Author: William Penn
Date: 05:17:53 03/02/01
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On March 02, 2001 at 07:00:18, William Penn wrote: >I still get too many engines running in Game Room, infinite time, Thinking Lines >& Visual Thinking open, with custom defined personalities. There seems to be no >good way to get rid of the extra engines. If I close then reopen CM with the >same settings, they're still there. I can close the engines via Ctrl-Alt-Delete, >which seems to be the only way. The disadvantage of that method is that Windows >98 then kicks the corresponding hash tables up into the win386.swp file, which >thereafter grows to a very bulky size and the hard drive does a lot of work. For >example right now I'm using 256MB RAM, 128 hash tables, and my swap file is >454MB. Apparenlty it works, but it makes most operations slow thereafter while >the hard drive manipulates the inflated swap file. I guess all I can suggest is >that there should be some way to start up everything without any engines >running, then select what you want to run. Apparently there isn't any way to do >that at present. >WP OK, if my layout does NOT have the Thinking Lines and Visual Thinking windows in it, and I set up the game with the custom defined personalities like I want (usually human vs a personality), then I exit CM and reload CM, it comes back up with the proper number of engines (one) running. (Of course that isn't very convenient, but it works.) I can then open the Thinking Lines window which comes up without any boxes checked, and I can select the White or Black box. I still have the proper number of engines (only one) running. The problem is with the Visual Thinking window. No matter what I do to try to avoid it, when I first open the Visual Thinking window it always comes up with the Chessmaster radio button active. That always opens the extra unwanted Chessmaster engine. And with 128MB hash, it is VERY slow to close that extra engine if I then check the White or Black button, or if I close the Visual Thinking window. It eventually closes the extra engine after several minutes (at least 5-10 minutes) of hard drive grinding during which period my computer becomes very sluggish. If I close Visual Thinking with the proper radio button selected then reopen it, that button remains selected. I would suggest that operation of the Visual Thinking window be revised so that it does NOT come up automatically with one of the radio buttons selected. Maybe it needs another radio button, a null position(?). But to be honest I am less than enthusiastic about this design which automatically calls up more than one engine to run simultaneously, and that's really the problem I think. I don't think anyone really wants to see the results of multiple engines running simultaneously in the Thinking Lines Window thereby greatly slowing down thinking, so I'd probably do away with that "feature". One engine running at a time is plenty! CM remembers all of its settings and keeps them the same the next time you load CM. That's wrong, I think, as regards the engines. Rather than the programmers trying to anticipate what user really wants to do with the engines, or assuming user wants to do the same thing each time (time after time) thereby activating an engine automatically at startup, the user needs positive control (selectability) over exactly which engine runs and when. Solution: Do away with all of the radio buttons and boxes on the Thinking Lines and Visual Thinking windows! Instead -- have a new Engines Window with boxes in it to select which engine user wants to run, the default always being that none are selected when CM first loads. I think that might fix this problem. WP
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