Chessmaster 9000 Version 1.0.0 Table of Contents: I. II. III. IV. V. VI.

General Information Late Breaking Changes to the Documentation What Problems Still Exist? Where to find the Chessmaster FAQ Reasons to visit Chessmaster.com Technical and Customer Support

===================================================================== I. *** General Information *** 1. If you experience any problems with this version of your Chessmaster 9000 pro gram, before you contact Technical Support, please make sure that you can outlin e the procedure by which you experienced your problem. Try to be as specific as possible when describing EXACTLY what happened. What were you trying to do with Chessmaster when (and before) the problem occurred? What type of hardware does y our computer have? What version of Windows is it running? What other programs, i f any, were running at the time? These are all potential questions that Technica l Support might ask you, and your ability to answer these questions will greatly increase the likelihood that your problem will be resolved. Thank you. 2. Chessmaster 9000 uses a "CD Refresh" form of copy protection. The first time you run Chessmaster 9000 after installing the program, you will be required to p ut in one of the Chessmaster 9000 CDs. After that time, you may start the progra m without one of these CDs for a certain length of time before being asked for t he CD again. In general, you may use the program for approximately two weeks or approximately two dozen sessions before the program will ask you to put in one o f your Chessmaster 9000 CDs, verifying that you possess one of them. However, if you chose the "Typical" installation option, you may still need on e or both of the CDs at any time, depending on which Chessmaster features you us e. So it is always a good idea to have your CDs on hand, in case the program req uires them. 3. The minimum system requirements for running Chessmaster 9000 are: Windows 98/ME/XP (Chessmaster 9000 does not officially support Windows 2000 or N T) Pentium II 450 or AMD K6-3 500 (Pentium III 1GHz processor or faster recommended ) 64 MB RAM (128 MB RAM required for Windows XP and recommended for Windows 98/ME) DirectX8.1-compatible video card (16MB required, 32MB recommended) 800x600 screen resolution (1024x768 or higher recommended) 250 MB hard drive space (1.2 GB recommended) Windows-compatible mouse Internet connection for play on Ubi.com (minimum 56k modem or broadband) 4. Chessmaster 9000 needs up to 20 MB of free hard drive space to run smoothly, due to audio requirements. Along with the needs of other Windows applications th at may be running, along with the requirements of Windows' swapfile, we recommen d having at least 30 MB free hard drive space on the drive where you installed C hessmaster 9000 before launching the program. 5. The Chessmaster 9000 CDs (both CD #1 and CD #2) contain an electronic version of the Chessmaster 9000 manual in PDF format, in the "Manual" folder of the CD. This file was also copied to your hard drive, in the target folder that you sel

