CM 11 Bug Fixes / Enhancements | Forums

[cysk]

If this has not been mentioned, I would like to see a modifiable delay and/or increment added to the chess clock (this is the digital age after all) - e.g. 5-second per move. Perhaps adjustable from 0 - 59 seconds.

The difference is that with a delay (Bronstein)- used more in US - if you don't use all of the 5 seconds to make your move, your overall time does not change. With an increment (Fischer) - used more worldwide outside of US - if you don't use all the time for a move, those extra unused seconds get added to the main time.

[dogsolitude_uk]

I'd like to echo PincerSmash1944's sentiments about tutorials etc.

I really love Chessmaster: the interface is far, far better than Fritz's, it runs on my laptop with no DVDS or internet connection (unlike some of Ubi's other games these days *glower*) so I can play on the train. It even ran really well on my antediluvian Vaio...

Tutorials

The tutorials are brilliant. It's so much easier to learn a chess technique or opening through Chessmaster than from a book full of notation. I really appreciate the way we have three different sets of tutorials, each taking a different approach.

So ok, why not sell additional tutorials?

Perhaps in the next version of Chessmaster (or even after an significant update to this one) we could see more tutorials on mroe advanced subjects, such as openings and studies of endgames. This would really be invaluable.

Tactics Training

I recently became addicted to the Chess Tactics Server. How about having timed chess tactics problems drawn from a database? I would love this to pieces. Really. In fact, I'd pay extra for it.

Puzzles, Merediths, Problems

A guilty pleasure of mine, John Nunn's puzzles were great. Lets have some more real problems and compositions, *not* just randomly generated positions with white to move and one king.

In fact, I've got a bunch in PGN format, but have not yet found a way of using them in the same way in Chessmaster. I can load the PGNs fine, but after that it all sort of loses it's way: no commentary and no way of knowing if I'm 'wrong'.

So many of these chess puzzles are available online as PNG or FENs, so having a mode where you can import one, tell Chessmaster what type of puzzle it is (select Mate in Two mode, say) and have Chessmaster solve/generate hints in the background would be cool.

Edit: it did occur to me to find some way of creating a .Net based app that would take a 'Mate In Two' PGN file or FEN string, pipe it through some engine or other, append the solution to the file and use a transform to procedurally generate .tut files, but this is a bit beyond my coding skills right now. Plus they often don't come with the (very useful) introductory paragraphs or hints.

Fairy Chess and other Arcane Variations

OK, maybe not for the purists, but I'd like these...

Skins and Stuff

I created my own chess set using the texture extract tool and got something quite nice to work with. The only thing I'd ask for here is the ability to shrink the font a bit, but really, you can never have too many skins and chess sets. Mind you though: would a black and white Staunton set on a Black and White board be too much to ask for? everything seems so, well, yellowish...

No Clock Mode

Hell, sometimes you just want to relax with a game. Even setting the timing rules to something silly still leaves something ticking away. I'd like to be able to start a game in the morning, and make the odd move throughout the day, say... OK, maybe I'm just weird.

Edit: I just fiddled with the clock setting a bit, but being able to give yourself infinite time up by ticking a box would be a small usability enhancement.
_____

In general though, most of the things I'd like I think could potentially be possible with a patch and downloadable content, say £5 for a bunch of tutorials.

I hope that helps, and look forward to seeing more of Chessmaster in the future! You guys have a wonderful product here, and letting it continue to grow with addons, more tutorials and puzzles would, in my view, definitely be the best way forward!

Edit: I's also like to say that the chess glossary is great too. Very handy. Could this be expanded upon? This would be useful, especially since the Oxford Companion to Chess is no longer available.

[topspeeds2010]

If this has not been mentioned, I would like to see a modifiable delay and/or increment added to the chess clock (this is the digital age after all) - e.g. 5-second per move. Perhaps adjustable from 0 - 59 seconds.

The difference is that with a delay (Bronstein)- used more in US - if you don't use all of the 5 seconds to make your move, your overall time does not change. With an increment (Fischer) - used more worldwide outside of US - if you don't use all the time for a move, those extra unused seconds get added to the main time.

methoo.com

[earcar]

I just bought this game and I'm happily using it on my Windows 7 partition. Awesome game!

