My (limited) understanding of how software works is that there is no real RNG in computing, rather it is a long list of numbers that are followed.
Any computer programmers that can comment from a point of knowledge please?
There isn't a list, but there are 2 ways to generate random numbers for a computer.
Pseudo random, this is a mathematical formula that generates random numbers. this is the most common way to generate numbers.
The main issue with the random number generation is not that it's not nicely random but that if you know where in the sequance it is, you can predict the next outcome. so this works fine for non-critical random number generation for example random loot in a game, but not for critical applications for example password generation, or random key generations because once you know the 1 key, you can guess the other generated keys.
@Regina8 this is an old formula, it works, you better take of your tin foil hat. nobody is gonna mess with it.
It's very tiring for yourself if you think there is an enemy behind every tree in a forest.
To think they would mess with random number generation just to screw you over is tin foil hat material. a programmer has better things to do that to mess with that, in general they are lazy and prefer to reuse code. building a new RNG from scratch will never be done unless there is an insane good reason to do it. (see the second way to generate random numbers)
The second way to generate a random key is, an example I have seen is a camera placed at a wall of lava lamps.
You cannot predict the behavior of eacj lamp at each moment in time so the camera will always generate a unique unpredicable picture. this picture is then used to feed the random number generator of a starting value thats different each time.
Another way they create random numbers is listening to background noise. this is also unique and there are other tricks.
This way the numbers become truely random. this is used in very critical applications where figuring out the number has great implications, think about secure bank keys to dealm with money transfers.
So RNG is always a mathematical formula, it's not a booklet with numbers printen in it that it follows to the teeth.
They do need a starting point, a start input.(for example current date/time) this can be generated in several ways. and the input is for crypthography the weak spot. but for games it doesnt matter.
It has no implications if I could predict the outcome of each RNG.