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Coding Challenge 172: Horizontal Directional Drilling - YouTube
Channel: The Coding Train
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hello welcome to a coding challenge i am
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just thrilled to be here i have had a
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wonderful invitation from my friend
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grady over at practical engineering to
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work on a simulation of horizontal
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directional drilling now if you had
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asked me a year ago hey are you ever
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going to do a coding challenge about
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horizontal directional drilling would
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say like what's that and probably not
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that doesn't sound like a thing i would
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do but after some research after being
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taught about this from grady i am just
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fascinated and i think there is
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potential to create a fun playable 2d
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casual game where you are
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the horizontal directional driller so
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what is horizontal directional drilling
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well you don't need to listen to me
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explain to it i've linked to practical
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engineering's video on the topic it's
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very well researched gives you lots of
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context and backstory as well as many
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amazing demonstrations of doing it on
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big and small scales
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grady was also kind enough to send me
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this diagram which sort of shows a
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scenario of how it might play out with a
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whole lot of suggestions for how this
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could be turned into a game from
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practice mode hard mode and other ideas
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i'm going to try to take all of that
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and synthesize it down into the simplest
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case scenario diagram it here on the
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whiteboard and then code it up
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all right my artistic skills aside here
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is the scenario we're dealing with in an
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overly simplified manner especially
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given the fact that this is completely
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two-dimensional we need to run some pipe
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from point a
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to point b
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if there were no river we could just
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excavate drop the pipe in and back fill
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it in but this river is here and also
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maybe there's some other restrictions
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that we can't dig up all the land so
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could we sort of thread the needle so to
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speak how could we just thread a pipe in
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and curve it around and steer it that's
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what horizontal directional drilling
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does now it involves all sorts of real
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world considerations drilling fluid and
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materials i'm not going to concern
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myself with any of that i'm just going
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to look at the mechanic of how the
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controller steers the drill and create a
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simulation mini game out of that now
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again i have very little real world
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experience with this but a regular drill
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you know the drill bit might just look
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like this
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obviously with some ridges and edges and
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markings and stuff to make it you know
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cut into things for horizontal
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directional drilling also sometimes
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called directional boring the drill bit
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itself will usually have something askew
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at the end we can think of it as like oh
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it comes off and it kind of points down
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this is what gives it a bias
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so as it's going into the ground and
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drilling this bias will cause it to
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curve down
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so that the drill as it's inserted
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it could start curving down in a 3d
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world this bias might be something that
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we fully rotate but here in our 2d
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scenario i'm just going to think of it
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as either pointing down or pointing up
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so pointing down for negative one and we
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could flip it to pointing up
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if i flip it pointing up it's going to
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start to curve the other way
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the drill is always turning there's no
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way for it to go straight so the
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challenge is if i have a drill that's
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always turning either up or down left or
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right on or off plus one minus one how
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can i effectively steer it through a
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complex path there could be all sorts of
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other stuff in the way here there could
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be other lines we don't want to
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interrupt strange rock formations i
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don't know what's underneath the earth
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and what engineers really deal with but
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we've got to be able to get some kind of
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control over steering this i think we've
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got what we need though for me to be
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able to get started coding here's the
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base code i'm going to start with now if
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for some reason this is the first time
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you're watching the coding train hello
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welcome
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this is p5.js a javascript framework for
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creative coding i use it in almost all
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of my videos if you've never coded
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before i do happen to have a complete
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intro beginner series there will be
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things in this video that you don't
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understand if you haven't coded before
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but i'll try my best to walk you through
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it and then you can always refer back to
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some of my intro videos to fill in the
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gaps when i'm starting with the same
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scene here a canvas with some ground and
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a river and my drill is going to start
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somewhere around here on the left i'm
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going to use p5 vectors as the main data
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structure to keep track of where is the
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drill and what direction is it moving
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so first thing first a position variable
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for the drill
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and i've put a little dot in the canvas
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for where the drill is going to begin i
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have the drill position what else do i
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need well i need a variable to keep
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track of the drill direction like what
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direction is it currently drilling in as
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well as the bias is the bias of the
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drill bit pointing up or pointing down
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this is again a physical thing that's
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either flipped up or flipped down plus
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one or negative one
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dir for direction
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bias for bias and i'm going to
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initialize the bias as negative one
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and the direction as a vector
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pointing horizontally
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straight i mean i guess we could start
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maybe the drill should start pointing
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down i don't know what would be typical
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you have to go you can't go in the earth
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this way so yeah let's have it pointing
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down
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so the simplest thing i could do right
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now would be to write a function call it
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drill
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and then in that function i could add
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the direction to the position
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and if i were to then call drill here in
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draw which happens over and over again
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you can see the drill is moving down so
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obviously i need to add this idea of the
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bias and being able to steer it around
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but before i even do that i'd like to
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draw the full path i think that will
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really help us in terms of visualizing
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the process here
