Lottery Mod Bug in Ultimate Points System

[Refiner]

When I was working with phpBB 2.x conversions, I knew that the Lottery Mod had a particular bug in it. I see that this bug is also in the phpBB 3.x version.

The bug is that the lottery is not very random and that one person seems to be winning with particularly more regularity than all others who are playing the lottery each week.

I believe there is a fix for this somewhere, but I cant seem to locate it. I would appreciate either a link to the fix or the fix code that needs to be applied.

Ref

[Patrick]

Hey Refiner,

What lottery hack are you speaking in reference to? Is it http://www.phpbbhacks.com/download/9169?

Thanks,

Patrick

[Refiner]

Yes it is.


Here's the results I am referring to. The clanhas dozens of members and Lord Cahan (retired Monkeigh) is not the only one who enters every week. Settings: Minimum Jackpot is set to 2,500.00 bananas, cost is 50 bananas/ticket, 10 max tickets/player.

1 Lord Cahan 4,500.00 Bananas Wed Jul 27, 2011 5:17 pm
2 Lord Cahan 9,050.00 Bananas Wed Jul 20, 2011 5:16 pm
3 No winner this time Wed Jul 13, 2011 5:24 pm
4 DJ Phox 8,500.00 Bananas Wed Jul 06, 2011 5:31 pm
5 No winner this time Wed Jun 29, 2011 5:21 pm
6 Ttfm111 5,000.00 Bananas Wed Jun 22, 2011 5:17 pm
7 Orcus 5,550.00 Bananas Wed Jun 15, 2011 5:16 pm
8 Lord Cahan 4,550.00 Bananas Wed Jun 08, 2011 5:16 pm
9 Lord Cahan 5,000.00 Bananas Wed Jun 01, 2011 5:20 pm
10 ste 2k4 11,300.00 Bananas Wed May 25, 2011 5:20 pm
11 No winner this time Wed May 18, 2011 5:17 pm
12 Lord Cahan 5,000.00 Bananas Wed May 11, 2011 5:16 pm
13 Lord Cahan 5,550.00 Bananas Wed May 04, 2011 5:16 pm
14 Lord Cahan 6,000.00 Bananas Wed Apr 27, 2011 5:17 pm
15 DJ Phox 9,500.00 Bananas Wed Apr 20, 2011 5:21 pm

Points are only earned by forum members. Membership in the forum is related to application/membership in the Runescape Clan.

Edit: Just checked it over and the version on the forum is out of date. My next question would concern whether this bug was fixed by 1.1.0 or not.

[femu]

This is not a bug. It simply may sometimes happens. There is random selection of the users, who played. If there is only one or two, the chance to win might always pick up one of these and you see them more often, than others

So in fact the lottery uses the PHP internal random function.

[chiroz223]

The word random can never truly be achieved in coding as the strain is already ordered and goes along with that. It just happens that the same person has won the lottery twice -- its just chance or ordered. o.o

[Refiner]

You can tell that several are entering as the base is 2,500 bananas and the max one person can spend is 500 bananas.


if everyone who enters buys the max:
(Jackpot - 2,500) / 500 = number of entries


There is a tweak in the code that can turn the default where nearly no one will win to where one person wins all the time.
This needs to be fixed in the code, or at least made an admin function to change as each board desires.


Also, this week's draw had at least 2 entries that I personally know of: "no winner"