in a flattened terrain is 256 game units per side or 4 yards.
- Terrain elevation changes at a rate of 8 game units per increment in heightmap value or 1/8th of a yard or 4.5 inches.
Character
- Base adult human height is 128 game units or 2 yards or 6 feet.
Tiles
- Tiles are 256 GU per side, or 4 yards.
- Single tile stairs have a 128 GU change in elevation, or 2 yards, so it would typically take 2 tiles to transition from one floor to the next.
- A single stair tile has 8 stairs that are each 16 GU high and 32 GU deep, or 9 and 16 inches respectively.
Ceiling
- Ceiling height is typically 236 GU, or 11 feet 3/4 inches, potentially the 20 GU discrepancy is there to allow a gap between floors. So each floor should be 4 yards apart from each other.
Windows
- Windows are all over the place on size and placement, no effort seemed to go into standardizing the various windows types in relation to one another, so you might as well do the same and just go with what looks best. Window sills checked have been roughly in the range of about 50-75 GU for the height of their top face.
Steep stairs
- 256 GU overall elevation change from floor to floor.
- They still have 16 stairs like the standard ones.
- The individual stairs are each 16 GU deep and 16 GU tall.
- Ceiling is 492 GU above the bottom floor (20 shy of 512 GU or 8 yards).
Combinations of steep stairs with tall ceilings
- They usually have the origin level with the upper floor on these. So the stairs head down from the base level.
- When you combine the 256 GU elevation change for the stairs plus the 364 GU to the ceiling, you get an overall tile height of 620 GU (20 shy of 640 or 10 yards).