C++ Getting chamber to work for a Slot Machine program - c++

Question

The situation
Hey guys, so I'm working on a project right now. Basically I need to make a traditional slot machine, or fruit machine, or "one-armed bandit". It's a 3 x 1 x 3 character grid that changes whenever the user "pulls the lever"
I've done all of the code by myself from the top of my head as of right now, but I'm at an impasse and I wondered if you guys could possibly help.
I use the word "chamber", but think of that as being the word "Wheel" and only three of the values on the wheel are ever shown on the screen at any given time, so I called these "Blocks".
I'm trying to have a single chamber display output such as:
2
3
4
where I generated the random number of 3, and outputted 4 and 2 because they are adjacent on the chamber. This would be the start position of the chamber, which I can then manipulate.
Obviously, to get the random number converted and displayed on screen, I need to convert that integer to a char* which I'll need in the future for icons, which isn't great as I need to make a constant char.
I have two issues.
1) The first is, I call my spinChamer() method 3 times (because I have 3 chambers) but the random number generator in the method don't seem to make any difference to the output of the method, almost like there is a constant somewhere.
srand(time(NULL));
//generate start position for central block. use this to find upper and lower block.
int startpoint = rand() % 7 + 1;
2) The second is, to draw a string to a co-ordinate on the screen I have to convert to a char*. This involves converting my random int variable to a char* variable, which seems easy, however, when I try to add this converted value to the vector alongside it's upper and lower elements on the wheel, all 3 positions are the same value, when they shouldn't be, again, it seems like there is a constant somewhere that I'm missing.
for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++){
convert = std::to_string(startpoint + assigner);
temporarystore = (char*)convert.c_str();
blocks.push_back(temporarystore);
assigner++;
}
//spin around twice for visual effect.
for (int counter = 0; counter < 2; counter++){
Draw_String(drawY, drawX - 1, blocks.at(0));
Draw_String(drawY, drawX, blocks.at(1));
Draw_String(drawY, drawX + 1, blocks.at(2));
}
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Note:
Draw_String() just draws the string to the screen, I won't edit that method due to dependencies elsewhere.

Answer 1

First issue: do not call srand(time(NULL)); inside the function that generates random numbers. Move it outside the function! srand() must be called only once during your program execution.
Second issue: It's not clear what you are trying to accomplish and why.

Answer 2

If you can use C++11 in your program, there is a new bunch of functions related to randomness.
#include <random>
#include <iostream>
namespace
{
std::random_device rd;
std::mt19937 mt(rd()); // seed the random number generator once
}
int GetRandomNumber(const int lowBound, const int highBound)
{
std::uniform_int_distribution<int> dist(lowBound, highBound);
return dist(mt);
}
int main()
{
const auto diceResult = GetRandomNumber(1, 6);
std::cout << diceResult << std::endl;
return 0;
}