Trax

This project provides the ability to work with Trax games in Javascript.

Description

Trax is a two-player boardless board game invented by David Smith. For more information about Trax, including its rules and history, see the official website at traxgame.com.

The goal of this javascript project is to allow Trax to be played programmatically. It can be used as an engine in a web browser, for example at slugbugblue.com; or in nodejs, for example by using the trax CLI provided as a child of this project.

The Trax engine now enjoys automated testing with 100% code coverage. Any future changes should meet the same standard.

API Usage

The Trax engine can be used as follows:

import { Trax } from '@slugbugblue/trax'

// default constructor gives you a Trax game
let trax = new Trax()
trax.play('@0/')

// but you can also select Loop Trax
let loops = new Trax('traxloop')

// or 8x8 Trax
let tiny = new Trax('trax8')

// and the constructor lets you start with an initial set of moves
let puzzle = new Trax('trax', '@0/ a0\\ @2/')
puzzle.play('@2\\')

For specifics, see the engine.js documentation.

Support

This project is built by Chad Transtrum for slugbugblue.com. Issues can be opened on the gitlab project page.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Ideally in the form of pull requests, but feel free to open an issue with a bug report or a suggestion as well.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to the late David Smith for coming up with the idea of Trax and for his generosity in allowing me to add the game to GoldToken.com.

Thanks to his widow Colleen Foley-Smith for extending that courtesy to allow me to include Trax on slugbugblue.com as well.

I would also like to express my huge heartfelt appreciation to the magnanimous Donald G. Bailey, who, through his excellent book Trax Strategy for Beginners, taught me the basics (and more!) of Trax. I found him always ready to share his insights on the mechanics of the game, as well as various approaches to encoding its complexities. His undeserved kindness and infinite patience in indulging my many questions can never be repaid.

Thanks to Martin M. S. Pedersen for contributing ideas, code, and puzzles. He's been curating Trax puzzles and coding solutions for Trax for over two decades, and has a lot of expertise in this area.

License

Copyright 2019-2023 Chad Transtrum

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use the files in this project except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

Trax rules copyright

In the United States, game mechanics are not eligible for copyright protection; however, the specific wording of game rules does fall under copyright law.

The official rules for Trax are found at http://traxgame.com/about_rules.php.

As Trax is a proprietary game, these rules are the intellectual property of David Smith and heirs, and are not to be used without permission.