Generating a good random seed

Questions & Answers
1

I made a game where the map is a set of corridors generated randomly using a lot of Random.Ranges, I got no problems until I got to making the multiplayer, I needed a Seed generated by the Host server and then passed to the other player connected (it’s a Co-Op game, no more than 2 Players), I succesfully created a Script that resets the seed any time I press the button to reset the Map. However, my map is not random anymore, Unity generates only 3 or 4 random different sequencies and then starts repeating them each time I restart the Map;

Now my question, Can I write a Script which creates a totally random seed that generates always different sequencies of corridors? Or do I need to write my own random seed generator? If I need to, what’s the code to make it work?

2

One simple way to solve this is to use the computers time as a seed. That way it’s pretty much guaranteed to be different ever time.

Perhaps use:

Random.seed = (int)System.DateTime.Now.Ticks;

3

The answer by @Aswissrole still gave me non-unique seeds when generating many seeds in a loop. My solution was to use the states of the Unity Random class, to have a single “state” or “generator” for only generating seeds, while not affecting other generator states:

    private static Random.State seedGenerator;
    private static int seedGeneratorSeed = 1337;
    private static bool seedGeneratorInitialized = false;
    public static int GenerateSeed()
    {
        // remember old seed
        var temp = Random.state;

        // initialize generator state if needed
        if (!seedGeneratorInitialized)
        {
            Random.InitState(seedGeneratorSeed);
            seedGenerator = Random.state;
            seedGeneratorInitialized = true;
        }

        // set our generator state to the seed generator
        Random.state = seedGenerator;
        // generate our new seed
        var generatedSeed = Random.Range(int.MinValue, int.MaxValue);
        // remember the new generator state
        seedGenerator = Random.state;
        // set the original state back so that normal random generation can continue where it left off
        Random.state = temp;
        
        return generatedSeed;
    }

This pretty much guaranteed to generate only unique seeds. Of course, ignoring the infinitesimally small chance a clash is generated. To solve this I’d say keep track of a list and keep generating until a unique number is generated, but in my case that chance is small enough to not need such a list.