Chessmaster 10th Edition

Version 1.0.0
Table of Contents:
I. General Information
II. Late Breaking Changes to the Documentation
III. What Problems Still Exist?
IV. Where to find the Chessmaster FAQ
V. Technical and Customer Support
=====================================================================
I. *** General Information ***
1. The minimum system requirements for running Chessmaster 10th Edition are:
Supported OS: Windows® 98/ME/XP (Chessmaster 10th Edition does not officially supp
ort Windows 2000 or NT)
Tested Service Packs: Win 2000 - Service Pack 4, Win XP - Service Pack 1
Processor: Pentium® III 450 MHz or AMD Duron 600MHz
RAM: 128 MB
Video Card: 4Mb
(For 3D game play, the supported graphic cards are GeForce 1/2/3/4/FX Families an
d ATI Radeon 7500/8000/ 9000 Families)
Minimum Screen Resolution: 1024x768 (lower resolutions not supported, even if mo
st of the game modes should work)
Sound Card: optional but recommended
DirectX® Version: DirectX 9
CD-ROM: 4X CD-ROM or better
Hard Drive Space: 540 MB
Multiplayer: 56 Kbps or better for Internet or LAN play
2. The recommended system requirements for running Chessmaster 10th Edition are:
Supported OS: Windows® 98/ME/XP (Chessmaster 10th Edition does not officially supp
ort Windows 2000 or NT)
Tested Service Packs: Win 2000 - Service Pack 4, Win XP - Service Pack 1
Processor: Pentium III 1Gz or more recent
RAM: 512MB
Video Card: ATI Radeon 9000 family, GeForce FX family
Screen Resolution: 1280x1024
Sound Card: recommended
DirectX® Version: DirectX 9
CD-ROM: 16X CD-ROM
Hard Drive Space: 1650 MB, allowing a full install
Multiplayer: broadband
3. Chessmaster 10th Edition uses Miles Sound System. Copyright © 1991-2004 by RAD
Game Tools, Inc.
Chessmaster 10th Edition uses Bink Video. Copyright (C) 1997-2004 by RAD Game To
ols, Inc.
4. Chessmaster 10th Edition uses a "CD Refresh" form of copy protection. The fir
st time you run Chessmaster 10th Edition after installing the program, you will
be required to put in one of the Chessmaster 10th Edition CDs. After that time,
you may start the program without one of these CDs for a certain length of time
before being asked for the CD again. In general, you may use the program for app
roximately two weeks or approximately two dozen sessions before the program will
ask you to put in one of your Chessmaster 10th Edition CDs, verifying that you
possess one of them.
However, if you chose not to install all the sound files, you may still need o
ne or all CDs at any time, depending on which Chessmaster features you use. So i
t is always a good idea to have your CDs on hand, in case the program requires t
hem.
5. Chessmaster 10th Edition needs up to 20 MB of free hard drive space to run sm
oothly, due to audio requirements. Along with the needs of other Windows applica
tions that may be running, along with the requirements of Windows' swapfile, we
recommend having at least 30 MB free hard drive space on the drive where you ins
talled Chessmaster 10th Edition before launching the program.
6. We strongly recommend to not install Chessmaster into your system's "Windows"
folder or in any partition's root (ex: directly on C: or D:).
7. For users of Windows XP or Windows 2000: to install Chessmaster, you must hav
e administrator privileges on your computer system. Otherwise, the installation
will fail.
8. If you're using the minimal installation, Chessmaster will usually ask you to
insert the CDs for needed files. If your CD/DVD-ROM is low speed, please wait f
or the drive to initialize before clicking on the Retry button.
8. For low performance computers, we strongly recommend to set up your desktop o
n the 800x600 resolution, 16 bits, and to select "2D boards only" in the Setting
s program which appears upon the 1st execution of Chessmaster 10th Edition. You
can also find the Settings program in Chessmaster's menu from Windows's Start /
Programs menus.
9. The Chessmaster 10th Edition CDs contain an electronic version of the Chessma
ster 10th Edition manual in PDF format, in the "Manual" folder of the CD. This f
ile was also copied to your hard drive, in the target folder that you selected f
or installing Chessmaster 10th Edition. This file's format can be read by the Ad
obe Acrobat Reader program, and the installation for the Acrobat Reader program
is also contained in the "Manual" folder of CD #2. Assuming that you have instal
led the Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can access the online manual from within Chess
master 10th Edition at any time by pressing F1.
