CL_Random
=========

Random values can be extremly valuable in game development, be it for
testing, random level generation, initial positions for monsters or
whatever. However srand()/rand() have several limitiations which make
them not well suited in general: 

 - bad distribution, the standard method of limiting the range via
   rand()%max_rand causes 'bad' random values

 - non portable, different OSs might implement rand() different, which
   would make it unusable in networking games where one relies on
   reproducable random number values

 - no direct support for float

 - only one seed is allowed, but under different circumstances it
   might be usefull to have numerous independed streams of random
   values

Thus I propose to add a CL_Random class to clanlib which servers the
following purpose:

 - generation of streams of 'good' random values

 - generation of float and integer numbers with a given range

 - generation of portable random numbers, the same seed should on all
   OSs produce the same sequence of random values

class CL_Random
{
public:
  /** Init the random generator with CL_System::get_time() */
  CL_Random();

  /** Init the random number generator with the given seed */
  CL_Random(cl_uint32 seed);

  /** Return the seed that was used to create this object */
  cl_uint32 get_seed();

  /** Set a new seed value */
  void reseed(cl_uint32 seed);


  /** Return a random value between between 0 and CL_Random::MAX_RAND */
  cl_uint32 rand();

  /** Return a random value in the range of [0, 1.0f] */
  cl_uint32 rand(int range);

  /** Return a random value in the range of [0, range] */
  cl_uint32 rand(int start, int stop);


  /** Return a random value in the range of [0, 1.0f] */
  float frand();

  /** Return a random value in the range of [0, range] */
  float frand(float range);

  /** Return a random value in the range of [start, stop] */
  float frand(float start, float stop);
};

Todo:
=====

 - support for gausian distribution and other kinds distributions

 - probally additional support for real random values (/dev/random on
   linux)

# EOF #