[Kde-games-devel] KsirK and Jabber

[Matthew Woehlke]

Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> On Tuesday 16 September 2008, Matthew Woehlke wrote:
>> Hmm, good point. But what about using the seed distribution system
>> again?
> 
> assuming you can generate enough entropy between requests, that should 
> probably work.

Well, you'd *better* be able to generate enough entropy :-). Otherwise, 
a central server is going to have the same predictability problem, no?

(Maybe not, since a central server using a monolithic PRNG may be 
unpredictable in not knowing how many bits it has fed out since the last 
ones you saw, but conversely, individual players have much more time to 
generate additional entropy than a busy central server.)

> note that you can only have as many players as there are bits in the seed 
> before it starts to break down (on disconnect you could re-choose seed 
> contributors; or rotate between players). i doubt that will be an issue for 
> most games though =)

I think that would depend on how you feed the bits into the PRNG, i.e. 
you could probably use a bitstream-based PRNG that can accept any number 
of input bits. But as you say, how many games have that many players? ;-)

-- 
Matthew
There's no place like ~. -- Unknown