10. Compatibility Issues
Chessmaster 10th Edition was tested on a wide range of CPUs, as well as over dif
ferent 30 video cards and over a dozen different sound cards. Following are some
of the hardware incompatibilities you may experience:
-- On NVidia GeForce 4 MX 440, when the user starts a game and changes Antialias
ing to 1x and switches the Stereo 3D feature ON, the game crashes.
11. Drivers
To avoid any compatibility problems, always update your graphic card drivers to
the most recently available versions.
For GeForce cards, go to www.nvidia.com <http://www.nvidia.com>. The latest driv
ers available at the moment of writing were 56.72 for Windows 2000/XP and 56.64
for Windows 98/ME.
For Radeon cards, go to www.atitech.com <http://www.atitech.com>. The latest dr
ivers available at the moment of writing were Catalyst 4.5 for Windows 2000/XP a
nd Catalyst 4.3 for Windows 98/ME.
The game was tested successfully on the following card/driver combinations:
NVIDIA GeForce2 Ultra - 52.16
NVIDIA Geforce 3 - 53.04
NVIDIA GeForce 3 TI 200 - 6.14.10.5303
NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440 - 56.64
ATI Radeon 8500 - Catalyst 4.3 (Win98/Me), Catalyst 4.4 (Win2k/XP)
ATI Radeon 9000 - Catalyst 4.3 (Win98/Me), Catalyst 4.4 (Win2k/XP)
ATI Radeon 9000 PRO - Catalyst 4.2
ATI Radeon 9600 - Catalyst 4.2
=====================================================================
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 and Visual Thinking features were omitted from the manual. H
ere's how they work:
To use Visual Thinking, choose the Windows/Visual Thinking menu command. Watch t
he chessboard dynamically update as
CHESSMASTER considers its best line. You can use the VCR controls to move back a
nd forth in the display.
To pause and resume Visual Thinking, use the Hold and Resume buttons.
Visual Thinking is only available in the Training and Set-Up Position game modes
.
To use Mentor Lines, choose the Mentor/Mentor Lines command. Watch the window dy
namically update as CHESSMASTER considers its best line. The display will show:
a. The time CHESSMASTER takes to predict the moves
b. The number of moves (depth) that CHESSMASTER is thinking about
c. The material and positional advantage (scor e) that would result if all the m
oves are played out as predicted by CHESSMASTER
Note: A positive score means that White is winning, and a negative number means
Black is winning.
Briefly speaking, this window allow you to see "running commentary" by Chessmast
er about the position of the current 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 position of the current game. When opened, this w
indow automatically launches a "mentor" engine instance to watch the game. This
will, like the Visual Thinking Window, take up as much CPU time as a computer pe
rsonality that is actually playing 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.
Mentor Lines is only available in the Training and Set-Up Position game modes.
2. The AI personalities rating displayed in the Set Up Personality window is the
base rating for that player. The actual rating (displayed in the Select Persona
lity window) is affected by the power of your CPU, so differences might exist.
3. In Tournament mode, games can't be saved individually. After the tournament e
nds, all the games in that tournament can be saved as a big PGN file.
4. The BMP format recognized by the Wallpaper feature is 256 colors or more. Als
o, the preview pane of the "File Open" window will display only a part of the la
rger bitmap wallpapers.
5. Chessmaster 10th Edition includes support for Endgame Databases, which are fi
les that can tell Chessmaster exactly how to play any ending that has few enough
pieces on the board. Chessmaster 10th Edition automatically installs all 4-man
endgame database (note that the two kings are always included in the total numbe
r of pieces, or "men", on the board). If you chose to install the endgame databa
se as well, then several of the most useful 5-man files were also installed on y
our computer. The Chessmaster personality, and all Grandmaster personalities, wi
ll automatically use the endgame databases for play, much in the same way that a
n 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 Personalit
y" dialog.
Additionally, the "Advice" tab of the "Current Situation Report" window will s
how additional data if the current position of the game has few enough pieces. F
or example, if one side in the current game has a King and a Queen, and the othe
r side has a King and a Rook, the Coach window will show all of the legal moves
for the current position, and how many moves it is to checkmate or draw for each
of them.
[to verify this]
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.
6. The Engine Preferences dialog, which is only available in Training Mode via "
Preferences -> Engine", contains two settings for certain mentor features. "Ment
or Transposition Table Memory" lets you modify how much memory Chessmaster will
allocate whenever a mentor engine instance is launched. Mentor engine features i
nclude: Advice, Game Analysis, Quick Hint, Solve for Mate, and the Visual Thinki
ng and Mentor Lines windows. Note that using too high a setting here can cause y
our computer to slow down considerably, if you tell it to allocate more memory t
han is currently available on your computer. Therefore, it is strongly recommend
ed that you do not use more than 32 MB of memory unless you are comfortable that
your computer is able to successfully handle larger values. Note that if you ch
ange this 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.
