Manual/custom reseed manipulation?

[ATMLVE]

For animation purposes it would be useful to be able to manually manipulate the random seed used for effects. I found an old thread where someone else wanted this function for this exact purpose. A solution there suggests there are only 255 possible random seeds, but I don't believe this is the case anymore, I tested some things out trying to replicate an effect and it never matched as I passed over 255.

Is this achievable in any way these days? Can I use codelab, accessing some source files for some effects and modify their implementation of the random seed?

 

The old thread: 

 

[BoltBait]

What effects are you trying to run and for what purpose?

 

If you're trying to make a background, for example, why not simply make one on it's own background layer?  You wouldn't need to make it for each frame... just reuse it.

 

[ATMLVE]

One example is using dents. Dents is a very nice effect, the distortion can have a wide range of appearances from fire to smoke to electricity. What I'm exploring is the ability to make an animated sprite for a video game effect.

 

If you start with a circle and apply dents you can, using the sliders, make a pretty nice looking animated looking effect. But of course this isn't actually applying anything, and if you do apply something and try and reapply the "next stage" of the effect, the seed is different and there's no coherence.