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Random numbers, different platforms

Started by kadaf Sep 18, 2006 at 9:14 AM 6 replies 1.2k views

Original Post

Sep 18, 2006 at 9:14 AM

Hello! Does anyone know of a simple random number generator (in C/C++), which have the following properties: - Always generating the same sequence of numbers, independent of the architecture it's running on. - Good randomness from a statistical point of view is not that important. It just has to generate numbers which are "kind of" random. As far as I know rand() is not guaranteed to work the same way on all platforms and architectures, not even the common ones (correct me if I'm wrong). I need it to generate levels for a cross-platform game, as you probably have guessed :) Thanks in advance! -Rasmus

Zakwayda

1,120

Zakwayda

Sep 18, 2006 at 9:17 AM

boost::random.

mossmoss

Sep 18, 2006 at 12:10 PM

If you don't want to include boost, and you don't care about statistical randomness, you can implement a linear congruential generator very easily.

namespace {   const uint32 kA = 1664525;   const uint32 kB = 1013904223;   uint32 gSeed;}void seedRand(uint32 seed) { gSeed = seed; }uint32 genRand() {  gSeed = kA * gSeed + kB;  return gSeed;}

Some values of kA and kB are better than others... Plenty of research out there. However, no LCG is going to be statistically good; you wouldn't want to use this for security reasons or gambling type stuff (where people are putting down $$$).

Benefits of LCG: trivial and fast. And it'll be cross-platform, and repeatable if everyone uses the same initial seed.

alvaro

1,980

alvaro

Sep 18, 2006 at 1:28 PM

If you use an LCG (which is reasonable), remember that the first few bits and the last few bits are the least random. So if you are ok with getting 16-bit random numbers, I would return (short int)(seed>>8), or something like that.

If you decide you need a better random generator, a Mersenne twister might be a good option.

Fruny

203

Fruny

Sep 18, 2006 at 1:37 PM

Quote:
Original post by alvaro
If you decide you need a better random generator, a Mersenne twister might be a good option.

Which happens to be one of the generators provided by boost::random. [wink]

nmi

Sep 18, 2006 at 1:51 PM

Another kind of RNG (which can also easily be implemented in hardware) is an LFSR:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_feedback_shift_register

kadaf

Author

kadaf

Sep 19, 2006 at 2:19 AM

Hey, thanks for all the responses! :)

I decided to implement a Mersenne twister from scratch as described in the article, and it works like a charm.

Maybe it would be smarter just to use the boost one, but I try to only add external library dependencies if it's absolutely necesary.

Thanks again!

-Rasmus

oliii

270

oliii

Sep 19, 2006 at 4:32 AM

cool!

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