7. The "Playback Move" menuitem, available in most game modes, plays back the au
dio for the most recently made move in the game. This feature is intended for th
ose who are playing a game blindfolded, or are visually impaired. This menuitem
also is activated by pressing CTRL+V.
8. 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.
9. The Tournament game mode contains a menu group under the "Actions" menu calle
d "Adjudicate". These menu items allow you to declare the result of a tournament
game (White Wins, Black Wins or Draw) between two computer personalities withou
t having to wait for the game to finish.
The following clarifications to Chessmaster 10th Edition features and/or modific
ations of features took place after the manual was completed:
1. While the Chessmaster Development and Quality Assurance teams have done their
 outmost to ensure that Chessmaster 10th Edition is as free of bugs as possible,
there is a statistical likelihood that some bugs have made it through all rigor
ous testing procedures only to be found by YOU.
Unfortunately, every once in a while a bug can cause a program to "crash", shu
tting it down immediately. Because Chessmaster 10th Edition now uses the Winboar
d protocol for all of its chess engines, these engines are actually SEPARATE pro
grams that constantly communicate with the Chessmaster main program. While Chess
master automatically closes all the King instances upon crashing, there are stil
l very rare instances when these engine processes may still be running "in the b
ackground," and may still be churning away on the current game, taking up your c
omputer's memory and CPU time. The only way to shut these engines down is to acc
ess 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 10th Edi
tion's engine is called "TheKing". You would then highlight any entry in the pro
gram list that is called "TheKing", and press the "End Task" button.
Also, if you happen to close Chessmaster by using the Windows Task Manager, be
aware that the King's engine will NOT be removed automatically. You have to loo
k for any entry in the program list that is called "TheKing", and press the "End
Task" button.
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.
-- Do not activate the Blunder Alert feature in the Training Mode. This feature
will also launch a mentor engine instance to watch your game.
-- Do not switch to other game modes, or access other game features or dialogs w
hile running a game, and try to avoid adjusting game settings (such as the playe
rs 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 things) 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.
-- Be wary when modifying the default engine values in the Engine Settings windo
w. The default values are: Win98,Me,XP - Engine 1, Blunder 2; Win 2000 - Engine
1; Blunder 1
3. If you are concerned about optimizing the framerate for the 3D chess sets, we
suggest the following:
-- Go to "Preferences -> Board Settings" and turn off reflections, shadows, tran
sitions, bump mapping, antialiasing and glare. Realistic shadows cause the bigge
st dip in performance, followed by complex shadows, reflections, glare, simple s
hadows and then bump mapping. Antialiasing also eats a lot of your processor's r
essources.
-- 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.
4. Chessmaster automatically considers your graphic card's performance and alter
s the default settings accordingly. The default values are: Shadows - Complex, R
eflections - OFF, Bump Mapping - ON, Transitions - ON. If you want to change any
of these settings, just go to "Preferences -> Board Settings".
5. Chessmaster uses a third engine instance (called the "Mentor" engine) for all
 "mentor" features, such as Advice, Game Analysis, Hint and Solve for Mate (as w
ell as providing data for the Post Game Analysis, Mentor Lines and Visual Thinki
ng windows). Unfortunately, starting up any of these features will restart the M
entor engine and any analysis data that is currently in the Mentor Lines or Visu
al Thinking windows will be lost.
6. 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 aspect
s of the program (such as piece movement audio and the updating of the board and
child windows) seem to lag behind or even get lost in the speed of the consecut
ive moves. This is because the actual moves themselves are given the highest pri
ority 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.
7. If you experience choppy audio in Tutorials or Natural Language Advice/Analys
is, 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.
8. Although you can play Rated Games against user-created personalities and impo
rted Winboard engines, we recommend that you refrain from doing so. It is very d
ifficult to accurately determine the rating of a personality that you create, or
to accurately calculate how well an imported engine will play on your computer.
Therefore, although you may play Rated Games against these types of personaliti
es, it is possible, and perhaps quite easy, to make your overall rating less acc
urate when you do so. The ratings for the personalities in Chessmaster were test
ed over many thousands of games, a large portion of which were played against ra
ted human players. The ratings for these personalities is believed to be accurat
e to within 50 points of their "real world" equivalent. Only playing Rated Games
against these personalities will keep your rating as accurate as possible.
