04-09-2004, 07:22 PM
Almost everything in the game is driven by random numbers in some way. When you hit a monster with a Short Sword doing 2-7 damage, it gets a random number and turns that into a percentage to see if you hit, then if you do, it gets the next random number and scales that between 2 and 7 and that's how much damage you do. If you then try to hit the monster again it will get the next random number. If you do something else, like stand back and let the monster hit you instead, the monster will get that same next random number to work out whether it hits you. The random numbers follow one after another in a list, they are not truly random.
If you use the -seed command, you start this stream of random numbers in the same place each time. So, if you go and do the same thing first each time you will get the same "random" result, and, if you were careful enough, you could conceivably duplicate an entire game every time, down to the drops.
OK, before Jarulf jumps on me, that is hopelessly unlikely past the first couple of actions unless you have 1-frame reflexes :)
It is possible though to do things that pull random numbers out much more slowly and controlled, such as walking out of town and opening the first chest you see, before you even go near a monster. If you do that while using the -seed command, that chest is likely to drop exactly the same items every time.
There's no sensible reason to use the command in normal play. It was a debug code left in accidentally by Blizzard (it is of course very useful for debugging to have the game act the same every time).
If you use the -seed command, you start this stream of random numbers in the same place each time. So, if you go and do the same thing first each time you will get the same "random" result, and, if you were careful enough, you could conceivably duplicate an entire game every time, down to the drops.
OK, before Jarulf jumps on me, that is hopelessly unlikely past the first couple of actions unless you have 1-frame reflexes :)
It is possible though to do things that pull random numbers out much more slowly and controlled, such as walking out of town and opening the first chest you see, before you even go near a monster. If you do that while using the -seed command, that chest is likely to drop exactly the same items every time.
There's no sensible reason to use the command in normal play. It was a debug code left in accidentally by Blizzard (it is of course very useful for debugging to have the game act the same every time).
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