ected for installing Chessmaster 9000. This file's format can be read by the Ado be Acrobat Reader program, and the installation for the Acrobat Reader program i s also contained in the "Manual" folder of CD #2. Assuming that you have install ed the Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can access the online manual from within Chessm aster 9000 at any time by pressing F1. 6. Compatibility Issues Chessmaster 9000 was tested on a wide range of CPUs, as well as over different 3 0 video cards and over a dozen different sound cards. Following are some of the hardware incompatibilities you may experience: -- Some older video cards do not have drivers that are 100% compatible with Di rectX 8.1. These drivers either incorrectly report the capabilities of the video card, or do not properly support certain 3D features that Chessmaster requires. One example you may notice if you have an older card (such as a Voodoo3), you m ay experience visual problems if you have the "Bump Mapping" option selected. Th ese problems can be avoided by deselecting the Bump Mapping option, or obtaining drivers that are 100% compatible with DirectX 8.1. -- Additionally, some older video cards DO support the features required for s hadows, reflections and bump mapping, but the resulting frame rate can become un acceptably slow. If you find that the performance of True3D boards and pieces is not satisfactory, we suggest turning off all three of these features, and then turning them on one at a time to see which features may be causing the poor perf ormance. -- The following video cards are known to have problems with certain True3D fe atures in Chessmaster 9000: TNT I (16MB) -- Shadows are not supported. ATI Expert 2000 Pro (32MB) -- Shadows and reflections are not supported. ATI Expert 128 (16MB) -- This card has significant problems. If you have this ca rd, you may not be able to use True3D boards and pieces. Matrox G550, G450 and G400 (all 32MB) -- Shadows are not supported. Matrox G200 (16MB) -- This card has significant problems. If you have this card, you may not be able to use True3D boards and pieces. -- It was observed that, on one networked HP 930C printer, any time a printing feature was used, the game could crash shortly thereafter. It is believed that this problem was caused by faulty printer drivers. If you experience any problem s with printing similar to this, you should verify that your printer drivers are up-to-date. -- Using the "Clear Type" display option in Windows XP (usually only available for laptop or other LCD displays) can cause some text that is displayed through out the program to have an incorrect color (pink, for example, instead of black) . If your computer has the "Clear Type" display option selected, and you notice this problem, you can avoid it by turning off "Clear Type". -- It was observed on one machine that using shadows could cause shadow "remna nts" to be left on the board. If you experience this bug, we suggest deselecting the True3D shadows option. ===================================================================== II. *** Late Breaking Changes to the Documentation *** The following features were omitted from the Chessmaster manual. They are explai ned here in detail: 1. The Mentor Lines window is briefly discussed in the manual, but an explanatio n of the "Best Moves" control and the intent of this window was omitted. Briefly speaking, this window, which is available in the Game Room and the Library, all ow you to see "running commentary" by Chessmaster about the position of the curr ent game. This commentary will run indefinitely, until the status of the current game is changed, at which point the commentary will begin again with the new po sition of the current game. When opened, this window automatically launches a "m

entor" engine instance to watch the game. This will, like the Visual Thinking Wi ndow, take up as much CPU time as a computer personality that is actually playin g the game. The data that is displayed in this window is identical in content and layout t o the Thinking Lines window. The "Best Lines" control of this window allows you to view this data in two different ways. If you select 1 (one) best move to be s hown, then the window will show the single best move "over time". In other words , as the Chessmaster engine searches deeper, the most recent "best move" will be replaced by a newer one AT THE BOTTOM OF THE LIST. This is very important to re member -- if "Best Moves" equals one, then the best move is always at the BOTTOM of the list. If "Best Moves" is greater than one, then the Mentor Lines window will show a number of lines equal to the number of best moves that you have aske d for. These moves will be sorted by score FROM THE TOP DOWN. So, if "Best Moves " is greater than one, then the best move is always at the TOP of the list. 2. The Wallpaper feature was also inadvertantly omitted from the manual. By goin g to "Preferences -> Wallpaper", you can select the background for the room that you are currently in. You have two choices: bitmap or gradient. If you select " bitmap", then you can select any Windows Bitmp (.BMP) file to use as your backgr ound, and Chessmaster will tile that bitmap in that room. Note that bitmaps must have 256 or more colors -- 16-color bitmaps are not supported. If you select "g radient", then you can select any two colors for Chessmaster to smoothly transit ion between, from top to bottom, in the background of that room. Note that the D atabase room does not have a wallpaper. 3. Chessmaster 9000 now includes support for Endgame Databases, which are files that can tell Chessmaster exactly how to play any ending that has few enough pie ces on the board. Chessmaster 9000 automatically installs all 4-man endgame data base (note that the two kings are always included in the total number of pieces, or "men", on the board). If you chose the "Complete" installation option, then several of the most useful 5-man files were also installed on your computer. The Chessmaster personality, and all Grandmaster personalities, will automatically use the endgame databases for play, much in the same way that an opening book is used. None of the other computer personalities that ship with the game will use the endgame databases, but any personality that you create can use them if you select the "Endgame Databases" option in the "Set Up Personality" dialog. Additionally, the "Advice" tab of the "Coach" window will show additional data if the current position of the game has few enough pieces. For example, if one side in the current game has a King and a Queen, and the other side has a King a nd a Rook, the Coach window will show all of the legal moves for the current pos ition, and how many moves it is to checkmate or draw for each of them. For more information about Endgame Databases, including the tool which will al low you to generate the complete set of 5-man (and even 6-man!) database files, just go to www.chessmaster.com. 4. The Mentor Preferences dialog, which is only available in the Game Room via " Preferences -> Mentor", contains two settings for certain mentor features. "Tran sposition Table Memory" lets you modify how much memory Chessmaster will allocat e whenever a mentor engine instance is launched. Mentor engine features include: Advice, Game Analysis, Quick Hint, Solve for Mate, and the Visual Thinking and Mentor Lines windows. Note that using too high a setting here can cause your com puter to slow down considerably, if you tell it to allocate more memory than is currently available on your computer. Therefore, it is strongly recommended that you do not use more than 32 MB of memory unless you are comfortable that your c omputer is able to successfully handle larger values. Note that if you change th is value, it will not take affect until a new mentor engine is launched. The "Blunder Alert Threshold" setting allows you to specify the sensitivity at which the "Blunder Alert" feature will notify you that you have made a potentia lly bad move. The LOWER the value, the MORE LIKELY that you will receive an aler t. Basically, this value is equal to the number of points of material (or positi

