To all who have ever had this problem - you are right - it does return the same sequence when shipped, but not in the editor. I’m not sure whether it’s a bug or a feature (my mathematics and IT knowledge is very poor), but here’s one example - the Black Jack game provided by Epic, when launched as an executable (but not in the editor), returns the same “random” sequence of cards all the time depending on your bet and number of decks.
If you don’t believe me, here’s a David Copperfield-style trick for you - Open BlackJack (it seems the version doesn’t matter here - I’ve tried 4.2, 4.5., 4.6), package the project, run the .exe, choose “Number of decks” 1 and bet $25.
I know what you have - 9 and 4 of Spades! Fascinating, isn’t it? Not really. But wait, it gets better - exit the game, choose 5 decks and bet $5. It’s broken, I’m telling you.
Here is your proof:
It can only mean three things:
- Epic knew about it and didn’t intend this project to be shipped.
- Epic knew about it and didn’t intend the cards to be random. (but then, why is there this bug with 2 of Clubs?)
- Epic didn’t know about it.
Anyway, I got a bit carried away here. I guess that the seed really is the same all the time, so if you want to always get some kind of random results, you need to include some other factors such as the system time, cursor position, etc. For my project where I needed to use a random integer every 300ms after the game begins, I used the following routine: generate a random int every tick, but start getting it only when the player clicks the start game button (this way coincidence is virtually eliminated, so we are getting a pseudorandom sequence that looks like a random one to the player).