Author: Frank Quisinsky
Date: 07:42:45 11/10/04
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On November 10, 2004 at 08:37:36, Dom Leste wrote: > >Frank would you consider adding more chess variants to Arena? For example Chess >Gothic? > >Thanks in advice > >Dom Hi Dom, not for the moment! The problem are the bugfixes for all the new features Martin added in the latest months. Furthermore, on our list (after Arena 1.1 official release version, before christmas available) is: 01. Bugfixes for ICS mode 02. Latest bugfixes for analyses (seems that we have here a smaller problem and this must be check) 03. DGT clock XP The DGT clock XP is a long time on our list, the ICS bugfixes too. The clock works generally but not with all the options the new great clock by DGT have. The most users have the wish that Arena supported Swiss chees tourneys, other tourney ideas. At the moment Martin had added only a "Swiss Chess Pseudo" code in the program. Swiss Chess tourneys and the ICS bugfixes need a lot of time, more or less a lot of test time. We have perfectly swiss chess tournament mangager program but this tourney manager are very very expensive. I don't know why and talked with Chess Niggemann about it. Chess Niggemann gave me the information that he know one of the programmers from such a program. To add all the rules, the frequently updates for rules with all the possibilities is a long time work and for one program alone enough. I believe in German the program have a price from around 199,-- Euro! To add such options in Arena is really a "meet for challenge" Martin had on more times look in the rules and he gave me the information ... possible but Frank, this need a lot of time. For around 3-4 years I add some messages in chess fora that I am very disappointed about the Swiss tourney options in Fritz GUI. This works a long time not perfectly. Today I know why ... but ChessBase seems to find a good way to solved older problems (I don't know in which time in the latest years). But it works fine in Fritz GUI with the options the ChessBase programmer had added. The tournament options are the options the most Arena users which give us information in mails or in our support forum have the most interest. Today the most users have interest on engines, more as on chess server (after our knowledge of development and support). To your question now: FRC is added in Arena, a very interesting idea and after all information we have the most interesting "Chess Variant" for users. We have here a lot of fun with FRC in combination with the FRC program, like TheBaron the other partners and the DGT board. Oh yes, better ... the "Classic Chess" is a a chess variant of FRC :-) Gothic style, Capablanca style and other ideas are for the moment not interesting for Martin. Same for Linux compatibility. A lot of users asked here too! All is interesting of course but Martin need the next time he have for add the latest big wishes in Arena. Today I start a poll in Arena Support Forum. Perhaps you gave your vote with your wish "Gothic Chess". Let us following the developement of Gothic chess in the next year. Perhaps Martin have later interest, better the time to add it. Here a little statistic: Arena had now over 100.000 downloads in the this year. Around 35.000 comes from Freeware / Shareware pages, I believe 8.000 from a very popular sharware page in Czech. 14.000 downloads are FRC Setup downloads! Perhaps Gothic chess have the same success. We have nothing againt it, because more and more users find the way to this intersting hobby. But I am sure for the moment comes Gothic chess to fast. To optimize now the GUI (Martin do it at the moment with bugfixes other important things) is much more important. Not sure but perhaps Reinhard Scharnagl have interest to develops an GUI for Gothic Chess / FRC and Capablanca style in the near future, or other programmers. Reinhard Scharnagl is an active member here, book author from the FRC standard "classic" book, I believe at the moment only in German available. If we have such programmers it would be great to have contacts to this group of programmers. I believe why not to develop a Modul for Arena in a group of programmers. Perhaps in two years, or three years we have 10 or 15 intersting moduls for Arena. This is the way I like because then I am sure that the compatibility of chess developments are not loosed with so many different ideas or commercial interest. You can be sure that I am really happy about it that for me the most interesting chess engins in playing strenght "Gandalf and Shredder" are compatible to one of the two standard engine protocols we have. Compatibility is the most important for Arena Chess GUI. But Gothic chess comes just in bad time for us ... Bad; So many other things to do! Best Frank
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