I'm working on Pong in C# w/ XNA.
I want to use a random number (within a range) to determine things such as whether or not the ball rebounds straight, or at an angle, and how fast the ball moves when it hits a paddle.
I want to know how to implement it.
Use the Random class. For example:
Random r = new Random();
int nextValue = r.Next(0, 100); // Returns a random number from 0-99
Unless you need cryptographically secure numbers, Random
should be fine for you... but there are two gotchas to be aware of:
- You shouldn't create a new instance every time you need one. If you create an instance without specifying a seed, it will use the current time as the seed - which means if you create several instances in quick succession, many of them will produce the same sequence of numbers. Typically you create a long-lasting instance of
Random
and reuse it.
- It's not thread-safe. If you need to generate random numbers from multiple threads, you should think about having one instance per thread. Read this blog post for more information - but make sure you read the comments as well, as they have very useful information.
Random rnd = new Random();
rnd.Next(minValue, maxValue);
i.e.
rnd.Next(1,10);
Use the Random object's Next method that takes a min and max and returns a value in that range:
var random = new Random();
int randomNum = random.Next(min, max);
While you can use the Random
class like all the other are suggesting, the Random
class only uses psuedo-random number generation. The RandomNumberGenerator
, which can be found in the System.Security.Cryptography
namespace, creates actual random numbers.
How To Use:
RandomNumberGenerator rng = RandomNumberGenerator.Create();
byte[] rand = new byte[25]; //Set the length of this array to
// the number of random numbers you want
rng.GetBytes(rand);
More Info: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.security.cryptography.randomnumbergenerator(v=VS.80).aspx
Here is my random generator
private static Random rnd = new Random(Environment.TickCount);
private int RandomNum(int Lower, int Upper)
{
return rnd.Next(Lower, Upper);//MyRandomNumber;
}