Dampé’s gravedigging game in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time looks like an exercise in hoping for the right reward. It turns out the gravedigger has a tell: his eyes.
As highlighted by Time Extension, PoodleSkirt has demonstrated a way to predict when the heart piece can be obtained. The original explanation, posted on 31 October, describes watching Dampé blink and recording whether each eye-flutter contains three or four blinks.
Feed that sequence into a calculator and it can narrow down the game’s random-number state. Once it identifies the state, the script starts counting down to a window of roughly half a second. Pressing A in that window, PoodleSkirt says, produces the heart piece on the first attempt.
Random-number generation, usually shortened to RNG, is what makes outcomes appear unpredictable. In a game, that randomness can come from a sequence of numbers that changes as the program runs. If an observable action reveals enough about where the game is in that sequence, another outcome can become predictable too.
That’s the neat part here. The animation isn’t just something to stare at while waiting for a dig. It supplies information that helps the tool work out what the game will do next.
PoodleSkirt also says a program could detect the blinks automatically, removing the need to count them by eye. A later explanation describes ways to move the random-number counter along more quickly, including taking out the ocarina, which pauses Dampé’s blinks while Link’s continue.
There’s still timing involved: knowing the favourable window doesn’t press the button for you. And the demonstration concerns the original Ocarina of Time; it does not establish that the same approach works in the new remake.
For anyone curious about what an apparently random minigame is doing underneath, the original post includes a demonstration. Watch the gravedigger’s face, rather than just his shovel.
