Talk:Pneumatic Drill

Dumping some info

• Shortest dig: 126
• Furthest dig: 203
• Drill always lasts five seconds

If the dig's entire depth is in question - meaning not only the depth a worm can descend to -, then my shortest one is 122 and the furthest one is 207. Balee 00:37, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

It's been a while but I think I measured it as the deepest removed pixel. Wish I still had the replay, it was quite funny seeing the variation :) I found the drill seems to work by making a series of triangular pits, the precise location and timing of which varies as it goes down, and that's why the depth can vary. It probably fits a normal distribution though, if you were to graph it Run! 08:28, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, if you extract your gfx file in one of them (I dont remember which) you can find a masks.img.bmp, where the 4th mask, looking like a vase - according to CyberShadow - is the mask of the drill.

Seems to be normal distribution, I'll probably do another 50-digs simulation so that I'll have 100 holes.

What I cant figure out, is that the relation between gravity and the depth of the holes. If I dig while having LG on, its obviously affects it, but decreasing or increasing the gravity itself doesnt really seem to have that much of an effect on it. Both 5.3x gravity and 0.1x gravity virtually made similarly deep holes, as a normal gravity. Still, 0x gravity obviously didnt make any hole. It would seem that as long as theres gravity, the only thing changing the depth is whether or no LG is activated, since the drill then "jumps" higher, a feat we dont see even with 0.1x gravity. I'm going to work on it, though, since I only checked the depths virtually, and with only 20 digs. Balee 11:13, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Did 200 digs, here are the results:

• Shortest dig: 126
• Furthest dig: 219
• Average dig: 164.2

Ill add some user-friendly interpretation of this to the article. Balee 22:36, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

This may come in useful: [1]. Supposedly the drill has a 5/16 chance of drilling in each frame. Is the distance it drills each frame always the same (assuming the 5/16 chance has worked)? If so, then this could be the sole cause of variance. If the drill removes 2 pixels of land every frame where it successfully drills, then the distance drilled would be reasonably close to your average.--Melon 10:31, 30 March 2009 (UTC)