Author: Paul Doire
Date: 18:33:05 11/21/00
Go up one level in this thread
On November 21, 2000 at 19:03:28, ujecrh wrote: >On November 21, 2000 at 18:34:13, John Merlino wrote: > >> >>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? > >If I remember correctly there was something about that in the release notes >installed with ChessMaster 8K. > >>-- 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. > >I noticed that and thought it was on purpose, in fact it is pretty nice to have >sounds disabled when you do something else and CM is in background too. Very >minor bug, if a bug at all. > >>-- 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. > >Even stranger, after having such a problem I noticed that if I started the >parameters by a blank space they were sent correctly to the engine. Maybe that >can help. > >>-- 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 > >I would add two suggestions > >1/ It would be nice if we could specify an initialization string that will be >send to the winboard engine when it is started like winboard does (with the >parameter /initString=...). It could either be from a ChessMaster text editor >dialog box or simply offer the option to give a filename. Then, when the >winboard engine is started, the content of the given file is sent as is. That is >great for example when you want to disable ponder and the engine does not >support any parameter to do it from command line but requires the "easy" command >to be sent. > >2/ Allow custom personalities and winboard engines to have ratings and play >rated games ! Two reasons for that: > First: people will not have to launch Chessbase or any tools to compute >ratings. > Second: Some people, like me, use a fake winboard engines to play on a >wooden chessboard connected to the PC (UCB or Saitek autoboard for example). In >the actual configuration these games can not be rated. > >Overall, this is by far the best ChessMaster upgrade I have seen so far, >congratulations to the whole development team and thanks for the great software >! > >Ujecrh Hi, Welcome Back Update on XBoard Engine issues: Putting a space first in the parameter line has resolved issues I had with Bringer 1.7 and Anmon 5.09 ,they are up and running thanks to Ujecrh's tip. Thanks Additionally,these 3 engines don't seem to recognize the 0-0 or 0-0-0 command when engine displays it in "Engine Output Window" 1)Arasan 5.4 2)Gnuchess 4.14 3)Phalanx 22 Dobes Arasan's parameter line=(space)-H 32768 Gnuchess parameter line=(space)-T 1400000 Phalanx's parameter line=(space)-l+ -t32768 -r900 Tao 4.4 causes "illegal operation by chessmaster" whenever it attempts to update its tbook.bin file. GreenLightChess 2.10 parameter (space)-hash 32 Nothing happens Nejmet 2.57 parameter(space)-xb Nothing happens NewRival 1817 paramater(space)-winboard 32000 -info Gui starts nothing happens Yace 023 no parameters Nothing happens Raffaela 002 no parameters Gui starts and as white engine makes move in own GUI Nothing else SOS 11/99 parameters none or (space)c:\\chess\\nalimov which is path to my Nalimov tablebases nothing happens. John I hope this is specific enough and can aid in the next patch Regards, Paul
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