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i'm going to use an array and every time
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i move the position right before i move
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it let's make a copy of where it was
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that's essentially the previous position
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it's very important that i make a copy
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because these are objects if i just add
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the object directly without making a
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copy i'm adding a reference to it and
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then i just have many many many many
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references to the same point so when
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that point moves they all move then in
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draw i can use begin shape and end shape
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to connect all the previous points with
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a line
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loop through everything in the path
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and you can now see this black line
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trailing behind the red dot now instead
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of drawing that red dot i'd like to
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visualize the drill bit so we can see
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what's going on in which direction the
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bias is pointing so let me first just
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draw it as a line pointing down
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and now i want to rotate it a skew up or
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down
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up i don't know which way is what but to
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rotate this line i need to make use of
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transformation another topic that you
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may or may not be familiar with but
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luckily for you i have a whole set of
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videos about transformations in p5
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transformations come up any time you
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need to rotate something so i want to
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rotate by let's say pi divided by six
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it's like 30 degrees times the bias so
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positive or negative direction of course
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you can see now that's way in the wrong
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place this is where i need to translate
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to the point of origin to have the
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rotation work correctly
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and there you go so let's start it
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actually at entering in around 30
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degrees
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i could create a vector from an angle
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interesting hmm
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let's try flipping the bias oh let's add
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a button for that
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so what this bit of code does is it
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creates a button attaches a mouse
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pressed event to it and whenever the
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mouse is pressed that bias is multiplied
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by negative one making it positive or
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negative or vice versa but look at that
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the drill bit is not pointing in the
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direction that the drill is actually
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going it's always just flipping left or
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right from pointing down so we need to
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also incorporate the heading of the
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drill bit itself into where the bias is
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pointing
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i've made an error here where i
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originally drew the drill bit pointing
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down but all of the rotation and angles
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are relative to the horizontal axis so
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for all this to work nicely i should be
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drawing the drill bit pointing to the
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right
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i also made another error which is that
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the heading is the heading
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the bias is affecting whether i'm
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rotating to up or down based on that
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heading so i want to multiply the bias
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only by that offset which is pi divided
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by 6. there we go now we can see the
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drill bit
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toggling between pointing up down up
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down up down up now no matter what angle
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we start with for example 90 degrees
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it's still going to work
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i can even start from zero degrees
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and you can see i'm still able to toggle
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and visually everything's looking right
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i'm actually doing this live on twitch
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and the chat is asking a great question
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should we be using push and pop here and
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i don't need to because i'm not drawing
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anything else after drawing the drill
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bit but it would be really good to
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protect myself by using it this
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translate and rotate will affect
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anything that comes afterwards that
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drill function don't let that mislead
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you that's not drawing anything but one
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i might say logically it might make more
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sense to put drill at the beginning
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and then put a push and pop around here
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all right i kind of went about this in a
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strange order because i really was
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working on just visualizing all these
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elements the key here is actually taking
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the bias and having it affect the
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direction to which the drill turns
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remember it's always turning it's like a
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shark it's always got to turn it can't
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go straight that's not what a shark does
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the shark always keeps moving you get
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the idea though this begs the question
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how much does the drill actually turn
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now i'm sure again there are real world
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values for all of these things i'm going
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to make up a value
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i'm going to call it angle .01 a small
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incremental change and i'm going to say
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direction rotate by that angle times the
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bias oop
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my drill it's taking off to space i have
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defied all the laws of physics it's
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amazing let's have the bias pointing
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down to start and now here we go
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i'm gonna try to toggle that bias
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curve back
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i gotta get to the other side
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[Music]
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oh no oh no don't hit the water
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now you can see if i just keep toggling
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it over and over again i'm that's
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essentially how i'm getting to go in a
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straight line and can i make it to the
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other side
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come on keep going
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[Music]
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we did it horizontal directional
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drilling coding challenge complete so
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what's next here certainly i shouldn't
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be allowing the drill to sort of orbit
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in this strange way i need to add
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collision detection to see if it hits
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water maybe the scene should be
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procedurally generated in a different
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every time i could have an easy mode and
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a hard mode if you're actually doing
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this in real life you don't see
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everything underground and have a
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complete view of the entire world of
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what you're doing so i would encourage
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you to take this as a code base and see
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how you can expand it share it with me
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on the coding train website there's a
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form you can submit links to your
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versions of horizontal directional
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drilling but i also have made hopefully
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not right now but by the time you're
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watching this a fully playable version
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of this game
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that code will be on github i've made a
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list of all sorts of new features and
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ideas that could be added to this by the
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time you're watching this a lot of those
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will be implemented maybe there'll be
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some new ones so come check out play the
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demo enjoy it contribute to this make
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your own version share it with me and
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see you next time on the coding train
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[Music]
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