onal considerations) you are likely to lose due to your last move. So, if you ra ise the value to its maximum of 3.0, then you will only be notified if you make a blunder that loses a piece. 5. or ho is The "Playback Move" menuitem, available in most rooms, plays back the audio f the most recently made move in the game. This feature is intended for those w are playing a game blindfolded, or are visually impaired. This menuitem also activated by pressing CTRL+V.

6. There is a "Copy Contents" feature available via right-clicking on either the Thinking Lines or the Mentor Lines window. Simply put, selecting this menuitem will copy the contents of this window to the Windows clipboard. 7. The Tournament Room contains a menu group under the "Actions" menu called "Ad judicate". These menu items allow you to declare the result of a tournament game (White Wins, Black Wins or Draw) between two computer personalities without hav ing to wait for the game to finish. 8. Under the "Windows" menu in most rooms, there is an item called "Hide/Unhide Windows" which can be accessed by pressing CTRL+TAB. Activating this item will t oggle all open windows. In other words, if you have any windows open and press C TRL+TAB, these windows will be closed. You can reopen all of these windows by pr essing CTRL+TAB again. This is useful for people who want to have a "full screen " 3D board, but would occasionally like to see the output from some windows. 9. Right-clicking on either of the "Winboard Engine Output" windows brings up se veral menu items: -- "Clear Window" clears the contents of the output window. -- "Change Font" allows you to select any font for displaying text in this windo w. It is recommended that you use a Courier-based font for ease of reading Winbo ard engine output. -- "Pause Display" stops the scrolling display. When display is paused, this ite m will read "Resume Display". -- "Log to Output File" allows you to specify a file name where all engine outpu t will be written. When logging is active, this item will read "Stop Logging Out put". The following clarifications to Chessmaster 9000 features and/or modifications o f features took place after the manual was completed: 1. While the Chessmaster Development and Quality Assurance teams have done their utmost to ensure that Chessmaster 9000 is as free of bugs as possible, there is a statistical likelihood that some bugs have made it through all rigorous testi ng procedures only to be found by YOU. If this happens, please notify us by e-ma iling chessmaster@ubisoft.com, or by going to www.chessmaster.com and following the appropriate links. Unfortunately, every once in a while a bug can cause a program to "crash", shu tting it down immediately. Because Chessmaster 9000 now uses the Winboard protoc ol for all of its chess engines, these engines are actually SEPARATE programs th at constantly communicate with the Chessmaster main program. The upshot of this is that if Chessmaster crashes, these engine processes may still be running "in the background," and may still be churning away on the current game, taking up y our computer's memory and CPU time. The only way to shut these engines down is t o access the Windows Task Manager (usually by pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL) and looking for the name of the chess engine program that is still running. Chessmaster 900 0's engine is called "TheKing". You would then highlight any entry in the progra m list that is called "TheKing", and press the "End Task" button. However, if you have imported a Winboard engine into Chessmaster, and it was r unning when Chessmaster crashed, you will have to look for the name of that prog ram in order to shut it down.

