*** What's New in Version 1.0.2a? ***
1. Fixed a bug regarding take back action.
2. Fixed a notation bug.
=====================================================================
III. *** What's New in Version 1.0.2? ***
1. Fixed a rare bug which caused you to always play against the Chessmaster
personality in a Rated Game, no matter who you chose to play against. This bug
only occurred on Windows XP or 2000 machines.
2. Fixed a bug with choosing a random opponent in a Rated Game that could cause
a user's rating to be inaccurately adjusted after the game was completed.
3. Fixed a rare bug which could corrupt the names of the folders in the File
dialogs (e.g. Load Game, Save Game, etc.). This bug only occurred on Windows
XP or 2000 machines.
4. Fixed a bug with loading an adjourned Rated Game that could cause a user's
rating to be inaccurately adjusted after the game was completed.
5. Fixed a bug in Blunder Alert in which pressing the "I Take it Back"
button would sometimes take back the move in the move list but not actually
move the piece on the board back to its original position.
6. Fixed a bug in which it was possible to select inactive menu items via the
keyboard.
7. Fixed a crash bug that was caused by minimizing and restoring the application
while the Game Analysis feature was being used. However, in general, you should
avoid minimizing Chessmaster 9000, or switching to another application, while
a Mentor feature (such as Game Analysis, Solve for Mate, etc.) is being used,
as Chessmaster will no longer have as much access to your computer's CPU, causing
lower-quality results.
8. Fixed a rare bug in Chessmaster Live in which, whenever the user attempted
to challenge another player, the user received a message stating that the player
was not available for challenges. This bug only occurred on Windows XP or 2000
machines.
9. Added two command line parameters to Chessmaster 9000. By launching Chessmaster.EXE
with the "-disable3D" switch, the program will disable all True3D
options, and not allow you to select any True3D boards and pieces. This is useful
for users who have video cards or drivers that claim to be DirectX 8.1 compatible,
but are not. By launching Chessmaster.EXE with the "-enable3D" switch,
the program will enable all True3D options, regardless of what your video card
and its driver can support. Note that these two switches are PERMANENT. In other
words, if you run Chessmaster with "-disable3D", and then run it with
NO command line parameter, you will STILL not get 3D support until you run Chessmaster
with the "-enable3D" switch. The opposite is true for the "-enable3D"
switch.
10. Modified the "Mentor Preferences" dialog to contain a new setting
that affects all engine instances. The menu item in the "Preferences"
menu is now called "Engine". It still contains the setting where you
can change the Blunder Alert Threshold and the Transposition Table Size for
the Mentor engine instance. But it also now contains a control called "Engine
Priority", in which you can tell Windows how "important" the
engine processes are to your overall multi-tasking system. This is useful if
you intend to use other Windows applications at the same time as Chessmaster
9000. HOWEVER, note that changing this setting from its default of "Normal"
can GREATLY reduce the overall strength of play of ALL engines in the program
(INCLUDING imported Winboard Engines!), as well as lower the quality of Advice
and Game Analysis. Once again, this setting is ONLY useful for users who wish
to multitask while playing Chessmaster and had difficulties doing so before
installing the v1.0.2 patch. Also note that changing this setting will NOT affect
engines that are currently active; it will only affect engine instances that
are created after the setting is changed.
11. Greatly reduced the probability of a Blunder Alert telling you that you
should have made the move that you DID make. However, given that the Blunder
Alert feature attempts to very quickly determine if a blunder is made, this
behavior is still possible. If you find that the Blunder Alert feature pops
up more often than you believe it should, then you should consider increasing
the threshold value by going to "Preferences -> Engine".
12. Fixed a bug in the Annotation window involving editing the User annotation
of a move. This bug would cause any text after about 500 characters to be truncated
once the "OK" button was pressed after editing. Users may now enter
up to about 8100 characters of annotation text per move.
13. Fixed a bug in which personalities that had access to the Endgame Databases
would fail to find the correct move in the EGDBs if there was a White pawn on
a2 or a Black pawn on a7, or in rare en-passant cases. Also, mates longer than
150 moves are now handled properly (only of interest for separately generated
6-man EGDBs).
14. Fixed an error with two menu items and their corresponding accelerators
in the Kids Room. The "Quickstart! -> My Level" is now CTRL+Q,
and "Quick Hint" is now CTRL+H.
15. Tournament PGN files are now automatically saved with Time Stamp Annotation
information if that feature is selected.
16. Fixed a bug in which attempting to import a PGN file with only one game
into an opening book failed to import any moves.
17. Fixed a problem with the biography of the Lili personality.
18. Added another PGN Import criteria for opening books -- Knight Moves.
19. Mentor Lines spin box no longer stops at 2.
20. Blunder Alert window can now be closed while the engine is thinking.
21. Fixed a bug that allowed players to choose some options from the table's
right-button menu while the Blunder Alert window was visible and the "Why?"
button pressed.
22. Fixed a bug that highlighted the e6 square when the answer from an en-passant
quiz was displayed, instead of removing the captured pawn.
23. Fixed a bug in which the wrong menu was displayed when you right-clicked
on one of your pieces.
24. Fixed a rare bug in which you couldn't solve a "Pin the Piece"
drill because you couldn't move the right piece as that move would leave your
king in check.
25. Fixed a bug that left the table empty on the last move in the last 4 games
from "Josh/Psychology of Competition"
26. Limit the maximum value of time of the game to 99:59:59.
=====================================================================
IV. *** What's New in Version 1.0.1? ***
1. Added support for downloadable True3D boards and pieces.
2. Fixed a rare problem in Rated Games (including rated games in a Tournament)
that could, after the game was finished, cause a large number of dialogs to
appear, each one referring to the result of the current game. This bug could
permanently corrupt a user's rating. If you happened to experience this bug,
you should delete your user and create a new user.
3. Fixed a rare problem in which it was possible for humans to be added to
a tournament if the user asked for random computer opponents.
4. Made minor adjustments to the Capablanca, Lasker and Morphy personalities.
5. Fixed two tutorial errors.
=====================================================================
V. *** What Problems Still Exist? ***
The other bugs that have been reported, but are either not fixed or not confirmed,
are:
1. It has been reported that attempting to switch from a True3D chess set to
a 2D or Fixed View set could cause a crash on a computer with the Intel i850
EP chipset. If you have a computer with this chipset (which has its video card
embedded with the motherboard) and are experiencing this bug, you can avoid
it by only using True3D boards and pieces. It is possible that this is not a
bug in Chessmaster 9000 at all, and is due to a video driver problem with this
card. This is most likely caused by drivers that are not 100% DirectX 8.1 compliant.
You should also regularly look for updated drivers on your computer manufacturer's
website.