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Elite on the BBC Micro and NES

Main loop: Main flight loop (Part 1 of 16)

[BBC Micro disc version, Flight]

Name: Main flight loop (Part 1 of 16) [Show more] Type: Subroutine Category: Main loop Summary: Seed the random number generator Deep dive: Program flow of the main game loop Generating random numbers
Context: See this subroutine in context in the source code Variations: See code variations for this subroutine in the different versions References: This subroutine is called as follows: * DEATH calls via M% * Main game loop (Part 2 of 6) calls via M%

The main flight loop covers most of the flight-specific aspects of Elite. This section covers the following: * Seed the random number generator
Other entry points: M% The entry point for the main flight loop
.M% LDA K% \ We want to seed the random number generator with a \ pretty random number, so fetch the contents of K%, \ which is the x_lo coordinate of the planet. This value \ will be fairly unpredictable, so it's a pretty good \ candidate STA RAND \ Store the seed in the first byte of the four-byte \ random number seed that's stored in RAND