Author: Axel Schumacher
Date: 16:29:20 09/20/05
Go up one level in this thread
On September 20, 2005 at 18:29:06, enrico carrisco wrote: >Hello Axel. > >It appears you have spent a great amount of time on the review and such a >commitment on time is a noble thing. Thanks. > >I have a couple of questions about a few of the features the programs were >ranked on as well as the overall evaluation of Palm HIARCS. > >Clearly aspects like board, piece design and a few other odd categories are of a >subjective nature and what one person finds appealing the next could find >unappealing. > >However, a few other categories caught my eye either because they did not make >clear sense to me or were just plain erroneous as they apply to Palm HIARCS. > >1) Hashing - I'm having a hard time making the connection as to how this is >relevant - surely what matters is chess strength, not that someone can allocate >some memory! Maybe there should be a category for pawn hash table or memory for >the move list!? Points for hashing come from different sources. First, if the program has adjustable hasing in general, which is important IMHO, since the playing strength depends on it highly. Yet, the on a device with high memory capacity, let's say 264MB RAM, some programs will still use only 64k Hash. Second adjustable Pawnhash and thrird other ways to adjust hashing (some programs offre even more hash-functions) > >2) In the "Save Game" ranking, Palm HIARCS scored 4/10 - Last I checked, Palm >HIARCS saved games fine. Is this not a "has it" or "doesn't have it" type of >feature? > No. Hiarcs can only save very inconvenient via MemoPad and it is difficult to select, for example a specific PGN database where to save to. There are many different qualities in the ability to save a game. Also, for example, the ability to comment during saving, choosing in which format to save etc.. >3) In the "Level Adjustment" ranking, Palm HIARCS scored 6/10 but you can adjust >more on Palm HIARCS than on Fritz 8! ?? No. Hiarcs offers 'only' 10 different playing levels. Of course, there are other ways in Hiarcs to adjust playing strenght by other parameters, but then they are covered in these other attributes categories (e.g. personalities, style, hashing etc.... > >4) Engine strength counts for ONLY 10/383 points - 2.6%?? I think engine >strength is definitely relevant on such slow devices compared to PCs. Engine strength is valued a lot, next to design the highest! There are 100 parameters.For 99% of the users, the strength is not of first priority, since they will loose against the program anyway. > >5) In the "Fischer Time" ranking, Palm Hiarcs scored 3/5 - Where is it missing >functionality? You can even set fischer time on primary, secondary and the >third time control. I can't comment on that in the moment. I don't own a copy of Hiarcs(Fischer time is not usable in the demo). I tested Hiarcs on a friends device. But I think I had reasons :-). If I will get a copy I might look at it more closely. > >6) There is an opening book style selector on Hiarcs but it scores 0. yes, I mixed that with the book selector, so the points from that column belong in 'Adj. Opening book style'. Doesn't change the overall point though. > >7) Palm HIARCS scored 0 for "Tutor/Trainer" even though it clearly shows book >moves, legal moves and incorporates a Coach Blunder Alert. This is all not covered under Tutor. For these attributes there are separate categories. Hiarcs doesn't have a Tutor functions, such as Chessmaster has. > >8) Highlight Legal Moves scores 0 - This is odd because Palm HIARCS has a >function called "highlightlegalmoves" which, suprise suprise, highlights legal >moves! Agreed. That slipped the test. I will correct that in the next version. > >9) "Move Entering" scores only 1, yet Palm HIARCS has normal move entry >(from/to), smart entry (to) and 5 way key entry. It can't slide the pieces, which is the most important entry method. > >10) Playout scores 0 even though Palm HIARCS has autoplay support!? Yes, it has autoplayer (it got the full points for that !), but starting the autoplayer may be not possible from a given board position (as mentioned before, I can't test that anymore). If it can start autoplay after a board setup or from within a game, then I can add points for that. > >11) Save energy scores 0 but the set Elo levels ALL save energy. Oh, come on. Not playing the game will also save energy. Other programs have special functions to lower the processor speed. That is clearly missing in Hiarcs. > >12) Next best scores only 1/2 - However, Palm HIARCS has a full next best >function -- certainly more than Palm Chess Genius which scored 2/2 but does not >have the function at all!?!? You are incorrect. Chess Genius HAS this function and it is easier accesible than in Hiarcs (one step less to reach the function; which is important if you play, you don't want to wander through menus). > >My next question would be: Did you actually test and run Palm HIARCS yourself >for this review? Yes, I did. Unfortunately, as I said, I don't have it available anymore. Maybe Mark Uniacke can give me a test version, I don't know. Most points you raised I could explain as you could see. Then, I made one mistake, which is not surprising (and I expected that when testing several thousand parameters). But for that we have people like you who can find these mistakes. Thanks. > >Looking forward to your reply, > >Enrico L. Carrisco.
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.