2. If you are concerned about optimizing the performance of the Chessmaster engi ne, be sure to follow these guidelines: -- Run as few other programs as possible while you are running Chessmaster. -- Use as few child windows as possible. Some of these windows (most notably Che ss Coach, Mentor Lines, Thinking Lines and Visual Thinking) can take up a decent amount of CPU time due to either their visual updates or because they might cau se a mentor engine instance to be launched (see #3 below). -- Do not activate the Blunder Alert feature in the Game Room. This feature will also launch a mentor engine instance to watch your game. -- Do not switch rooms, or access other game features or dialogs while running a game, and try to avoid adjusting game settings (such as the players or the time control) in the middle of a game. Some of these features/dialogs will actually restart any chess engines that may be associated with the current game, causing any memory that these engines has allocated (used to "look ahead," among other t hings) to be destroyed. This, of course, will lower the quality of play. -- In the "Piece Movement" tab of the Sound dialog, select "No Sounds." This wil l prevent the program from taking up a significant portion of time queuing up an d playing piece movement sounds. 3. Chessmaster Live statistics from rated games played on Ubi.com are only saved on your local machine. 4. If you disconnect FOR ANY REASON (or just simply close Chessmaster 9000) whil e playing a Rated Game on Chessmaster Live, you will automatically resign the ga me. Switching rooms will NOT disconnect you from Chessmaster Live; it will set y our status to be "Away". 5. If the host of a Chessmaster Live session disconnects for any reason, a new h ost will be selected automatically. This is so any games that are in progress wi ll not be lost. However, if this Chessmaster Live session is being played on Ubi .com, then no new players will be able to join this session after the host disco nnects. 6. If you are concerned about optimizing the framerate for True 3D boards and pi eces, we suggest the following: -- Go to "Preferences -> Board Settings -> True 3D Tab" and turn off reflections , shadows and bump mapping. Shadows cause the biggest dip in performance, follow ed by reflections and then bump mapping. If, after turning off all of these opti ons, you are still not happy with the framerate, you should try using a piece se t that has very few polygons, such as the Faceted Wood or Faceted Marble set (or their "Flat" counterparts). Even an older 3D card such as a TNT2 or GeForce2 sh ould be able to get 30 frames per second with this setup. -- Run Windows in a 16-bit display mode instead of a 32-bit mode. For significan tly older cards, this could cause a very noticeable performance increase. -- Consider not having the main Chessmaster window take up the entire display ar ea of your monitor. The bigger the main Chessmaster window is, the slower the pe rformance will be. See the "Compatibility Issues" section above for more details.... 7. Several True3D boards intentionally will not reflect the pieces that are on t hem, due to the "material" they are made of. They are: Kids Clay, Rollup, Newspa per, Gnomes, Dogs, Halloween and Isle of Lewis. 8. ----The The The The The only True3D boards and piece sets that use Bump Mapping are: Isle of Lewis Board and Pieces Nuts & Bolts Pieces Rusty Metal Board Irish Pieces

