Mining Slowly Downwards

[Aelfred 15]

mining out my cave actually and there is a trend to getting deeper and deeper when im mine_forward. since im close to waterlevel i often get into the water and have to dig up then and lower the area, to stay above the water.

My question is, am i doing wrong something or can i do something to avoid this slowly gettin-deeper ?

[Jonneh 82]

I've noticed this in the past... from my programming experiences I'll take a stab and guess that the random change in height is generated something like this:

Random rng = new Random();

int heightChange = rng.nextInt(8)-4;

Which would generate a number between 0 and 7 inclusive, then subtract four. This would give random numbers in the range -4 to 3, which is biased towards the negative, causing the cave floor to slope down slightly. Of course this is all speculation and there may well be a very different, maybe intentional, reason for it...

Edited November 6, 2012 by Jonneh

[Keldun 335]

yeah mining is slightly random. Mining up and then carefully flattening the floor is the only way to make sure it stays completely flat.

[Aelfred 15]

ok thanks. well its not that worse that its not flat but the water-walk sound is bit strange in the cave heh

[Laiwyn 188]

Yeah, it is slightly annoying. Especially when you're trying to place lamps when there's that thin layer of water...

[Gorwst 129]

It's not just you.

Also, I've noticed that the mine_down and mine_up are not equal. I mined down a long hallway and then mined up again the same length in parallel and was over 20 slope different when I hit the top level of my mine.

[belthize 438]

Reason #312 why I wish we were be able to raise mine floors.

Edited November 6, 2012 by belthize

[meiyeeer 78]

I'd like to just be able to see the slope of mine floors, even. Perhaps another use for prospecting?

As for another guess at the reason from another programmer, perhaps it's a truncation instead of rounding issue with ints?

[Depends 220]

I've posted suggestions for this to be removed and I believe others have too, it's not noticable in small mines but in long tunnels it's very obvious especially when 2 parallel tunnels meet and one is 10-15 slope higher.

[Guest Docterchese]

In long tunnels it's very noticeable, particularly when it gets bad enough to drown carts so you cant drive them through that area x)

[Meridius 80]

Actually, the flatness of your mine floors, and consistency of the up/down slope depends a lot on your mining skill. At over 70 mining, my floors are usually flat, and newer villagers have irregular floors.

[Keldun 335]

Nice, that is a start to making this feature a good one. But it still is pretty horrible, because there is no good way to correct these mistakes beside loads of expensive shaker orbs or the help of a mag priest.

[Depends 220]

Here's one of the older threads:

http://forum.wurmonline.com/index.php?/topic/61535-why-do-mine-forward-actions-need-to-create-random-slopes/

Actually, the flatness of your mine floors, and consistency of the up/down slope depends a lot on your mining skill. At over 70 mining, my floors are usually flat, and newer villagers have irregular floors.

I don't find this to be the case at all.

Edited November 7, 2012 by Depends