Author: Sune Fischer
Date: 13:02:25 04/06/04
Go up one level in this thread
>>Well if they are not interested the whole deal with chess engines is not very >>relevant to them. >>They aren't going to bother to figure out how to edit winboard.ini and they most >>certainly won't pay $50 for a commercial product either. > >5 million people bought ChessMaster. Absolutely no way that 5 million people >will edit winboard.ini. Why not, there are like 100 million users of Linux so it could happen. The problem is most people are just not aware of the high quality engines you can download for free. If they were I think it would hurt sales of the commercial engines. Marketing is everything here, and nobody markets the free stuff. > But that's just the start of it. Every winboard (or >almost every) program has a configuration file. Some will not work properly >without having that file set up correctly. Others will work suboptimally. On >some machines, chosen defaults are going to cause problems. Do you really think it is important if an engine is running suboptimally for a 1300 Elo player? Those extra 50-100 points is not going to make any difference to him. >>That's funny, I'm a pretty bad speller but always get it right with winboard :) > >I have 700+ engines set up in my Winboard directories. Someday I will have >1000, probably. And I know I will make many mistakes setting up the new ones. >.. >A missing quote. A typeographical error in the name of the executable. A wrong >drive letter. You will glance at it and know instantly what is wrong. They >will not. If winboard is too complicated for you I suggest you use Arena :) >>>>Even it if were, they could just install Arena instead. >>>>Arena can scan your harddrive for available engines, so all you have to do is >>>>download them and unzip them. >>> >>>Arena asks where to scan. This assumes several things. First, that you have >>>successfully installed Winboard engines. After all, why are you scanning if >>>they are not there already. So the cart is before the horse. And secondly, it >>>assumes that you know the area where you should scan. People do not have to >>>memorize that sort of detail. >> >>AFAIK all windows programs ask for paths when they install, that is simply a >>good policy. Usually there is a default option available of course. > >The default is important. Yes, that is what it is there for. >>I really don't see anything different between the Fritz GUI and Arena in this >>respect. >> >>The Fritz GUI comes with some engines pre-installed, so does Arena. >>The Fritz GUI requires the user to setup the EGTBs, so does Arena. >>The Frtiz GUI needs the user to manually install new UCI engines, Arena can do >>this automaticly by a scan. >>The Fritz GUI can connect to servers, so can Arena only to many more servers. >>The Fritz GUI can do engine tournaments, so can Arena. >>Neither Fritz GUI or Arena is bugfree. >>Arena can do FRC, Fritz GUI can't. >> >>One could even claim Arena is _more_ user friendly :) > >Arena has no database function. How will they review their games? That is now your worst criticism? I suggest they download SCID which is all so free. >>>Arena makes lots of mistakes. Perhaps 5% of my engines do not work at all under >>>Arena. >> >>Five percent is not a lot of mistakes if you think about all the buggy engines >>it has to support. >> >>Fritz GUI solves the problem by not supporting them at all, do you really >>consider that to be a better solution? > >For the average user this is much better. The average user can then make do with what comes pre-installed in Arena, which is also plenty for the un-interested idividual anyway. Supporting the winboard engines is just a bonus, something the user should be happy about! The Fritz GUI is just being cruel to the users expecting them to fiddle with adaptors. >>I think you underestimate people, everybody who is motivated can figure out >>these things for themselves. > >I have worked in technical support. Have you? Perhaps that is why you are so negative, you have been around the worst of the worst and think this represents the average user. Have you any idea how many who _didn't_ need to call technical support because they figured it out on their own? >If people have enough motivation, they will figure it out. But they will be >much happier if it is figured out for them. > >Consider the cost of technical support. Suppose you have a totally shoestring >budget and can somehow provide technical support at $50/hour total cost to you. >If you sell your product for $50, I am very sure that you will lose a ton of >money. > >>The real problem is that a lot of people don't want to put their mind to it! > >The real problem is that the engineers don't spend enough time to make it so >easy for them that they don't have to put their mind to it. Of course I'm not suggesting to make everything as cryptic as possible for the user, only that the standard windows concepts are known. Know what a path is, know how to open and read a txt file, know how to download and unzip. This is an absolute minimun to get value out of your computer, therfore it is also reasonable that I as a programmer expect the users to master these elementary techniqes. If you don't know these techniques, don't worry about playing with a chess program, worry about taking a computers 101 course! -S.
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