Author: Frank Quisinsky
Date: 02:50:13 12/18/04
Hi there, different persons asked me and I will write the answer not by mail again and again. Interesting are the news ticker message I have written to this topics. You can see it on Arena webpage co.uk. Additional: ---------- Since Arena 1.092 Martin added a lot of important things. I wrote in the older Arena Support the wishes before I have closed the forum. A little bit about the problem we have here with support mails and in combination with it the wishes I have. So Martin try to added all of my wishes in the latest weeks and we discuss a lot about the new options with ideas to implemented the wishes. Arena have a new backup system. The files engines.ini, bundle.ini. *.cfg and the registration of engine and gui settings are saved directly with this new GUI option. Example: You has install Arena on your PC! You will make a new OS installation or you buy a second machine! You can saved all settings (backup Arena settings and you can create a backup CD from your Arena folder with all engines you installed (for the copy protection engines, please follow the notes from the companys). Now you can add the folder on a new PC and you can restore all settings. Arena will be ready for take off after one minute. So you can see that the registry settings are much more interesting as *.ini or *.cfg files. You can make more. The engines freaks have to learn it because the engines like is to edit in configuration files. For this group of people a nice example: Look in the new backup folder Arena created after "backup Arena settings" and you can see one *.reg files from all intalled engines. Interesting, you can see all the UCI settings from all installed UCI engines in only one file :-) You can edit the settings all in all directly in the *.reg (please make an backup before you will do some things) files you have create with "Backup Arena Settings". After this you can say "Restore Arena Settings" and you don't have to start all UCI engines if you like it to edit UCI parameter from all installed UCI engines in one file all in all. In combination with this new options Arena show now in a table the configuration from the WB engines. Which engine will give me support for: Edit mode, move now, analyze mode, ponder, table-bases or used an Arena Engine book. All this you can set by yourself in the engine configuration or you can try Pedro's Beltran "engines.ini". In engines.ini are all information available which WB engine supported the different modes WinBoard will give us. Arena will read the engines ini and will set all information automaticially in the GUI. Pedro Beltran (Mexiko) do here a big help for us. I like the webpages of Leo but I haven't interst to look after each new configuration in the detail page and search the information for the reason to find out if an engine supported the "analyze mode" (for an example). Interesting is, that you can set for each engines comments. Example Nejmet: Nejmet is stronger in version 3.06 with ponder, without ponder 3.07 is stronger. Such comment you can set by yourself and in a good table all is sorted and no information you will be loosed. The problem is that we have to many engines today and I cann't know for each engine all the information i found out for myself ... too many information for me. The DGT Clock XP is clearly improved and show the move of the engines. This is the big deal for the clock XP in combination with the big display. But not for us because we are try to make in detail a little bit more. For the DGT Support Martin have since years a lot of power options in Arena. The Clock can show under Arena GUI the evaluation :-) If I install other chess GUI I look what the others made in questions to the DGT support. After all what I can see Arena have the most interesting DGT Support. One of the highlights in Arena Chess GUI. Read my other message I have written to the topic in CCC. Different new smaller options Martin add. Colors for the pieces for an example. User can set a ELO for each engine by itself. This is interesting because Arena show this ELO during an engine-engine match. Nice to see in tournaments how big is the difference in ELO if the engines are played a match. We have so many good rating list in WWW, interesting users can pick up the ELO from good rating list we have today. Later Martin will try to add the ELO after an ELOstat calculation automatically. The most work for such an option is done but not ready yet after my information. We discuss about it and I have the opinion that the user have set the ELO, not Arena automatically. Because this one is in combination with an other option more interesting we can talk about it if Arena 1.2 or 1.3 is available. Other smaller options, like figurine notation for the show ECO line in Arena. Arena show the player name above and under the board. Here you can see ... Flag / Player Name / ELO / Clock again. You can set the information you like. The clock here have now the same font as the main clock. Same for the ELO, same font as the clock. This is important, because the GUI have a better look. Martin fixed some of the reported bugs, the biggest know bugs are all fixed. Different smaler bugs are after testing not a bug, more or less a feature :-) We are thinking that version 1.1 is the best Arena version we give out and I believe that perhaps Arena don't have so many bugs as other GUIs. The reason is that we try to find out bugs with our open way and the user help us. This is important in a small team and the reason that we make our webpage more secure. We have interest to develop a chess GUI and no interest on boring discuss from trouble makers again and again. With such discuss we can make Arena not stronger! A lot of bad English from myself but I hope that this text give the users a little bit more information about the new Arena. To make Arena more stabil is the main point in version 1.1 and I think we have now a great release version of Arena. The next Arena version will come out in 11 years. Best Frank
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