9. Using the LAN game mode requires that your computer have the IPX protocol ins
talled.
10. For the Online game mode to function properly, the ports that need to be ope
ned are:
 TCP: 668, 40000 - 42999
UDP: 41006, 44000, 45000, 45001
for the ubi.com matchmaking services and
UDP: 17110
for the game communication. The game was designed to facilitate connectivity eve
n if the computer is connected through a NAT to the internet (but keep in mind t
hat not all router/NAT combinations work). If you can't connect to the matchmaki
ng services or to a game server, please contact your network administrator and p
rovide him this information.
11. During Online play, the ladders, tournaments and simul games are not rated.
12. During ladders, tournaments and simul games, every victory is worth one poin
t and every draw is worth 0.5 points.
13. To be able to create tournaments, simul games or ladders, a player must have
played at least 50 rated games.
14. Players can play a scheduled tournament game even before the scheduled time,
if both of them agree upon this and join the game. However, there is a time lim
it - you can join a scheduled game with at most 3 hours before the scheduled hou
r. This can speed up tournaments, if all players are present and willing to play
this way.
15.
The Global Reward System
The Online play contains a hidden reward system based on the GRP - the global re
ward points. To put it simply, each game offer players reward points; new game m
odes or add-ons to the personal profile are unlocked according to the number of
points gained.
The amount of reward points gained by playing is as follows:
Unrated Games
- defeat: 1 point
- draw against a weaker player, rating difference >200: 1 point
- draw against a weaker player, rating difference (50,200): 1 point
- draw against a weaker player, rating difference (0,50): 1 points
- draw against a stronger player, rating difference (0,50): 1 points
- draw against a stronger player, rating difference (50,200): 2 points
- draw against a stronger player, rating difference >200: 2 points
- victory against a weaker player, rating difference >200: 2 points
- victory against a weaker player, rating difference (50,200): 3 points
- victory against a weaker player, rating difference (0,50): 3 points
- victory against a stronger player, rating difference (0,50): 4 points
- victory against a stronger player, rating difference (50,200): 5 points
- victory against a stronger player, rating difference >200: 7 points
Rated Games:
- defeat: 1 point
- draw against a weaker player, rating difference >200: 1 point
- draw against a weaker player, rating difference (50,200): 1 point
- draw against a weaker player, rating difference (0,50): 3 points
- draw against a stronger player, rating difference (0,50): 3 points
- draw against a stronger player, rating difference (50,200): 5 points
- draw against a stronger player, rating difference >200: 7 points
- victory against a weaker player, rating difference >200: 5 points
- victory against a weaker player, rating difference (50,200): 7 points
- victory against a weaker player, rating difference (0,50): 9 points
- victory against a stronger player, rating difference (0,50): 10 points
- victory against a stronger player, rating difference (50,200): 12 points
- victory against a stronger player, rating difference >200: 15 points
Simultaneous Exhibitions:
The games are considered rated and the host receives a double reward for each dr
aw or victory.
Clan Membership:
Joining a clan gives 5 reward points.
Being the clan founder gives 5 reward points.
Being the clan champion (best player) gives 2 reward points at any time (if a pl
ayer falls back then returns to the top it gets the 2 points again)
To prevent cheating, a player can't create more than one clan/ladder every week
and one tournament every day.
The amount of points needed to advance a star (there are four star shapes and th
ree colors for each shape; the stars are visible in the Player List, next to the
player's name):
20 points initial increment increasing by 15 for each level (so you can get a st
ar at 20, 55, 105, 160, 225, 300, etc)
The amount of points needed to increase in title (titles are visible in the play
er's profile):
10 points initial increment increasing by 10 for each level (so you can get a ti
tle at 10, 30, 60, 100, 150, 210, 280, 360, 450, 550, etc). Max title obtained a
t 2320 points.
16. When watching a Simultaneous Game, you'll be sent to the first game in the s
imul. If that game is finished, the board is inactive. Use the Simltaneous Game
window to switch between games.
17. If you disconnect FOR ANY REASON (or just simply close Chessmaster 10th Edit
ion) while playing a Rated Game in Online mode, you will automatically resign th
e game.
18. During the Openings game mode, when trying to build a new Opening Book, you
can't promote your pawns to any other piece except the queen.
19. The Switch Sides function, located in the Training Mode, will rotate the boa
rd 180 degrees and also switch players (i.e. the player who was playing the Whit
e pieces will now be playing Black, and vice versa). Note, however, that the Whi
te and Black players will NOT switch clocks and time controls.
20. 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.
