Author: Thomas Mayer
Date: 21:52:11 11/11/01
Go up one level in this thread
Hi Aloisio, I don't know if your question was only considered to be answered by professional chess programmers... anyway I'll try to answer from my view as an amateur... >1) What's your impression of the Unix market for Chess? >(UnixWare/SCO/AIX/IRIX/Solaris/NetBSD/OpenBSD/FreeBSD/HP-UX/Digital-Unix) I think for professionals it is not that interesting, still the dominance of Windows on home-pc's is extreme, and I don't think this will change in the near future. I have played around with Linux (which I would add to the above group, it's just another Unix-compatible-platform to the x86-platform in my opinion) and I still think for those which just want to use there PC for some office kind software, the web and some games & maybe chess, windows is still the better choice, knowing about all the problems. I use Linux as an internet router and Samba-Server in my private network - something where it is in my opinion unbeatable, it is running since March 2000 without any crash. I don't see any other platform then unix based systems which get near to that kind of stability. (Except maybe Novell based systems) >Would you consider a port of your program for Unix? >2) What's your impression of the Linux market for Chess? >Would you consider a port of your program for Linux? So I think this both questions should stay together. For Quark I plan somewhere in the future to release it also as Linux-version. According to Dann Corbit the port shouldn't be that complicate (he knows my source). Well, when just programming an engine it should be easier then porting an entire GUI, that's sure... with xboard the biggest port work is already done... Thanks Tim... :) >3) What do you think about the AMD x Intel struggle? well, I only take care of that when thinking about buying a new pc... At the moment I would definitely tend to buy an AMD based system. (In fact I have two) But I do not take to much care of that... For tourneys I'd like to use the best available x86-based system, whether this is an AMD or Intel is not my problem. (But I like the underdogs, so I am not unhappy that AMD has at the moment the performance crown, it's good that the Intel guys has something to do, and I believe they WILL do something) >4) Would you consider optimizing the code to run your program using an Alpha >processor? At the moment - No... >5) Do you agree with Microsoft's idea of "Software Activation" ? Would it be >aplicable to the Unix / Linux World ? No & No >6) What's your impression about 3D graphics and Chess? What about the multimedia >resources? Aren't both 3d and multimedia neglected nowadays? Do you know any 3D-board that is really playable ? I think for chess software they are only a funny feature but I do not know anyone who really works with the software and uses a 3D-board... Multimedia like ChessMaster use it in it's lectures is okay with me... But I don't see how there can be done much more... And I don't see why it is necessary... In fact for most serious chessplayers a multimedia GUI like chessmaster do prevent them from buying it... For those gamers around, it is different, but what do you think are they doing ? Play 3 or 4 games, get totally beaten by chessmaster and throwing it away ? In fact they will have this problem with programs like Fritz, Rebel Tiger etc. with chessmaster it might be different with all the personality's but those hardcore gamers which never read booklets or help-files you will never caught with a chessprogram. Think about Battle Chess I - I know many which had this software those days, but most weren't even capable of beating that engine on those days (which was REALLY bad), they just love to see the animation, but after some games the thrill was gone and the software lies in an edge. Greets, Thomas
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.