Author: Jason Williamson
Date: 04:18:45 11/22/00
Go up one level in this thread
On November 21, 2000 at 21:33:05, Paul Doire wrote:
>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
Ok for my part:
TCB 045 --> command line w/o space: tcbxinit.cui = nothing happens
command line with space: <space>tcbxinit.cui = Chessmaster crashes
after a few seconds.
Amyan 1.21 works.
Ant 6.03 --> Command line w/o space: -t32000 = hash tables not set, default
used. Program plays.
Command line with space <space>-t32000 = hash tables set! works
ok.
Anmon 5.09 works with space before the command line <space>xboard
Arasan 5.14 works with space before the command line: <space>-H 32000
Betsy 5.0 works with space before the command line: <space>xboard
Bringer 1.7 goes into winboard mode with the space before the command line:
<space>/winboard
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