21. 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 by going to "Pre
ferences -> Chess Set" and selecting a new board and/or piece set. If you find t
hat other windows are also 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 default layouts that came with Chessmaster 10th Edition. O
f course, that's possible only if you haven't overwritten the default layouts fi
les with a badly-saved layout of your own...
22. 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.
23. 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.
24. If you play MP3 audio files on your computer, you may find that Chessmaster
10th Edition and programs that play these types of files (such as WinAmp and Win
dows Media 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 confl
ict in your computer's sound card. Usually, this problem only occurs with older
sound cards, 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 Chessm
aster does 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.
25. 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. Only on some Win 98 hardware configurations - In the Database game mode, when
the user left-clicks on the Database window, the window remains attached to the
cursor and moves with it until the user makes another left click.
2. On older/weaker computers, using the Fairy Tale chess set may lead to tempora
ry "freezing" of the animations during the time when the AI opponent is thinking
.
3. Only on Win 98 and Win ME - When the user selects Preferences/Wallpaper/Use B
itmap/Browse... then chooses a drive from File Open/Look in, the refresh period
might take as long as 3 seconds. During this time, the content of the chosen dri
ve won't be displayed properly.
4. On older/weaker computers, using "Spoken Move Announcements" and letting two
AI personalities play each other might lead to looping sounds, IF the game is mi
nimized (visible only as an icon on the task bar).
5. A very rare bug in the Fun/Learn section leads to Chessmaster quitting to the
desktop.
6. Another rare bug happens in the Fun/Learn area. Sometimes information display
ed onscreen disappears - the Drills tree, a pop-up window's content or various o
ptions.
7. When a modal window is opened and the user switchs to another application usi
ng the Alt+Tab key combination, the Chessmaster icon will no longer appear in th
e task selection window until the modal window is clicked on.
8. On Win 98 AND older/weaker computers, the install program might sometimes cra
sh.
=====================================================================
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. *** Technical and Customer Support ***
Technical Support
Before contacting Ubisoft s Technical Support Department, please first read throug
h this file and the game's manual (the printed version and/or the electronic ver
sion available on the game CDs). Also browse through our FAQ listings or search
our support database at our website, http://www.ubireg.com/uk/. Here you will fi
nd the most recently updated information since the game s release.
Also please make sure that your computer meets the minimum system requirements,
as our support representatives will be unable to assist customers whose computer
s do not meet these criteria.
Whenever you contact the Technical Support Department, please include the follow
ing information or have it available if you are calling:
· Complete product title (including version number).
· Exact error message reported (if applicable) and a brief description of the prob
lem you re encountering.
· Processor speed and manufacturer.
· Amount of RAM.
· Operating system.
· Video card that you are using and amount of RAM it has.
· Maker and speed of your CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive.
· Type of sound card you are using.
Support Over the Internet
This is the best way to find answers to common issues seen with our games. Our F
requently Asked Questions list is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and co
ntains the most up-to-date Technical Support information available, including pa
tches that can be downloaded free of charge. We update the Support pages on a da
ily basis, so please check here first for solutions to your problems: http://www
.ubireg.com/uk/
Contact Us by Webmail
Due to high volumes of spam, viruses, and other non-support-related contacts, we
no longer offer support via standard email. However, we do provide something be
tter, webmail. By taking your questions directly through our website, we have co
mpletely eliminated all spam contacts. As a result, we are able to respond to yo
ur questions much quicker than we could through standard email. To send us a web
mail simply log into our site at http://www.ubireg.com/uk/.
From this site, you will be able to enter the Ubisoft Solution Center, where you
can browse through our lists of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), search our da
tabase of known problems and solutions, and send in a request for personal assis
tance from a Technical Support representative by using the Ask a Question featur
e on the Frequently Asked Questions page.
Most webmail contacts are responded to within two business days.
Contact Us by Phone
You can also contact us by phone by calling 0905-482-0109 (30p per min) (9am-7pm
Mon-Fri)
Contact Us by Standard Mail
If all else fails, you can write to us at:
Customer Services
Ubisoft Entertainment Ltd
Chantrey Court
Minorca Road
Weybridge
Surrey
KT13 8DU
Return Policy
Please do not send any game returns directly to Ubisoft before contacting Techni
cal Support. It is our policy that game returns must be dealt with by the retail
er or online site where you purchased the product. If you have a damaged or scra
tched CD, please visit the FAQ listing for your game and get the latest replacem
ent policy and pricing. We will not accept unsolicited returns/exchanges without
prior approval and an RMA (Return Materials Authorization) number from a suppor
t representative.

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