Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version nyu B notes v1.5 12/10/84; site acf4.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!acf4!chen
From: chen@acf4.UUCP (H. Chen, Nick Jacobs)
Newsgroups: net.lang.c
Subject: Re: Random Numbers
Message-ID: <800011@acf4.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 22-Jul-85 09:44:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: acf4.800011
Posted: Mon Jul 22 09:44:00 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 24-Jul-85 05:59:31 EDT
References: <643@hou2e.UUCP>
Organization: New York University
Lines: 16

Recently a friend and I needed some random numbers for a game (sigh) program.
Since we just wanted to generate a small range of values, we simply made an
array with the range of values in it. Since we knew that the user's "access"
to these psuedo-random values would be semi-random in itself; we simply creat-
ed a mini Turing machine algorithm (sort of) where the value returned would be 
dependent on the state of the algorithm from a prior call. (It was like a Turing
machine in that we moved up and down the array depending upon the previous state
of the algorithm.) 

We haven't had a chance to test this algorithm heavily, but the game (for the
PC) was like pong in which the ball's movement is already semi-random due to
the fact that most people cannot control the ball that well.

					Nicholas Jacobs
					chen@acf4 (just for the summer)
					...cmcl2!acf4!chen