Author: John Merlino
Date: 15:34:13 11/21/00
Go up one level in this thread
On November 21, 2000 at 16:04:02, John Merlino wrote:
>I'm back, and I have already posted responses to items that required my
>response. However, since most of these responses are to older threads, it is
>possible that my posts have already been pushed back to the "next group of
>messages". So, check there to make sure that you haven't missed anything.
>
>I'm REALLY surprised by how few bugs have been reported. Although I haven't
>heard back from the e-mails that have been sent to chessmaster@broder.com, there
>is NOTHING major yet reported, and so far only two significant bugs have been
>brought to my attention (a sound issue and the possibility that command line
>parameters are not being sent to XBoard engines properly or at all). I'll notify
>you all if there is anything that gets reported there that needs your attention.
>
>Other than that, thanks for your patience over the weekend.
>
>jm
Ok. I've gone through all of the e-mail that users have sent us, and here are
the only significant bugs (i.e. ones that are verified and/or happening to more
than one user).
-- Win2K users have reported that tutorials will crash if you make an error
moving a piece. The dialog box comes up asking you if you want to try again, and
pressing either the "Yes" or "No" button will result in a crash. This will be
fixed in the patch.
-- One user has reported that, on many occasions, several personalities will
stop responding after leaving book. Has anybody else experienced this?
-- Two users have reported sound anomalies such that both Thematic and Simple
Sounds will not play on their systems UNLESS (and this is the weird part)
Chessmaster is NOT the active app. Spoken move announcements works fine on these
machines. The development team apparently has some idea of what the problem
might be and are hoping to have a fix for the patch.
-- Two users have reported problems with command line parameters for XBoard
engines, but the development team cannot reproduce any of them. Can anybody
reply to this with some examples of this failing? I would need the engine (and
its version number), and the EXACT text entered into the command line parameter
edit field.
-- A few users have asked for a "human adjudication" feature that would allow a
user to intervene in a computer vs. computer tournament game, calling it a draw
or a win for one side or whatever. This is a good suggestion, but it remains to
be seen whether it gets into the patch.
-- Of course, two users have reported that the program fails to run AT ALL on
Windows 2000. They, sadly, are told that the program does not officially support
Windows 2000 and that their best bet is to return it. It is unknown what is
causing this problem.
Other bugs that have already been fixed/addressed:
-- There was a bug that would cause the mentor engine to restart thinking about
a position if the Visual Thinking or Thinking Lines window was opened, even if
the mentor engine had already been thinking about the position and sending its
output to another window.
-- Fixed a bug that would cause the "Positions" columns in the Thinking Lines
window to display incorrectly after approximately 2.1 billion positions had been
seen. These columns will now "wrap" their values (i.e. display incorrect data)
after approximately 4.2 billion positions, but this is unavoidable. On a typical
machine (Pentium III - 600 Mhz, for example) this will not occur until 30 or
more hours have passed, given a typical midgame position.
-- Fixed a crash that was caused by attempting to load a 16-color bitmap as a
wallpaper in a room. 16-color bitmaps are not supported, but the program now
tells you when you are attempting to load one as a wallpaper.
-- The Vector Board that is mentioned in the documentation actually does not
exist in the program. The documentation is in error.
And some enhancements that I'm sure some of you will appreciate:
-- Added a "Copy Contents" context menuitem to the "Thinking Lines". Whenever
any checkbox in this dialog is selected, you can now right-click on any "best
line" window (the one that has a "Score" column), and one of the menu items will
be "Copy Contents". Choosing this item will copy all of the contents of that
window to the Windows clipboard, formatted just like it is in the program. Since
you can have more than one of these sub-windows active at a time (if you have
more than one checkbox selected), whichever "best line" window you right-click
on will be the one that copies its data to the clipboard.
-- Added an "Import PGN Settings" dialog that allows you to set the criteria by
which games in a PGN file are imported into an opening book. The following
options are available:
-- Moves for Color. Whether you want the moves for White, Black or
both to be imported. The default is Both.
-- Weighting Frequency. Whether you want the moves to be weighted by:
Frequency (how often the moves occur in the PGN file)
Wins (how often the move was made by the side that won the game)
Losses (how often the move was made by the side that lost the game)
Draws (how often the move was made in a game that was drawn)
Long (how often the move was made in a long game -- the longer the
game, the more likely the move will have a higher weight)
Short (how often the move was made in a short game -- the shorter
the game, the more likely the move will have a higher weight)
Captures (how often were captures made in the opening)
Low Captures (how rarely captures were made in the opening)
Queen (how often were queen moves were made in the opening)
Pawn (how often pawn moves were made in the opening)
Gambit (how often gambits -- pawn sacrifices -- were made in the
opening)
The default is Frequency.
-- Depth. How many moves deep you want the opening book to be. This number
is in terms of plies, meaning the default depth of 30 equates to 15 moves
by White and Black.
At this time, the patch is hopefully going to be released within two months. Of
course, many more users are probably going to be sending their bugs, so I'll
keep you all updated with the most significant ones.
jm
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