C place n elements randomly throughout array map

Question

I am trying to make a colonization type game, where there are two teams which have soldiers randomly placed on a map, each soldier fires a missile somewhere on the map randomly.
I am having trouble placing the soldiers though. The issue is that instead of displaying the correct amount of soldiers in the right locations, they always end up filling a row instead. For example I would want teams(2,3,4,4) to return something like:

A 0 0 0
0 A B 0
B 0 0 0
0 0 0 B

But instead I am getting:

65 65 65 65
0 0 0 0
66 66 66 66
66 66 66 66

I am unsure if I can make this show up as A and B, so 65 and 66 is still ok, but there are too many. Here is some snippets of my code (I am printing the array a lot to see if it messes up somewhere)

Code to populate soldiers:

//declare the arrays
   InArray = calloc(row * col, sizeof(char));
    OutArray;

void teams(int teamAsoldiers, int teamBsoldiers, int mapRows, int mapCols){
  srand(time(0));
  const char teams[2] = {'A', 'B'};
  int maxTeamSoldiers = teamAsoldiers + teamBsoldiers;

  //Place team soldiers
  for(int j = 0; j < 2; j++){
    for(int i = 0; i < maxTeamSoldiers; i++){
      int location = ((rand() % (mapRows * mapCols)) );
      //read the elements from the file into the array
      ReadFromBinFile(sFileName,&OutArray,&nElements);
      //binary file stuff
      if(OutArray[location] == 0){ //if current is empty
        InArray[location] = teams[j];
       //write the array into the file
       WriteToBinFile(sFileName,InArray,mapSize);
       PrintArray(InArray,row,col);
        printf("-------------------\n");
      }else{
        i--;
      }
    }
  }
}

Code for reading/writing to binary file and printing the array:

//-----------------------------------------
// Write the content of an array into a bin file
//-----------------------------------------
int WriteToBinFile(char * sFileName, char * bArray, int nSize)
{
  FILE * pFile = NULL;
  if ((pFile = fopen(sFileName,"wb+"))==NULL)
  {
    printf("Error in creating the file:%s\n",sFileName);
    return -1;
  }
  else
  {
    
fwrite(bArray,sizeof(char),nSize,pFile);

    fclose(pFile);

    return 0;
  } 
}

//-----------------------------------------
// Read the content of a bin file into an array
//-----------------------------------------
int ReadFromBinFile(char * sFileName, char ** bArray, int * nSize)
{
  FILE * pFile = NULL;
  if ((pFile = fopen(sFileName,"rb+"))==NULL)
  {
    printf("Error in opening the file:%s\n",sFileName);
    return -1;
  }
  else
  {
    //calculate the size of the file
      
    //position the file pointer to the end of the file
    fseek(pFile,0,SEEK_END);
    //get the size of the file in bytes
    *nSize = ftell(pFile);

    //allocate the space for the array
    *bArray = (char *)malloc(*nSize*sizeof(char));
    fseek(pFile,0,SEEK_SET);

    //second solution reading all at once (fast)
    fread(*bArray,sizeof(char),*nSize,pFile);

    fclose(pFile);

    return 0;
  }
}


//-----------------------------------------
// print the content of an array
//-----------------------------------------
//this way it prints the array with proper visual of rows and colums
int PrintArray(char * bArray, int row, int col){
  for(int i=0;i<row;i++){
    for(int j=0;j<col;j++){
      printf("%d ",bArray[i]);
    }
    printf("\n");
  }     

  return 0;
}

Answer 1

I start admitting I don't know why you get the soldier placed in rows, but there are several issues I would solve before worrying about it.
The issues are all in the teams functions, in the loop where you place the soldiers (I'll omit the file I/O part, that is not relevant):

for(int j = 0; j < 2; j++){
  for(int i = 0; i < maxTeamSoldiers; i++){
    int location = ((rand() % (mapRows * mapCols)) );
    
    /* ... omissis... */

    if(OutArray[location] == 0){
      InArray[location] = teams[j];
      PrintArray(InArray,row,col);
      printf("-------------------\n");
    }else{
      i--;
    }
  }
}

The main problem is that in the inner loop, where you are supposed to place the soldiers for each team, you instead try to place maxTeamSoldiers soldiers. So, considering the outer loop, you do it twice placing in total maxTeamSoldiers*2 soldiers.

Your "trick" to decrease the loop counter whenever you find an occupied location is not a good idea, as it results in unmanteinable code. Use a while loop, instead.

The following snippet, though it might be optimized (I used your same approach), should work:

void teams(int teamAsoldiers, int teamBsoldiers, int mapRows, int mapCols){
  const char teams[2] = {'A', 'B'};
  int nrOfSoldiers[] = {teamAsoldiers, teamBsoldiers};

  if(teamAsoldiers+teamBsoldiers > mapRows * mapCols)
  {
    printf ("Too many soldiers!\n");
    return;
  }

  srand(time(0));

  //Place team soldiers
  for(int j = 0; j < 2; j++){
    int placed = 0;
    while(placed < nrOfSoldiers[j]){
      int location = ((rand() % (mapRows * mapCols)) );
        
      if(OutArray[location] == 0){ //if current is empty
        OutArray[location] = teams[j];
        placed++;
        PrintArray(OutArray,row,col);
        printf("------------\n");
      }
    }
  }
}

I used only OutArray and added a little check on the parameters to avoid your function looping forever.