9. True3D shadows and bump mapping are OFF by default. Reflections are ON by def ault. If you want to change any of these settings, just go to "Preferences -> Bo ard Settings -> True3D Tab". 10. Chessmaster uses a third engine instance (called the "Mentor" engine) for al l "mentor" features, such as Advice, Game Analysis, Hint and Solve for Mate (as well as providing data for the Mentor Lines and Visual Thinking windows). Unfort unately, starting up any of these features will restart the Mentor engine and an y analysis data that is currently in the Mentor Lines or Visual Thinking windows will be lost. 11. You may notice that computer players sometimes make their moves very quickly (usually during the opening moves of a game), and that other audio/visual aspec ts of the program (such as piece movement audio and the updating of the board an d child windows) seem to lag behind or even get lost in the speed of the consecu tive moves. This is because the actual moves themselves are given the highest pr iority in Chessmaster. The engine, in a nutshell, gets to do what it wants, WHEN it wants. For example, making the engine wait to move so that the audio for the previous move can finish playing could possibly cause the engine to lose a game by running out of time when it normally would not have done so. So, let's assume that you are watching a game between two computer players. If this game starts with a flurry of opening book moves on both sides, you may not hear or see anything, other than the moves being made on the board, until all o f the moves have been made and one of the engines starts thinking (out of openin g book). After a short time, all of the windows will be updated with the current data, but much of the piece movement audio may be lost. 12. If you experience choppy audio in Tutorials, Josh Games or Natural Language Advice/Analysis, it could be caused by one of several problems: -- You might need to update your drivers for your sound card and/or CD-ROM drive . Chessmaster "streams" its audio and sometimes requires several megabytes of co mpressed audio data, assuming that the CD-ROM will be ready to retrieve the data when asked. If your CD-ROM is lagging behind (either because it is too slow, ne eds updated drivers, or Windows is generally slow), then you may hear the audio skip and jump. -- Another possible cause is not having enough free hard drive space. Chessmaste r sometimes uses your hard drive as temporary storage for large quantities of au dio. If your hard drive is full, and it cannot accommodate the space requirement , then Chessmaster has to search for other means of storing the data. This can c ause the audio to stop and start. Freeing up hard drive space is the way to solv e this cause of the problem. -- Your machine speed is just too slow to successfully pull all of the audio fro m the CD, for any of several reasons. The best way to solve this problem is to u se the Full installation option and copy the large audio files to your hard driv e. This will maximize the speed at which the audio can be handled, but does requ ire an additional 770 megabytes of hard drive space for all three large data fil es. 13. Although you can play Rated Games against user-created personalities and imp orted Winboard engines, we recommend that you refrain from doing so. It is very difficult to accurately determine the rating of a personality that you create, o r to accurately calculate how well an imported engine will play on your computer . Therefore, although you may play Rated Games against these types of personalit ies, it is possible, and perhaps quite easy, to make your overall rating less ac curate when you do so. The ratings for the personalities in Chessmaster were tes ted over many thousands of games, a large portion of which were played against r ated human players. The ratings for these personalities is believed to be accura te to within 50 points of their "real world" equivalent. Only playing Rated Game s against these personalities will keep your rating as accurate as possible.

14. Using the LAN option in the CMLive room requires that your computer have the IPX protocol installed. 15. The Switch Sides function, located in the Game Room, will rotate the board 1 80 degrees and also switch players (i.e. the player who was playing the White pi eces will now be playing Black, and vice versa). Note, however, that the White a nd Black players will NOT switch clocks and time controls. 16. When editing a personality that is currently participating in a game, the pe rsonality's new settings will not take effect until a new game is begun with tha t personality. 17. If you find that, for some reason, the chessboard seems to have "disappeared " from the game (either due to a change in screen resolution or in window positi on/size), don't panic. You can always safely get the board back to the upper-lef t corner of the main Chessmaster window by going to "Preferences -> Chess Set" a nd selecting a new board and/or piece set. If you find that other windows are al so not appearing when and/or where they should, then you can restore all windows back to their default position and visibility settings by loading one of the de fault layouts that came with Chessmaster 9000. 18. Depending on the speed of your system, you may not see the introductory vide o. Chessmaster makes a determination of your computer's speed to see if your mac hine can play the videos without audio or video distortion, and then plays the v ideos if your machine passes the test. 19. Certain video cards may cause Chessmaster to have visual problems if you hav e "Large Fonts" selected in your video properties. If text in menus and dialogs appears "wrong" to you, or some text or buttons appears to extend past the bound aries of a window, you might check to see if you have "Large Fonts" selected, an d change it to the Windows default setting, which is "Small Fonts". You can chec k this setting by going to "Control Panel -> Display -> Settings Tab" and pressi ng the "Advanced" button. There will be a combobox entitled "Font Size", where y ou can see your system's current setting. 20. If you play MP3 audio files on your computer, you may find that Chessmaster 9000 and programs that play these types of files (such as WinAmp and Windows Med ia Player) will not work properly with each other. This is because BOTH programs try to "take control" of the MP3 audio drivers, and this causes a conflict in y our computer's sound card. Usually, this problem only occurs with older sound ca rds, the most popular of these being the Soundblaster AWE64. Some people, though , have reported that starting up Chessmaster FIRST, and THEN starting up the MP3 player, will allow both programs to work fairly well (as long as Chessmaster do es not try to play any audio). So, if you enjoy MP3 music on your computer and you don't mind running Chessma ster with no sounds, then this procedure should allow you to do both. Just don't try to access advice, game analysis, tutorials or Josh Waitzkin Annotated Games , because the audio for these features is also in MP3 format. 21. To define your own sound effects set that will override the sounds played by the "Thematic Sounds" option, you can go to the "Sounds" option in the Windows "Control Panel". There you will find a "Chessmaster" group of sound effects to w hich you can assign any valid sound file that is in wave format (usually with a "WAV" extension). ===================================================================== III. *** What Problems Still Exist? *** The other bugs that have been reported, but are either not fixed or not confirme

