from Hacker News

The High Heel Problem

by lehi on 3/17/25, 8:43 PM with 41 comments

• by vunderba on 3/18/25, 2:39 AM

  Great article. It's such a seemingly trivial detail - modelers adding a piece of apparel (high heels) that ends up potentially having huge unintended consequences by physically altering the height of the player model when equipped.

  I remember playing an early 3D game that had a similar problem when they added support for alternative animal mounts. Most of the physics, structures, etc. were built with a standard horse model in mind, so the dragon mounts, etc. introduced all kinds of goofy looking clipping issues.

  Slightly related, but whenever I see high heels in video games I'm reminded of this comic by Double-XP:

  https://imgur.com/a/pUg6sCV

• by petermcneeley on 3/17/25, 9:48 PM

  This problem exists in the Dead Rising series as the main character can put almost any item on. There is hacks in the code specifying things down to the bone id to try to overcome this issue.

• by Timpy on 3/18/25, 12:33 PM

  I love these easy-to-illustrate examples where a request seems simple, but adds a lot of trouble for the person implementing it. "It's just adding a new skin for their footwear, how hard could that be?"

• by thrance on 3/18/25, 8:34 AM

  This just reminds me of the gross laziness of EA and its Sims franchise. The last installment costs well over $1000 to buy in full but they never bothered to implement height difference in a game that pretends to simulate daily life. And sure enough, putting on heels in the game just makes the character shorter to compensate.

  And they recently told their consumers to go fuck themselves, as they won't ever make a sequel and instead continue pumping lazy "content packs" for a buggy game that's obviously running on an outdated and very tired engine.

• by voidUpdate on 3/18/25, 9:08 AM

  Things like this are why I'm glad I'm not a Game Character Artist. I'd just give everyone trainers and be done with it haha

• by samcheng on 3/18/25, 1:50 AM

  The skeleton discussion reminded me of this real-life analysis of Vladimir Putin's high heels:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY6lHjZjYXE

• by nvahalik on 3/18/25, 1:47 PM

  Not only do heels modify someone's height, they also modify the range of motion for doing something like squatting down.

  For kids this isn't a problem, they can squat all the way down without issue. But as an adult, regaining that lost mobility is a process!

  But, try this: elevate your heels by an inch. Then try 2 inches. You'll find that you can more comfortably squat down the more your heels are elevated. It also impacts center of balance and the angles at which your back is at while squatting.

• by QuercusMax on 3/17/25, 9:39 PM

  None of the videos in the article are loading - hacker news hug of death?

• by Jun8 on 3/17/25, 9:00 PM

  Amazing! Of possible interest: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29429385

• by IvyMike on 3/18/25, 12:22 AM

  The golf animation is described as a problem, but I say it depicts what would actually happen.

• by JumpCrisscross on 3/18/25, 4:56 AM

  Wait, what modern material enabled stilettos? Acrylics? Vinyl? I want to say steel, but I din’t think that is right.

• by AStonesThrow on 3/18/25, 4:36 PM

  Just going to leave this here: Jill Bearup, YouTube's #1 authority on women's armor in melee combat: https://youtu.be/ZTmTnWHXWqs?si=E83Y8I63LuACfF59

  [Please don't ask me how I find these people]