Random numbers to make simple bingo game

Question

Hi folks.
I am making a simple Bingo game in Director.
1. generate a random number up to 75; Number=random(75)
2. check if this number is on a list
3. if not the number is valid and code executed to display
the "bingo ball"
4. add the number to the list
and repeat.
Is this valid? Are there problems with this approach, ie. as
the numbers are called, the random number generated has more
likelihood of being on the list already so will speed take a hit?
OR is there another way to do this?
Thanks in advance

Answer 1

The issue with your approach will be evident when you've
removed a bunch of numbers already. What you will see is that the
number of times you will have to repeat step 2 will grow each time
you draw a bing ball as the number of balls drawn increases. How I
would approach it is in the reverse...
1. create your list of numbers from 1 to 75, procedurally at
the beginning:
bingoList = []
repeat witih j = 1 to 75
bingoList.add(j)
end repeat
-- that gives us a list containing the numbers from 1 to 75.
2. Now, all you have to do is generate a random number based
off the number of items in the list and then remove that item from
the list:
listCount = bingoList.count
bingoBallPosition = random(listCount)
-- get the bingo ball value at the position in the list:
bingoBall = bingoList[bingoBallPosition]
-- remove that ball number from the list
bingoList.deleteAt(bingoBallPosition)
You will have to do other things such as setting the
bingoList as a global or property variable depending on how you
code your project....
you may want to se this up in a moviescript if you're a
novice programmer so you can call the handlers from anywhere in
your project... so you'd probably want to create a newGame handler
that would set up your list (and other stuff)....
-- moviescript
global bingoList, bingoBall
on newGame
bingoList = []
repeat witih j = 1 to 75
bingoList.add(j)
end repeat
end newGame
on getBingoBall
listCount = bingoList.count
bingoBallPosition = random(listCount)
-- get the bingo ball value at the position in the list:
bingoBall = bingoList[bingoBallPosition]
-- remove that ball number from the list
bingoList.deleteAt(bingoBall)
-- do other stuff here such as display the bingo ball
end getBingoBall