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srand(GetTickCount())?

General and Gameplay Programming Programming

Started by Mashew January 04, 2008 12:29 PM

2 comments, last by Mashew 16 years, 3 months ago

Mashew

122

Author

January 04, 2008 12:29 PM

I keep seeing srand(GetTickCount()); in example code and I can't find what it is used for. I know it is for random numbers but, what does it do for the program? It really makes no sense. (I'm not using a book.)

jpetrie

13,220

January 04, 2008 12:40 PM

Good question.

VHL

190

January 04, 2008 12:41 PM

srand seeds the random number generator. Otherwise, if you don't seed the random number generator, you end up with same sequence of "random" numbers, every run.

You'll want to seed (srand) random number generator with a "random" number, such as with result of timeGetTime(), that returns elapsed time in milliseconds since system boot.