Talk:Racetrack (game)

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What is the best way to cross-link the articles called Racetrack and Race track? Should the articles be moved to Race track (facility) and Race track (paper and pencil game), with a disambiguation page and some redirects?--Niels Ø 09:48, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)

I think that Racetrack should redirect to Race track, and the game should be Racetrack (game). If you look at the "What links here" page for this page, you can see that almost all refer to the racing facility, not the graph game. If no one objects I'll take care of these moves in the next day or so. --Fastfission 18:41, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Martin Gardner?

From [1]:

The game was apparently first presented by Martin Gardner in his "Mathematical Games" column in Scientific American.

If anyone can confirm this, it should go in the article.--Niels Ø 22:19, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Nice find, but confirming this will be difficult, since the Scientific American archives in the web are only available from year 1993 onwards and your source says it was read from a book published in 1983. I just read the A quarter-century of recreational mathematics article but in vain. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 01:51, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

There is no doubt that Martin Gardner wrote an article about the game - but I certainly played it in the 1970's - so he was reporting something that was widely played throughout Europe at least. I'm the author of [2]. My efforts to track the game to it's ultimate inventor failed - but for absolute certainty, Gardner didn't invent it.

Around the time I was playing the game there was also a published space game based on a hexagonal grid that had planets with gravity. The movement rules were the same as the car racing game - except you can accellerate in 6 directions instead of 4 or 8. You had limited amounts of fuel and used one unit of fuel each time you accellerated. Gravity was done by red arrows printed onto the board. If your move starts on one of those arrows, you have to add it's direction to your previous vector. All six spaces around a planet had arrows pointing inwards to the planet - which permitted you to orbit stably without using fuel - or to use planets to 'slingshot' you around. You could refuel at any planet by making one complete stable orbit. The board was laminated and you drew on it with a grease pencil. As I recall, the objective was to orbit each one of the planets in the solar system at least once and return to Earth. That was also around in the mid 1970's.

Sadly, I don't recall the name of that game. SteveBaker 04:44, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

(I remembered and added a section about it - it was called "Triplanetary". My reference proves that was published in 1975 - ergo the idea of "vector-motion" games didn't come from Martin Gardner's 1983 Scientific American column.) SteveBaker (talk) 20:05, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

I translated this nice article into german (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racetrack) and enhanced it a little. Hopefully you are content :) --82.135.67.23 14:03, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Description of "speeding up"

The description of how to move, specifically how to move AFTER the first move, is written extremely poorly. I can't for the life of me understand it. Would someone please fix it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by RobertBorgersen (talk • contribs) 23:40, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, I wrote it (more or less), and I understand it... Perhaps YOU could help. Here's an example (it works in my screen font; I hope it works in yours too):

o  o  o  o  o  o  o  o  o  o  o  o  o

o  o  o  o  o  o  o  o  o  c  c  c  o

o  o  o  o  o  o  o  o  o  c  z  c  o

o  o  o  o  o  o  o  o  o  c  c  c  o

o  o  o  o  o  b  b  3  o  o  o  o  o

o  o  o  o  o  b  y  b  o  o  o  o  o

o  o  a  a  2  b  b  b  o  o  o  o  o

o  0  1  x  a  o  o  o  o  o  o  o  o

o  o  a  a  a  o  o  o  o  o  o  o  o

o  o  o  o  o  o  o  o  o  o  o  o  o

It shows ONE player's moves; the "o"s (and other letters/digits) are the intersections on the squared paper. She starts at point "0"; first move goes to "1" (one unit to the right). The principal point for the next move is the "x" one unit further to the right, but also has the choise of the eight neighbours (the points marked "a", as well as the points "1" and "2"). The player chooses max acceleration and also turns, going TWO units right and one up to "2". Thus, for the next move, the principal point is the "y" two units FURTHER right and one up, and the player has the choice of either this point or one of the eight neighbours, marked "b" or "3", and happens to choose the point marked "3", again achieving max acceleration. The next principal point is "z", and the eight neighbours are the "c"s.

Notice the vector equalities 0-to-1 = 1-to-x, 1-to-2 = 2-to-y, and 2-to-3 = 3-to-z. What this means is that e.g. the horizontal and vertical change in position from point 2 to point 3 is the same as that from point 3 to the next prinicpal point, z.

Does this make sense? How can we explain that better?--Niels Ø (noe) (talk) 13:31, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't get it either, and I think I've played the game! You've not described the rules for braking and accelerating at all, only referred to them. What do braking and accelerating do? How much can you brake and accelerate in each turn? Can you brake or accelerate and change your direction at the same time? (In the game I played the answers are: changes the length of the line; only by one square; yes.) 78.148.110.157 (talk) 08:55, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

The above was not meant to describe the rules, but to illustrate the description in the article proper.--Noe (talk) 12:18, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Part of the confusion here is that from a mathematical/physics perspective, braking and turning are both forms of accelleration. It would be much simpler to say "On your turn, your car may accelerate by one square" - but sadly, in the language of non-scientists, that's even more confusing that how we have written it. SteveBaker (talk) 18:52, 21 February 2008 (UTC)