Author: John R. Menke, Sr.
Date: 23:46:21 10/16/99
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On October 16, 1999 at 10:04:30, Jeff Lackey wrote: >I've read a lot of messages here about how crappy CM7000 is, but few that >actually detailed the specific bugs. I run Rebel 9, Fritz 5, and CM6000 for >various uses, so I'm curious as to the SPECIFIC bugs that people see in CM7K. I >know some people hate the CM series because it is very popular and doesn't fall >in the "serious" category, but the CM series serves it's niche pretty well. > >So - what are the specific problems people are having? If you say it screws up >your system, how specifically? If you see bugs in the controls, what do you see? > >Jeff ========================================================================== Jeff, Well, I don't have any particular agenda to pursue, except that I don't like the new design of CM7000. Obviously Matel Corp. (the new owner of Chessmaster/Mindscape/TLC) decided to turn it into a kid's toy. To wit, look at all the new personalities in CM7000 -- mostly all kids, many "rated" below 100!? They're handsome kids, but I'm not a kid anymore, and I prefer CM6000, CM5000, etc. I'm a devotee of Chessmaster going back to their first release in the mid-1980's. My posts on this forum and elsewhere have always been enthusiastically supportive of Chessmaster. Despite my dislike of their new design, I am very disappointed that I'm having so many problems with it. I've previously mentioned some of the bugs that I've found in my posts, but here's a list of 10 off the top of my head: (1) There are fatal error messages when attempting to perform various CM7000 operations, typically "This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down..." (2) After loading a game in Game Room, some of the VCR controls cause the error condition in (1) above. In particular if you reset to the starting position with the leftmost VCR button, then click the rightmost VCR button to jump to the final game position, it crashes the system. (3) CM7000 won't correctly load all .cmg games recorded with CM6000 or prior versions. Some work OK. But some of them load with the wrong side (black or white) designated to move next. And sometimes the fatal error message mentioned in (1) above happens. (4) The "Wake Up" operation doesn't always work in Game Room. (5) CM7000 apparently gets confused when switching sides or flipping the board in Game Room, so the wrong side is designated to move. But admittedly, maybe I'm just confused, because their design in that regard seems non-standard. (6) When using the Coach operation, Database tab in the Game Room, it said that the database contained about 500 games if a certain opening move was made. So I made the move, and it should have found the 500 games, but it only found 3 games. I got the same result if I searched the database from the Database Room. Where are the other 497 games?! So the database opening statistics and search results can't be trusted. (7) Screens are not properly sized for a given resolution. For example if you load the 800x600 layout in Game Room, various screens therein, and in other rooms, will not display properly. Changing the font size to a non-standard size corrects that problem, but it means that the programmers (and thus the compiled product) used a non-standard display configuration. (8) It has no resave provision. If I try to save the same game to disk again, it keeps adding a .cmg appendage each time. After a few resaves, the name gets pretty darned long with all those ".cmg" extensions on the end!? Yes, I can truncate it manually, but that shouldn't be necessary. (9) It won't keep the player's selected settings and defined layout intact in Game Room. It sometimes spontaneously reverts to the default settings at the next startup. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. (10) My benchmark test with a typical middle game position calculated to a certain ply depth took 13 minutes with CM6000 but 19 minutes with CM7000. Same settings, same machine, etc. The chess engines are reportedly the same in both, so why would I want to use a much slower implementation of it?! As for DirectX, Quicktime, and video drivers, my feeling is that I should have been warned and advised fully in advance. Instead, the CD installation process simply said that they are "required". Well, I discovered after the fact that is untrue. Failing to install them would disable some of the multimedia features in CM7000, but should not cause bugs. I also discovered much to my dismay that at least one of them, DirectX, is uninstallable. I must object VERY strongly to any installation that does such a thing to my computer without fully informing me in advance. I consider my computer to be damaged whenever I cannot uninstall something, as in this case. I can possibly uninstall it, but only via non-standard methods and at a significant risk. My plan at this point is to return the CM7000 CD on Monday and claim that it is defective, requesting a replacement CD. If they send me one, then I can test that theory. Considering that some other people are not having as many problems as me, apparently, that is as good a theory as any... --JRM
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