Need for predictable random generator

Question

I\'m a web-game developer and I got a problem with random numbers. Let\'s say that a player has 20% chance to get a critical hit with his sword. That means, 1 out of 5 hits

Answer 1

It's not really clear what you want. It is possible to create a function such that the first 5 times you call it, it returns the numberes 1-5 in a random order.

But that's not really random. The player will know that he's going to get exactly one 5 in the next 5 attacks. It might be what you want though, and in that case, you simply have to code it yourself. (create an array containing the numbers and then shuffle them)

Alternatively, you could keep using your current approach, and assume that your current results are due to a bad random generator. Note that nothing may be wrong with your current numbers. Random values are random. sometimes you get 2, 3 or 8 of the same value in a row. Because they're random. A good random generator just guarantees that on average, all the numbers will be returned equally often.

Of course if you've been using a bad random generator, that might have skewed your results, and if so, simply switching to a better random generator should fix the problem. (Check out the Boost.Random library for better generators)

Alternatively, you could remember the last N values returned by your random function, and weigh the result by those. (a simple example would be, "for each occurrence of the new result, there's a 50% chance we should discard the value and get a new one"

If I had to guess, I'd say sticking with "actual" randomness is your best bet. Make sure you use a good random generator, and then keep going the way you're doing it now.