Author: Eric Campos
Date: 19:00:21 04/12/01
Go up one level in this thread
On April 11, 2001 at 19:16:35, Christophe Theron wrote: >On April 11, 2001 at 14:36:17, John Merlino wrote: > >>After a couple of e-mails between myself, Johan and Hans Lykke, we have >>determined that, solely because of a misunderstanding, the SSDF's testing of >>Chessmaster 8000 has been faulty. The shortest explanation is that CM8000 has >>only been getting about half of the CPU. The reason for this is simple to >>understand if you have seen CM8000's Thinking Lines window, but may not be very >>clear if you have not. >> >>The Thinking Lines window has three checkboxes: White, Black and Chessmaster. >>Clicking on White or Black will allow you to see the analysis of the >>corresponding engines playing the game. Clicking on the Chessmaster checkbox >>will launch a NEW version of the engine, running the DEFAULT Chessmaster >>personality, so you can see Chessmaster's analysis of the current position as >>well. >> >>However, due to misunderstandings and (yet again) some less-than-stellar and >>more-than-confusing text in the manual, Hans had checked the "Chessmaster" >>checkbox, rather than the appropriate "White" or "Black" checkbox, to view the >>in-game analysis. Since the SSDF is NOT using the default personality (all they >>changed was increasing the hash table size to 32MB), checking the Chessmaster >>checkbox launced an ADDITIONAL engine, meaning that two engines were running >>simultaneously, and the engine that was actually playing the game was getting >>less than 50% of the CPU. >> >>We apologise to all members of the SSDF for the confusion and inconvenience, and >>hope that they will be understanding and start testing Chessmaster 8000 over >>again from the beginning. If not, then, oh well.... that's the breaks. >> >>If they DO start testing over again, then I'm sure that you'll all be much more >>pleased with the results.... >> >>Once again, our deepest and most sincere apologies to Hans (who has already >>tested CM8000 in almost 50 games), and all of the Chessmaster fans. >> >>jm >> >>p.s. Hans, if you would like to reply to this e-mail with your comments, it >>would be greatly appreciated.... > > > >I knew something was wrong. > > > > Christophe I'm 99.9% saddened to hear that so many games were tested under these non-ideal conditions and 0.1% happy to hear that I'm not the only one that had this problem (if this makes sense) :). It took me a long time to notice this problem (er.., ughm, I've been told it's not a problem, but a feature). The big problem here is that most of the people who purchased this program don't read this message board and are playing it under the same conditions as described with at least two engines running at the same time. Add the visual thinking window for the third King engine...most users, outside of these forums, probably don't even realize that the third engine gets fired up. I did have my CPU calculating things in triplicate for a while there. In CM6K, the visual thinking window simply displayed what was already calculated, so no penalty for using it -- I miss that window!!! Additionally, I wonder how many copies of CM8K were sold and how many times the patch was downloaded. The difference between the two is a crude indicator of how many people are innocently using the program with "move too quickly" bug. Then if you use the patch, the program asks for the CD. Call me lazy, but when Chessmaster prompts me for a CD, I usually click one of the Rebel icons instead! Okay, looks like I've reduce this to just plain whining now. It's just that I was sooooo impressed with CM6000 - this program was an unbelievable value for me. I guess they spoiled me and I expected the same of CM8000. Eric
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