My 2 cents

Josh tutorial were GREAT!! More of this please!!

May have missed how to do it, but I want to copy from the database to the 'set up position' section.

Analyser blows through stuff to fast. Some way of stepping through it would be great.

Sometimes it seems the lower level players do impossible things. Example Raj, at 1059 has calculated mate at 12 moves out. Huh? A real person that has that ability to calculate positions would be rated much higher, IMHO.

Resizing of boards. I like the 2D boards but I can't re-arrange the windows in a way that I like. A smaller board would help. Even if it wasn't re-sizable, just a smaller set.

Swordfishtrombo's ideas on more human players are great.

Backwards compatability for online players seems like a no brainer. Not implementing it seems like a heavy handed approach to forcing people to upgrade from previous editions.

Somebody already said it, but more personalities would be good since you hit a plateau and end up playing the same ones over an over.

i hope to see chessmaster can play like fritz
the most powerful missing features in chessmaster play in server like chess.net
thanx

hi to all
I read all this thread and found many usefull information, but please explain me next thing.

I got version 9000, and found new option "swiss tournament" - ok, very nice and fine - but how I could play some serious games (for example 90minutes/game) and wait that huge time expenses while will play all other players.

or if I want to do tournament with 126+2human players???? Why there is no option to "randomise" the games and give only results??? and we with friend cant play only our games...

if smb can help please answer.
thx!

First off, I love the game. Had the previous version, never really played it. The 10th version is brill, now playing opponents ranked 1100+. Nice! As a beginner, I LOVED the tutorials, amazing, interesting, challenging, and clearly very good at teaching. Books etc I find boring, the tutorials are a blessing!

I'd love to see more tutorials, I'd love to have a joining between the tutorials and the training mode, It would be really cool to improve the post game analysis to show where your worst move was and suggest a different approach. The number of possible mates in a game notification at the end could be improved, 'to take you back to that point' to point out just what you're missing.

Is it possible to change the angle of the board during ranked play? Thanks again!

Anyway, I LOVE it, you've really opened Chess up for me, makes me WANT to play it. Nice one, slap on the back for everyone. Thank you.

Pauly.

The more I play CMX the more idea's I have, here are a few more.
1) The 'Mini CM' idea is great! Also a version for my Paml Pilot would be nice.

2) A better database would be nice. Something that is more functional. It would be nice to input a position and then get the win/loss/draw percentage for certain moves from that position. Or see which moves are played more often est. I play corrospondence chess, and a real good database would be nice.

3) Get rid of the 'titles' for the online players. They are totaly irrelevant. Players should be able to make up a little 'rolex' card, that they could put there own data into, along with a small picture. Check out peoples home pages on Chessworld.net to get an idea of what I mean. Clicking on a player online to see a profile is a good idea, but the way it is set up now is terrible.

4) CMX personalities play well, but they turn into Kasparov when they are losing, regardless of there rating. Also CM 11th needs a true monster chess engine at it's highest setting, and a more detailed analysis feature.

5) I mentioned this in an earlier post, but there have been so many complaints I'll state it again. Don't release the first build! Or the second build! The online experience is a big part of CM, so get it right! Also make sure that earlier verisons of CM can connect. CMX users should be able to play with CM 11th users online. CM 9000 users should have been able to play with us. That is the best way to keep customers coming back, and building the online community. The interfaces may change for the diffrent versions, but the inline site should be the same for all versions. The site just has to sync clocks, recognize moves, and operate a few chat windows. All versions of CM should be able to play each other!!!

6) More criteria in the online games. For example the ability to set a minimum rating in order for an opponent to accept your challenge. Most of the time I don't mind playing a much weaker player, but sometimes I want a challange, and it would be nice to set a level for an opponent to qualify for the challenge. It could be set in 100 point increments. That way a 1400 or 1600 player can set a level when creating a game and not have to deal with someone rated 800.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: E.Thang,

