Rand()

[GoodVibe]

Hello everybody,

 

I just have a quick question.

 

I am trying to develop a webpage for dice rolling (to use for myself when i play dnd)

 

Now, I know a lot of the random functions is computer languages are not truly random, and thus have some areas that the value will be the result more than others.

 

What would be a good way to try to make it as "random" as possible, or am I just over-thinking it?

[MMDE]

mt_rand is usually considered a better than rand

 

Or do you want to write on yourself? I think you are best off with mt_rand alone!

[GoodVibe]

I do not know enough math or PHP to try to write one myself

 

I did not know of the existence of mt_rand(), but when i was researching random number generators I did notice that the one it uses is one of the faster and more "accurate" methods out there.

 

Thank you for the help.

[xyph]

The only issue with rand() or mt_rand() is that they're not cryptographically secure. Their results tables are generated by a seed, usually involving the date/time in microseconds.

 

For a dice roller, it'll work extremely well. The distribution is as good as you'd need.

 

In any pseudo-random environment, results won't be perfectly even. What you want is over many, many iterations, these numbers are distributed well and no patterns show up for any specific results.