d, are: 1. There is a very rare crash that can occur when shutting down the program. How ever, in all cases when this crash occurred, no user data was corrupted and no c hess engines were left running. So, if this crash happens to you, it is very unl ikely to cause any harm to your Chessmaster installation or your computer on the whole. Please e-mail any bug reports to either chessmaster@ubisoft.com or support@ubiso ft.com. ===================================================================== IV. *** Where to Find the Chessmaster FAQ *** The Chessmaster FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) is regularly updated with answe rs to many of the most popular questions that users ask when they are troublesho oting. You can find a FAQ dedicated to each version of Chessmaster at our websit e: www.chessmaster.com ===================================================================== V. *** Reasons to visit Chessmaster.com *** 1. At Chessmaster.com you will always find the latest updates. 2. You will also find the latest Chessmaster FAQ, which will answer the most com mon questions sent to us by users like yourself. 3. If you discover any bugs, you can report them via e-mail by following the app ropriate links. 4. You may find free goodies to download such as new boards and piece sets, addi tional opening books, and other new content for Chessmaster 9000. 5. You will also find links to other great websites and software created by Ubi Soft. Why not go to www.chessmaster.com right now? ===================================================================== VI. *** Technical and Customer Support *** Our website contains the most up to date Technical Support information available including patches that can be downloaded free of charge. We update the Support pages on a daily basis so please check here first for solutions to your problems at www.ubisoft.com/support/supportmain.htm. From this site, you will be able to enter the Ubi Soft Entertainment Solution Center where you can browse through o ur listings of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), search our database of known pr oblems and solutions, or, for fastest e-mail response, you can send in a request for Personal Assistance from a Technical Support Representative. If you don t have access to the World Wide Web, you can contact our Support Depart ment by e-mailing them directly at chessmaster@ubisoft.com or support@ubisoft.co m. Please ensure that you include all of the bulleted information above for your computer when sending e-mail.

You can also contact us by phone by calling (919) 460-9778. Note that this numbe r is for technical assistance only. No hints or tips are given over the Technica l Support line. When calling our Technical Support line, please make sure you ar e in front of your computer and have all of the necessary information listed abo ve at hand. Be advised that our Technical Support Representatives are available to help you Monday-Friday from 9 am to 9 pm (Eastern Standard Time). While we do not charge for technical support, normal long distance charges apply . To avoid long distance charges, or to contact a support representative directl y after these hours, please feel free to use one of the other support avenues li sted above. E-mail issues usually receive a response within 2 business days. If all else fails you can write to us at: Ubi Soft Technical Support 2000 Aerial Center Suite 110 Morrisville, NC 27560 Return policy Please do not send any game returns directly to Ubi Soft Entertainment. It is ou r policy that game returns must be dealt with by the retailer or online site whe re you purchased the product. If you have a damaged or scratched CD, please visi t our FAQ listing for your game and get the latest replacement policy and pricin g. For general information about Chessmaster 9000, including upgrades, special offe rs, and registration information, visit our web site at www.chessmaster.com.