Drills lock up after trying to load the 2nd one. Although I haven't tried it in a bit, but I don't think there have been any updates since. Btw, I hope someone from UBI contacted you, because when I tried to report a bug they just gave me scripted responses. After I asked where to report bugs they just closed it as 'resolved.'
First of all: Great work on the chess personalities, graphics and overall playability. I really enjoy this chess program!
However...
- The installation procedure should allow adding components, such as the voice files, after the initial install. Now, I have to uninstall the entire game, and reinstall to get the voice files on hard disk. Or don't I?
- Only pause tutorials for three reasons: input required by the user (what move would you play?); take time to think about a position; explicit 'pause' by the user. So don't stop after every sentence or section for no reason at all, making me do 90 clicks in a 10m tutorial. That's more than actually playing a game!
- Allow selective disabling of all sound, videos and animation during startup(!!) and play from within CM itself. Also, setting NoAudio=1 in cm.ini doesn't work; it even gets reset to 0! (I am unable to get rid of the loud sound - and the sound IS loud - when the board rotates into view right after the intro movie. Deleting the used sound file is such an ugly solution)
- Menus for sound and graphics should be available from the startup screen (board with three buttons underneath it).
- In training, allow the user to select an opening for the computer personality to play. Also, it should be possible to preempt the computer's move if you want to check out a certain line of play.
When listening to f.i. Waitzkin's comments in the learning section of CM, unless I pause playback myself, the sound stops when the CM window loses focus and doesn't return until I replay a particular section or continue to the next. And some sections don't even allow me to pause. So I cannot listen to the Josh' comments and at the same time write an email or something. Since I am a multitasker, this annoys me quite a bit.
This behaviour is really counterintuitive!
The solution:
At least auto-pause and auto-continue if CM is unable to play sound while not having the focus.
Another useful training function would be to have visual feedback on the scores of played moves and current moves. Something like the game chart, extended with a fan of nodes that display current possible moves. These nodes would be moving as the engine calculates deeper
This has a number of useful aspects: 1. Easy to see that there is a single good move to play, without immediately knowing about the move 2. Instant overview of how the game is and has been progressing
Further functionality would include jumping to a position when clicking a node to see if I can find the move afterwards.
Also, you have obviously chosen to value checkmate by (-)100.00, but in the game chart, this skews the graph too much. 25.00 - 30.00 would be a good value (for displaying in the game chart of course) , since there are very few positions having that score for which the engine does not find a mating attack.
Annotation with the tactic puzzle drills, We like working with the pin, fork, hung piece, mate in two...etc. Can we also add as many other tactics as we can; like, deflection, skewer, removing the guard, the overworked piece, discovered attack, double attack, the "in between" move, find the weak squares and more. The more the better. Also, when playing human vs. human can we have the board flip sides automatically after every move? Also, make it so that any version of Chessmaster can play online with all other versions by updating past version's online. Which will have more people online. Thank you.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: TimmyT123,
CM11 works fine on my laptop using a pentium and XP, but on my desktop AMD and XP - it had minor problems (like game freeze). Also, we should work on a patch for game.exe, set to high priority, for those that have had the freeze problem. I'll look into it.
I would add the problems with diagrams in the PC version. In auto-annotation, the diagrams that CM inserts do not display properly. Likewise, when I try to print out a diagram, it comes out all jumbled just as in the auto-annotation.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: WargamerScott,
"In the game of chess, you can never let your adversary see your pieces." ---Zapp Brannigan
CM is a good SW to learn and improve chess playing. CM XI is only a little step forward than X edition. A missing tool is, in my opinion, the possibility of obtain the post-game analysis after closing the game. This feature is a must in a serious analysis of own games, i.e. lost ones.
A missing tool is, in my opinion, the possibility of obtain the post-game analysis after closing the game. This feature is a must in a serious analysis of own games, i.e. lost ones.
You mean the ability to revisit the auto-annotation after the initial session? Just save the game after you are done annotating it. I have all my games saved with any annotation by me or the PC.
"In the game of chess, you can never let your adversary see your pieces." ---Zapp Brannigan
Some people have noted that Chessmaster X does not have the ability to create an opening book from a PGN file (as in Chessmaster 9000). Perhaps we could have this back?
I bought this game (Chessmaster) on the xbox live arcade. At first message chess worked fine, but now when I try to view my inbox it says "Loading" and shows the spinning loading symbol indefinitely. It is not the xbox freezing, because I can still back out with B, or sign out via the xbox guide (the button in the center of the controller). It's pretty annoying, seeing as how message chess was my favorite match type, when it worked. If you could come out with a patch to fix this, that would be great, thanks.
Originally posted by Vector.ca: I would like a back up, restore feature, for all your individual configuration settings, screen layouts, adjourned games, Academy history, user data, etc to another drive partition and/or a memory stick, for safe keeping. This way if your OS or hard drive failed you could quickly re-install all saved games and tutorials after the problem was fixed. An import/export feature or backup would really be appreciated. All from the game, menu system. This is the PC software version of CM I am discussing.
Originally posted by thedarkone11983: CHESSMASTER 12
Please, make it possible to play through the Chessbase-format ebooks - by everymanchess, chesscentral, etc. - on CM! I also think it would be very useful to combine the score and the analysis windows!
I am thrilled to see that you are aware of the ratings issue--my rating always goes down, but never goes up. My question is this: Does anyone know if this problem is being addressed with a patch anytime soon?
I contacted technical support by email and phone, and they completely ignored me, once even saying it was not even a technical support problem but an "in-game" issue? WHAT? lol!
Any info/help anybody can provide on this would be greatly appreciated. (I use a PC, Windows Vista 32 bit.)
I'm encountering problems related to the Swiss System in the program. The majority of times, the program will make seemingly RANDOM pairings instead of the proper ones. For example, a player with a score of 5.0/5 will face someone with a score of 2.0/5 instead of the ones at 4.0 or 4.5 And whenever I exit & re-load the tournament, the pairings continue to be randomized.
Yes, once you start a swiss tournament you should go through with it. Once you interrupt it it starts making strange pairings (it even pairs up players that had already played). This has been so at least since Chessmaster 8000, so I wouldn't hold my breath
