DAN09697@NUACC.BITNET (Daniel G. Rabe) (12/05/86)
I've been greatly impressed with ChessMaster 2000's chess-playing ability.
I have been terribly disappointed with its tendency to crash, and with what
I feel is an inferior user interface.
I don't have any specifics on the crashes; sometimes it's a Guru, sometimes
the machine just freezes.
My gripes on the user interface:
-- When analyzing a game (letting CM2000 play back all the moves), there
is no pause mechanism. Thus, the game is played back so fast that it
is impossible to follow what's going on.
-- If you hit the mouse button when it's not your turn to move, CM2000
puts up a big window saying "It's not your turn". This window does
not go away until CM2000 moves, obstructing your view of part of the
board.
-- Menus are poorly designed. If you're moving the mouse down a menu,
chances are you'll evoke a sub-menu; if you keep moving the mouse down,
you'll traverse the sub-menu options, but entirely skip over a couple
of primary menu choices. Aligning the left boundaries of the sub-
menus would fix this. (I haven't programmed my Amiga very much, so
I don't know how difficult this would be).
In summary, the only reason ChessMaster 2000 can be on the market is the
fact that it plays good chess -- and this is presumably the primary
criterion for purchasing a chess game. (In other words, it plays good
chess, but you've got to put up with a few hassles along the way).
Daniel Rabe
BITNET: DAN09697@NUACCgrr@cbmvax.cbm.UUCP (George Robbins) (12/06/86)
In article <821@ulowell.UUCP> DAN09697@NUACC.BITNET (Daniel G. Rabe) writes: >I've been greatly impressed with ChessMaster 2000's chess-playing ability. >I have been terribly disappointed with its tendency to crash, and with what >I feel is an inferior user interface. ... > -- If you hit the mouse button when it's not your turn to move, CM2000 > puts up a big window saying "It's not your turn". This window does > not go away until CM2000 moves, obstructing your view of part of the > board. On the version I've seen, all you have to do is click the mouse off of the board somewhere, and the error message goes away... My biggest gripe is that there isn't an option for plain black and white pieces - I want to see those enemy pieces. Maybe if it would just flash threatening pieces in red, that would help, huh 8-) Also, the 3-d board is cute, but a pain in the ass to pick up the pieces on. A window that didn't obscure the board, but would display the last n moves in chess notation would be nice too... -- George Robbins - now working for, uucp: {ihnp4|seismo|rutgers}!cbmvax!grr but no way officially representing arpa: cbmvax!grr@seismo.css.GOV Commodore, Engineering Department fone: 215-431-9255 (only by moonlite)