However it will be much more awesome if the next version will be ported to Mac OSX, because few Mac users have a Windows license for their Macs and rebooting sucks.

I know that Chessmaster 9000 for Mac uses Gameranger for the online multiplayer mode, so when and if it will be ported make sure the multiplayer mode is compatible with the Windows version!

Ah, and native UCI engines support of course.

[KHollister]

Originally posted by TwoDecadePlayer:
I was curious, since CM X has added Kasparov and Topalov to the personalities of CM X if there was any news on a release of Magnus Carlsen? I know he is only 19 but there should be adequate data to do his personality pretty accurately. He's only 25 or 26 pts behind Kasparov's all time high of 2851 and eventually going to win the World Championship, it's only a matter of time. If anyone has any clues about this I'd like to know. Thanks.

[zoren1]

It would be very nice to have a way to slow down (or is this already possible?) the automatic spoken move voice announcement for the PC version of the game. It is very helpful for the visually impaired.

[KHollister]

Originally posted by Koachchris:
Whats up with a "storege" problem causing the ratings not to work ? Also, when I do play non rated games , why is analyze mode still on ?

There are some issues with the servers as of late, hence the reason for the problems. As for the spelling... well, keep in mind that Ubisoft is a global company, and not everyone's first langauge is English.

Also, why wouldn't Analyze mode be on for non-rated games? Keep in mind that you can turn it off via the Shortcuts bar (the bottom left hand corner of the screen).

[NeoZen88]

I love your Chessmaster: Grandmaster edition. I am new to this forum so I am not sure exactly what has already been discussed. So, please forgive me for anything that is redundant. As I have been playing and learning, I do see a few KEY changes that would be beneficial to ALL that truly love this chess game in the next version.

1. When you finish a game in the training mode and lose...then take back the last move and win...it registers as one win and one loss and you didn't play two FULL games. It can be viewed in the category under unrated-games. That is not good. In a sense you can cheat and increase your percentages of winning if you wanted to.

2. The chess boards in 3D need a way to control the tilt of the board...there has been too many times you can't see the whole board from a top position - and you make a mistake because you don't perceive the whole board correctly. That got me so frustrated that I just uses the 2D boards to make sure there won't be ANY such mistake. Perhaps, make it tilt to your specifications from flat to 80 degrees to 60 degrees or 40 degrees etc.

3. Fixing some of the spelling mistakes and words in the text that don't match your what your voice spoke. It may seem trivial but people see it as more professional when it is perfect.

4. Under the Rated-Games, after it is over and you anyalize the game with the computer to learn what you did wrong, it would be great to have the option to play the game over from exactly where you want. Right now it is not simple or possible to save the game and instantly play it over. Say you wanted to avoid the blunder from move 30 it would be ideal to not have to manually set up the pieces anew for those really great games that you worked so long and hard at. Perhaps, with one button, you could save it and be able to play it again in another section that would be unrated - just in order to learn from your mistakes.

Thanks in advance!
Jim

[KHollister]

Hi!

Thanks for your comments.

There is already a way to resize/rotate the chessboard: by using the mouse wheel or the Page Up/Page Down keys.

To move the board, click and drag it by the border (note that the cursor will change when you move it).

The Left and Right arrow keys rotate the board, and you can tilt it by using the Up and Down arrow keys.

Hope this helps!

[NeoZen88]

Thanks so much for the quick response!

The only other thing I see wrong is as you play better players, with higher ELO ratings, it takes really long for them to move. At times this can be good but at other times this can be really painstaking. I don't know all the math behind the computer's strategy but if you could force the players, in the Rated-Games to move quicker it would help beginners like me. Right now, if you set the clock at 30 seconds per move I still see that sometimes the computer will go beyond that - Unless I am missing something?

It sure does take alot of discipline to wait two minutes plus for the higher rated opponents to move. For forty plus moves that is over eighty minutes! You could have new options in the next version, that doesn't compromise the integrity of the depth of their moves, so as to learn how to play against higher-rated players in order to see their patterns of play. With that knowledge, we can at least can see how much more we have to improve down the road.

Thanks in advance,
Jim