Thanks for a great program! We are having a blast with it - especially Josh's academy. But there are a couple things I would like to see in the next edition:
1. Game analysis that is context sensitive to the level of the opponent. When entering one of my son's scholastic tournament games, there was one move that turned a badly losing game into a win that won the state championship. His coach loved the move and cited several distinct benefits of the move. However, CMX called the move a blunder. It then indicated that the move leads to blah, blah, blah. If the opponent was a chess master, that would likely be true (I guess). But when you are entering and analyzing scholastic games, it might be good to get analysis that contemplates the level of play that could be reasonably anticipated by the level of opponent based upon their rating. You could provide a dual track analysis something along the lines of "this move can work well against an opponent rated under 1500 because it leads to blah, blah, and blah or has this advantage, but against stronger opponents, it leads to blah, blah, and further blah." Without this approach, as a relatively novice chess Dad, I can't very well tell my 7 year old that his game winning move was a blunder, but also couldn't tell him why it was successful, whereas his coach could. If I could get both sides of the analysis, I could work with him as to why it worked, and also why against another opponent it might have not worked.
2. An ability to take the game with me on my Pocket PC would be nice. The old Kasparov Chessmate by Broderbund has this feature, though their execution of the concept is positively horrible. I would love to see what you guys could come up with. I imagine you might need to restrict the opponent strength due to the decreased processing power, but for us newbies, this would still be an enjoyable feature. Key would be the ability to save multiple games and then synch back to the PC for the analysis.
3. Clearly label the packaging as US version or UK (etc.) version. I inadvertently ended up with the UK version. As such, I wasted several efforts trying to download and install the wrong patch. Fortunately my connection is high speed so the wasted download wasn't too painful. Also note the distinction in the version in the "About" menu that is supposed to tell you what version the game is.
4. I saw someone else recommend a "physical" clock that the player must get in the habit of pressing. As I'm working with my son on scholastic tournaments, I think that would be a wonderful training tool. I can't tell you how many times I've seen scholastic players forget to hit the clock. Please add!!!!

Again, CMX is a great product and we are enjoying it immensely. Thanks.

I am new to this program !!!
AND I LOVE IT. Thank you.

However, every once in a while I want to ask "why did the computer move there?"

Please give me a way to ask that question.

You know how the database just block up everything. I think it's very annoying.
Please make the database better.

Also, I think it's pretty cool to have animated menus, and stuff like that.

A few more ideas:

- One of the things that I've noticed is a challenge at scholastic tournaments is the frequency with which the young players will make mistakes in notating their games. In addition to a physical clock, it would be good to be able to suppress the computer display of the moves and have a window into which the player notates the moves. The computer, of course, would continue to track the correct notation and could then present instruction on any notation errors made after the game is over.
- The ability to analyze multiple games and scrutinize a player's style. Instead of always focusing on each move's merits, the computer might be able to see systematic problems such as a player over focuses on attacking and not enough on defense.

Hi,

I'm new to CMX as well. One of the few things I'd like to see, is a history/encyclopedia of chess and/or documentary included on the CD explaining more about Chess and ChessMaster itself.

Also, what about the inclusion of a set of "Lexx" style pieces? This sci-fi TV show had a brilliant 4th Season episode called "The Game", which played out the historical L. De Labourdonnais v A McDonnell game from London, 1834. I'd love to be able to play Chess, using the "Lexx" characters. I guess, though, that copyright could be problematic.


Jon

quote:

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I'm new to CMX as well. One of the few things I'd like to see, is a history/encyclopedia of chess and/or documentary included on the CD explaining more about Chess and ChessMaster itself.

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You could. Go under help, then click about chessmaster 10th edition.

I have already posted a suggestion for a new chessmaster on the Nintendo DS elsewhere on this forum. I don't want to double post, but it seems that this is a better thread to post it.

Basically it would be nice to have a stronger portable chessmaster. Plus it would be nice to use the touch screen to move the pieces.

1. Visibility of blacks (only few are good for sth more than showing to one's grandmother) and - to some extent - whites in the vast majority of sets.

2. At least two additional predefined layouts for popular screen resolutions ("proportional" 1280x960 and 1152x864)

3.Program fonts should be compatible with system large fonts - now I virtually cannot set up 1280x960/1024 screen resolution on my '17 CRT without causing mess in my CMX window. Of course, the system then is almost unusable.

4. Spoken and detailed commentary on the most complex and famous openings.

quote:

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1. Visibility of blacks (only few are good for sth more than showing to one's grandmother) and - to some extent - whites in the vast majority of sets.

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Have you checked mismatt and Skess_01's beautiful creations?

Hi there,

I'm from Latvia and I play chess quite often. I've tried chess software like Fritz, but I allways return to Chessmaster 10th, maybe because it looks very good and is somewhat more user-friendly than other programs.

I have a pretty crazy wish, but who knows, maybe it is possble, anyways:

When I play human opponents, I allways write down the moves on my palm, so when I get back home, I can allways upload the pgn files to chess software and do deep analysis of my games.
My wish is to be able to create a personality in CM based on theese games I provide. Is it possible to make CM to be able to imitate players from the data I provide (and the more I provide, the more accurate the imitation)?
I really hope it is, but it sound really hard.

Anyway,
thx for the great game and good luck!

Maris

P.S. Excuse my english

Wow, I've learned a lot about chess in the last few months. CMX's tutorials have really helped!

One thing that would be nice is a multi-game analysis of a player and advice based upon that players style. This could almost work in conjunction with the last post which could also allow someone to practice new tactics against an opponent they've faced before. Even if CMXI can't simulate a real opponent by studying their games, it would be neat if it could analyze across my games and advise me of weaknesses or strenghts that I should focus on. An example would be that it might notice that I favor queen-side attacks, even from openings or against defenses that don't make that approach very viable. Armed with that information, it could advise me on better openings to use that will support my tendency to do queen-side attacks.

