From owner-freebsd-arch Tue Feb 27 10:40: 1 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from mail.rpi.edu (mail.rpi.edu [128.113.100.7]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F2D7737B739 for ; Tue, 27 Feb 2001 10:39:49 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from drosih@rpi.edu) Received: from [128.113.24.47] (gilead.acs.rpi.edu [128.113.24.47]) by mail.rpi.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id NAA47230; Tue, 27 Feb 2001 13:39:40 -0500 Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Sender: drosih@mail.rpi.edu Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <200102270317.UAA09690@usr05.primenet.com> References: <200102270317.UAA09690@usr05.primenet.com> Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2001 13:39:38 -0500 To: Terry Lambert , roam@orbitel.bg (Peter Pentchev) From: Garance A Drosihn Subject: Re: rand.c patch for review (was: Re: cvs commit: ports/astro/xglobe/files patch-random) Cc: ache@nagual.pp.ru (Andrey A. Chernov), n@nectar.com (Jacques A. Vidrine), arch@FreeBSD.ORG, kris@obsecurity.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG At 3:17 AM +0000 2/27/01, Terry Lambert wrote: >I know of at least two games which depend on the random number >generator producing repeatable results in order to have maps >that are actually fully navigable. I rather doubt their vendors >will carry around their own working generators so that their >code will run on FreeBSD, if it runs on Linux without such hacks. As an aside, I wonder if this explains some games I have played in the past, which had a habit of producing "random maps" which were simply unwinnable for me... Still, for this specific point, any game-vendor who NEEDS a repeatable random-number sequence SHOULD implement their own random number generator. It would be pretty trivial to do, after all, and if I'm selling a game I don't think I would ask a variety of operating systems to produce random numbers, and then trust that all of those operating systems will give me the exact same list... -- Garance Alistair Drosehn = gad@eclipse.acs.rpi.edu Senior Systems Programmer or gad@freebsd.org Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute or drosih@rpi.edu To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message