Is a new Chestermaster on the way ???

[Kapaun]

I hope it's going to contain a UCI version.....

[cooldalek]

Why would it?

Chessmaster is designed for the mass market as an excellent training tool and for humans to play against it

It's not designed for computer chess enthusiasts

[Uri Blass]

Why would it?

Chessmaster is designed for the mass market as an excellent training tool and for humans to play against it

It's not designed for computer chess enthusiasts

The only question is if there are going to be more buyers or less buyers in case that it supports uci.

I have no idea about the reply to this question but
assuming that there are going to be 100,000 buyers without supporting uci and 100,100 buyers with supporting uci then
I do not see a reason not to support uci.


Uri

[cooldalek]

depends on the cost of adding the UCI option vs the profit from an extra 100 or whatever buyers

If cost < profit, then of course you are correct

[Tony Thomas]

depends on the cost of adding the UCI option vs the profit from an extra 100 or whatever buyers

If cost < profit, then of course you are correct

The engine already supports WB, so there isnt much of a reason to add UCI. Also, the cost of adding a protocol is probably not much, it would probably take a good programmer few minutes to add the protocol, but getting it to work bug free takes a lot longer.

[tiger]

depends on the cost of adding the UCI option vs the profit from an extra 100 or whatever buyers

If cost < profit, then of course you are correct

The engine already supports WB, so there isnt much of a reason to add UCI. Also, the cost of adding a protocol is probably not much, it would probably take a good programmer few minutes to add the protocol, but getting it to work bug free takes a lot longer.

The problem is the cost of technical support. If just 1% if the customers contact the technical support just to ask what UCI is, it's going to cost them a lot more than the profit of adding the protocol.


// Christophe

[Tony Thomas]

depends on the cost of adding the UCI option vs the profit from an extra 100 or whatever buyers

If cost < profit, then of course you are correct

The engine already supports WB, so there isnt much of a reason to add UCI. Also, the cost of adding a protocol is probably not much, it would probably take a good programmer few minutes to add the protocol, but getting it to work bug free takes a lot longer.

The problem is the cost of technical support. If just 1% if the customers contact the technical support just to ask what UCI is, it's going to cost them a lot more than the profit of adding the protocol.


// Christophe

A good readme file should be able to take care of that problem. Did 1% of the tiger customers contacted Lokasoft asking what UCI is?

[Mike S.]

Also, Chessmaster introduced a similar enhancement with version 8000: WinBoard engine support for the interface. You can load WB. engines and run tournaments with them in the CM GUI, in 8000 and 9000. (I don't know if the feature has been kept for CMX.) That was done before Ubisoft became the publisher, but there should be experiences and/or figures about the result from adding such a feature.

That attention for that feature among the cc. enthusiasts was small, although it worked flawless and you could assign CM opening books etc.

With CM 9000, King's own endgame tables format was introduced, incl. a generator program which was updated later. - So, it's not entirely true that Chessmaster only addresses the mass market. I am only afraid that the CM makers will not be satisfied with the reward they got for adding such features.

P.S. from my cover graphics museum:

[Kirk]

Have they ever released a version that did not require significant patches?

The best version they had was when John Merlino was working there, and they foolishly let him go

[JVMerlino]

Have they ever released a version that did not require significant patches?

The best version they had was when John Merlino was working there, and they foolishly let him go

Thanks for the kind words, but in all fairness I wouldn't equate my presence with a smaller number of patches. Every version that I worked on required at least two patches, and some had four.

jm