Author: John Merlino
Date: 12:01:08 08/17/02
Go up one level in this thread
On August 17, 2002 at 01:25:41, Mike S. wrote: >On August 16, 2002 at 18:15:36, John Merlino wrote: > >>(...) >>>>It is not acceptable (IMO) for a chess engine itself to ask for a CD; that is >>>>the job of the GUI. > >Why isn't that acceptable? For example, Shredder (the "classic" engines) does it >like that when you run the engine in another GUI, and it is *very user >friendly*. No OPK trouble, insert the CD once in a while... easy. I probably should have clarified myself. IMO it is not the place of a WINBOARD engine to ask for a CD. Shredder does this anyway, and that's fine. But I think that just makes it very easy to crack. Note the No-CD crack for Chessmaster 8000 that we all know about.... >The GUI/engine concept actually *requires* IMO, that the engine can operate >independant from it's original GUI it comes with - even on another computer >where that GUI isn't even installed (!), if the user desires it. And it should >be possible to do it without any additional custom tools and without having to >be an in-depth configuration expert. It was never the intent that TheKing should be used outside of CM. Some very clever users (Odd Gunnar Malin, specifically) found a way to do it, and that's fine -- more power to him. But this is obviously not a wholly desireable way to use TheKing, because the engine itself knows nothing about opening books. All of that is handled by the CM GUI. >Maybe the CD request could be done by an "external" CM dll, which the engine >just would need to call on start (not neccessarily to ask for the CD always, but >just to see if the authorization is ok). Johan wants to keep his engine as pristine as possible, which is certainly his right. There are no Windows calls in it. >This is one of these topics, where the Chessmaster developers missed to take a >closer look on how other manufacturers do it. Most often it's better to copy a >good idea, than to create something new which is not as good... You know I'm a >big admirer of Chessmaster (and of The King, too) - but believe me, the OPK copy >protection is *by far* the worst idea for that purpose I've seen for a long >time. Uh, actually, it works extremely well, because you don't see versions of TheKing being run by people who do not have CM. THAT is the sole purpose of the OPK system. There was no intention of trying to design something that would make it annoyingly difficult to use TheKing in other GUIs. The intent was to make sure that people who did not have CM could not use TheKing. >I remember an old 8bit computer game (I think it was called "Alpha Centauri"), >where you had to twinkle through a plastic lens which came with the software, to >be able to read a hidden code from the game's starting screen, and enter that... > >That is no suggestion! :o)) Good. Yikes!! :-) jm
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