====== Fast 8bit ranged random numbers ======
by kerm1t

Randomness may be effective, since a random element is chosen from a table that
is randomly generated. On the other hand, memory consumption may be quite huge.

The random generator [1...256] I have found on White Flame's page:

<code>
           lda seed
           beq doEor
           clc
           asl
           beq noEor    ;if the input was $80, skip the EOR
           bcc noEor
doEor      eor #$1d
noEor      sta seed
</code>

Now, in order to get random number in a range e.g. between 1 and 6 you can build a table of 256
bytes that is accessed by index with the previously generated random number  

<code>
           tax
           lda rnd,x


rnd        .byte $4,$1,$2,$2,$5,$5,$6,$1
           .byte $3,$1,$2,$4,$1,$2,$4,$4
           ...
           .byte $3,$4,$4,$6,$2,$5,$2,$3
</code>

Such a table of random numbers in TAsm-Format may be generated with a python script:

<code>
from random import Random

range_lo = 1
range_hi = 7  # ..6
bytes = 256
byte_per_line = 8


g = Random(42)  # initialize Wichmann Hill seed
r = ''
cnt = 0
for i in range(1,bytes,1):
    cnt = cnt + 1
    r = r + '$' + hex(g.randrange(range_lo,range_hi)).lstrip('0x') + ','
    if ((cnt % byte_per_line) == 0):
        print '         .byte ' + r.rstrip(',')
        r = ''
</code>

However, this method has a major drawback: You can't map a set of 256 numbers to an arbitrary range of numbers while keeping the same probability for each number. For example, when you want to get values from 0 to 156 then it is obvious that some numbers would appear twice in your table, while others appear just once. This has of course a huge impact on the randomness of your results. A better, although much slower way to get random numbers in a choosen interval is:
  - extend the above described mechanism to create 24-bit random numbers
  - multiply the random number with your max. number
  - use the highbyte of the result