Author: John Merlino
Date: 16:47:39 12/15/99
Go up one level in this thread
On December 15, 1999 at 18:34:56, Michael Cummings wrote: >I did not realise that CM7K did not have infinite analysis, as you would know to >my limited use of the program. This is very unacceptable, I use CM6K for >position analysis and usually let it search for hours to find positions. Clarification: When I said that CM7000 did not have infinite analysis, I meant that the NEW feature that allowed you to view Chessmaster's analysis of a position in a human vs. human game did not exist. The old way that existed in CM6000 (setting the time control to infinite and having the Chessmaster personality analyze the position) still works fine. >They were on a winning formula with CM6K, and they had plenty of suggestions >when that came out as to what people would like in the next version. They had >plenty of time in which to take this information in, It is not as thouugh it was >thrust upon them in the last minute. It came to them after the release of CM6K. > >Then why do they go and create a whole new interface and where they take away >great features and add some which in my view a puffy rubbish. One of the main complaints of the old versions (from users and reviewers) WAS the interface, believe it or not. Most people (who spoke up about it, we'll never know about the silent majority) felt that it was confusing; were you in a tutorial, were you playing a rated game, were you playing online, were you looking at a Classic Game, etc. There was no visual cue to let you know. This was the MAIN complaint that the team addressed with CM7000. >It is not difficult to balance between what serious players want, and what you >need to make it interesting for the mass market. > >You would think that since the engine did top the SSDF that they would realise >that they had some opportunity to take this program to the serious and mass >market. The difference in number of units between the "serious" market and the "mass" market is huge. I would estimate (totally guesswork, but as much an educated guess as anybody's) that 1 in every 1000 units of Chessmaster are sold to "serious" chess players. From what I've seen, by adding several features that would make the program more desirable by those serious players, the ratio would go up to about 5 in 1000. Of course, I could be wrong. Do you think I'm way off base here? >I would have thought by now that getting it right is what they should be looking >at. They should know that 80% of the chess boards and peices (mainly the 3D >pieces) are just plain annoying and utter crap to play with and look at when >playing. And yet most people who ask for new features say they want the team to spend MONTHS developing true 3D pieces and boards that will look cool on their top-end 3D cards and machines. Of course, they don't realize that this would slow down the engine to a crawl. And, then again, they probably wouldn't care if it did. >They should add a survey to their site asking all these types of questions about >what was good and bad what is needed and what is not. They can go and change the >way there web sites look they could add this to gauge what people want The Chessmaster e-mail is read regularly (believe it or not), but not responded to unless a person has a bug that is significant AND the team needs more clarification on how the bug was caused. Other than that, you will probably not get a response other than the automatic one. >I think that is enough comment for now. But it more satifying to air them here >then sending them to Chessmaster to get the same response "Chessmaster has taken >on board your comment and thankyou for them" or something similar. To me it >seems to be automated response and get put into the recycle bin. Well, at least we're all getting our thoughts out in the open, which is always a good thing.... jm
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