For the human players, the map has a data layer where every tile has a number. Tiles not on the track are 0 and tiles along the course are numbered in ascending order.
The game tracks the last numbered tile each player was on. When the players are too far apart so that they can't all fit on the same screen, then the players who have the smallest number get popped / killed. So if you cut a corner, then you're taking a risk -- you might be further ahead visually, but since you left the course, your last waypoint number will be lower than players still on the course. Those players can swerve in the other direction to force the issue and kill you, if they're paying attention.
In another data section, some of the numbered tiles are marked as key waypoints (my term, I don't know what the Codemaster devs called this). If you miss a key waypoint block entirely, then you are popped for cutting too much.
Those two mechanisms work together to encourage a kind of "iterated prisoners dilemma", on top of the normal racing mechanics. It's great fun.
There are some screenshots that illustrate this at https://bradders.org/MMs/ -- see the section titled "Cutting corners"
For AI players, there's a data layer telling them which way to go next on each tile, much like is described in the OP article here in MMs v1.
Just this week we had a gathering of 7 people, playing MMv3 all on one big screen, with modified levels burned to a CDROM, using a PS2 with the sticky tape hack. It was awesome!
You are technically correct, but this is still a pointless argument to make.
It's pretty easy to see that any finite machine isn't Turing Complete, because you just ask whether it can compute a function that doesn't fit in its memory. So, for your laptop: define a function that's true on some number larger than would fit in 16GiB (fiddling the definitions as necessary depending on exactly how you define input / output etc.)
As wikipedia says:
> No physical system can have infinite memory, but if the limitation of finite memory is ignored, most programming languages are otherwise Turing-complete.
The convention is to ignore the infinite case, when talking about real systems because a) most things we want answers to are not large enough for this to make a difference and b) otherwise no real system is Turing-complete, and that's not a helpful definition.
EDIT: this was an attempt to get past the paywall, but looks like it's javascript driven, so this archived version breaks after a moment, unless you disable js
The game tracks the last numbered tile each player was on. When the players are too far apart so that they can't all fit on the same screen, then the players who have the smallest number get popped / killed. So if you cut a corner, then you're taking a risk -- you might be further ahead visually, but since you left the course, your last waypoint number will be lower than players still on the course. Those players can swerve in the other direction to force the issue and kill you, if they're paying attention.
In another data section, some of the numbered tiles are marked as key waypoints (my term, I don't know what the Codemaster devs called this). If you miss a key waypoint block entirely, then you are popped for cutting too much.
Those two mechanisms work together to encourage a kind of "iterated prisoners dilemma", on top of the normal racing mechanics. It's great fun.
There are some screenshots that illustrate this at https://bradders.org/MMs/ -- see the section titled "Cutting corners"
For AI players, there's a data layer telling them which way to go next on each tile, much like is described in the OP article here in MMs v1.