For that matter, in the openings section, there is an impressive database of choices. I also really like some of the explanations of the openings and the ability to practice them. One improvement would be to also present what the objective is of the opening. For instance, I only recently learned from my son's coach about how certain openings favor either king-side or queen-side attacks. Using CMX, I very easily (and actually have) studied an opening and tried to use it, but had no clue as to what to do after move 5, which was the last move in the opening line CMX presented. It could at least tell me what the objectives were. If it could point out that the opening is intended to lead to a queen-side attack or defend against a king-side attack while facilitating your launching a queen-side attack, that would be very helpful.

Again, thanks for a great tutorial series. Now that I've made it through more of that material, I'm starting to actually try to play against the computer. And in doing so, am starting to understand more of the posts and many reported frustrations with the bugs. Please don't wait until CMXI to address these bugs.

Thank you.

Congratulations on the 10th version guys. I really like the Acadamy because I used to be able to play well but after years of not playing I got real bad and this is helping but I need a bit more guidance say a visual suggestion of where I went wrong and what I should have played instead as well as drills allocated to me for my weaknesses.

I hope this doesn't sound stupid but I used to really love the classical music in version 6000 I think and was really put off when that was not included in 9000 or 10th Edition. It gave the game atmospher for me and I'm one of those whose thought wander more when it's too quiet. So where did that Classical music go to? Can't you make it available for download please?

I noticed a lot of boards from CM 9000 are not available on 10th Edition. Why? Unfortunately I think this is a market strategy to make sure that CM is available to as wide an audience as possible for sales but don't forget that a lot of us now have Pentium 4's with high end graphics cards so please don't lower the standard. I was disappointed with most of the sets because they just lacked that 'polish' that CM 9000 sets had.

This compromise on board and set quality is inexcuseable because all you had to do was provide extra options (T & L etc) for those with high end cards to get a brilliant effect. Instead you have forced us all, regardless of our high end Graphics cards, to look for hours at dull boring boards with an almost paper look with very little shine and reflection if any.

Glass and marble sets look terribly amateurish in 10th Edition compared to CM 9000 and are an eyesore to look at. By all means cater to those with low end machines but not at our expense!

Up until now CM's graphics were a real plus but with the 10th Edition you have totally riuned it. First you got rid of that terrific classical music, which goes so well with chess (CM 6000) now you downgrade the graphics - all for extra sales to appeal to low end machine users so as to increase profits.

Bit by bit the quality of CM is being gradually torn down and replaced with a 'universal version' for profitability. CM 9000 looked like a real chess game. Even the border looked 'wooden'. CM 6000 with classical music created a great atmosphere but 10th edition is so paperish and cartoonish, especially the menus with no atmosphere or music. A 21st century game with 10th century graphics.

A place to take notes, while going through the lessons I find myself writeing down notes on paper and my writeing is rather slopy and large, it would be neat to have a notepad right in the program interface. I dont like the one that comes with windows, or im too lazy to open it.

one thing i'd like to see. is that caheesmaster dosent freeeze while anaylising games!!!

i like to be able to bulk analyze games (ok i know its not the best way) that i paly on the net.

And while its running still be able to look at other games.
As just viewing a bord and anylising it on my own wont have any inpact on the anaylises running. i could then get on with learning while chess master works!!!

A tool to alow user created 3d modles (i.e. 3ds, lightwave, blender) to be added to a new chesset. The current chess set editor seems to only alow modification of the textures and not 3d modles.

I have become quite talented with 3d work and would like to try my hand at createing a chess set for the game.

my requests for CMXi..

1) EDIT - scratch that, Mentor Lines seems to be what I was thinking of.

2) Better database
-Similarly to 1), Chessmaster's database features fall far short behind those of their competition. Allow me to keep a nice PGN database of my games, let me paste a PGN from the clipboard into the database seemlessly. Let me search the Database for a position.

3) Better window management
- I hate all the little windows that move independently from the environment. If I Restore Down a maximized window, I'd like it if the smaller windows CM is using would dynamically shrink down, staying within the Chessmaster environment.

4) Universal Online
- Chess is a universal game that transcends the PC/Mac/Playstation/Mobile/Xbox/Gamecube/PSP/DS/etc barriers. The next versions of Chessmaster would do themselves a service by being interoperable online. If done correctly, that community would become THE place for online chess, as the Chessmaster brand is already much more recognizable than anything offered by the competition. Ubi is only limiting themselves and the potential of their community by restricting people to smaller circles of players. Now, I realize this might have larger issues preventing this, such as mandates from Xbox Live or whatever, but if it was possible, it would be sweet.

I would like to have relaxing chess playing music while playing. I would also like more learning stuff like power mates and trap and zaps with the same approach we use when you click advise on a game. thats it