Why Are My Random Numbers Not Random?

[pabush20]

Ok, here's the scene. I'm making a precedural house of cards. The location of each card is controled by point locations on a line, with the cards then instanced to the points to make the house. Works well enough.

Now what I want it to assign random textures to the cards. I dug through some of the old posts here, and found a method that SHOULD work.

In the Object level, I've created 9 geo objects, each with a basic card and a different color texture. In the point node for each line, where the card is instanced in, I've put an expression that picks a random card for each point on the line:

/obj/card`rint(rand($PT)*8)+1`

Is the expression I'm using. I have a total of nine textures to choose from. Now I know that since the random number seed is based on the point number, and since that each line starts at point 0, each line would generate the same pattern of cards, since then have the same point numbers. To counter that, I offset the points on each line by differing amounts. Even with that, the results i'm getting are FAR from random:

Out of the nine possible choices, Houdini picked FIVE, and picked them in patterns.

Here, I used this expression:

/obj/card`($PT%8+1)`

Same offset point numbers.

I get this lovely, patterned output.

What am I doing wrong?

Edit: nevermind, I'm stupid. I realized why its not working. Someone can delete this. I just shifted the points, not renumbered them. Back to the drawing board.