overview

Overview

Introduction:

These routines allow Great Cow BASIC to generate pseudo-random numbers.

The generator uses a 16 bit linear feedback shift register to produce pseudo-random numbers. The most significant 8 bits of the LFSR are used to provide an 8 bit random number.

When compiling a program, Great Cow BASIC will generate an initial seed for the generator. However, this seed will be the same every time the program runs, so the sequence of numbers produced by a given program will always be the same. To work around this, there is a Randomize subroutine. It can be provided with a new seed for the generator (which will cause the generator to move to a different point in the sequence). Alternatively, Randomize can be set to obtain a seed from some other source such as a timer every time it is run.

Relevant Constants:

These constants are used to control settings for the random number generation. To set them, place a line in the main program file that uses #define to assign a value to the particular constant.

Constant Name	Controls	Default Value
RANDOMIZE_SEED	Source of the random seed if Randomize is called without a parameter	Timer0

Example:

    #define RANDOMIZE_SEED Timer2