HCE feature requests

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Michael Blake
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Posts: 127
Joined: Mon Jul 13, 2009 9:32 pm
Location: Cheshire, England

Player Explorer

Post by Michael Blake »

I think the Player Explorer is a really nice feature and wonder if it would be practical/possible to improve it by showing the opening/defences initially grouped under their main headings. For example, I've recently played quite a few Caro-Kans and those are initially grouped under Caro-Kann Defence (B10-B19):

However my French games are grouped under a variety of headings such as -
French Defence, Winawer variation (C15-C19):
French Defence, Steinitz variation (C11):
French Defence, Tarrasch variation (C03-C09):

I understand the way this is done but wonder if it would be worthwhile allowing them to be grouped by the whole repertoire of a defence as the Caro is and then expand that initial top-level summary by clicking on the 'more' link?

It's not vital as I can search for a player and then use the game explorer but it would perhaps be a welcome finesse to the player explorer.

Happy New Year to everyone!
Mickey
delftblau
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doubles

Post by delftblau »

Explorer is getting better and better but top of my wishlist for 2014 are Find Doubles and Delete Doubles commands. It would make searching quicker.

Next would be being able to search for all games with an opening by just typing its name. eg Sicilian, Chekhover would give all of those games in a database.

Sorry, bet the most demanding people here are us Mac users :)
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Mark Uniacke
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Re: doubles

Post by Mark Uniacke »

delftblau wrote:Explorer is getting better and better but top of my wishlist for 2014 are Find Doubles and Delete Doubles commands. It would make searching quicker.

Next would be being able to search for all games with an opening by just typing its name. eg Sicilian, Chekhover would give all of those games in a database.

Sorry, bet the most demanding people here are us Mac users :)
While you cannot currently type the opening name in to the search field you can type its ECO code and it will find all games with that opening so if you type B53 into the quick search field of the database you want to search it will find the games. You can also combine this with other searches, e.g. B53 1-0 would be white wins in the Chekhover.

Another example would be searching for Kramnik wins in the Berlin, we would use C65-C67 -Kramnik 0-1

Another way to search a DB for opening is to use the Player Explorer and select database you will then get all the popular openings and can select them to get the game containing those openings in the game explorer.
Best wishes,
Mark

https://www.hiarcs.com
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Mark Uniacke
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Re: Player Explorer

Post by Mark Uniacke »

Michael Blake wrote:I think the Player Explorer is a really nice feature and wonder if it would be practical/possible to improve it by showing the opening/defences initially grouped under their main headings. For example, I've recently played quite a few Caro-Kans and those are initially grouped under Caro-Kann Defence (B10-B19):

However my French games are grouped under a variety of headings such as -
French Defence, Winawer variation (C15-C19):
French Defence, Steinitz variation (C11):
French Defence, Tarrasch variation (C03-C09):

I understand the way this is done but wonder if it would be worthwhile allowing them to be grouped by the whole repertoire of a defence as the Caro is and then expand that initial top-level summary by clicking on the 'more' link?

It's not vital as I can search for a player and then use the game explorer but it would perhaps be a welcome finesse to the player explorer.

Happy New Year to everyone!
Mickey
Thanks. It may be worth having the additional ability to expand and collapse opening systems in a future version.
Best wishes,
Mark

https://www.hiarcs.com
Patatov
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Posts: 13
Joined: Wed Jun 04, 2008 10:08 pm

Games Explorer

Post by Patatov »

Hello... Just a small request... I'd like to be able to not show the Games Explorer list every time I launch Chess Explorer. Based on my settings when I closed down the program. It's a little bit annoying that I have to uncheck the Games Explorer every time I launch the program so I can have the chess board bigger.
A full screen option would be great too (I have the Mac version).

Thanks!
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Mark Uniacke
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Post by Mark Uniacke »

Ironically this is my fault, in earlier versions we had it so the last state (game explorer open or not) was remembered. However I was concerned that novice users would be confused if they opened a database and the game list was not present. So we made a change so that when opening a database the Game Explorer is always shown so you can see the games in that database.

The unintended side effect of that is the new database gets the game explorer list shown. We will look at this for 1.8 where the DB does not have any games (such as a new DB) then it does not make sense to show the list when the user does not want it.
Best wishes,
Mark

https://www.hiarcs.com
Carl Bicknell
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Joined: Mon May 04, 2009 10:06 pm

Post by Carl Bicknell »

Here's my feature request:

More heavy-duty automated analysis features. Something like Chessbase's Deep Position Analysis or (even better) Aquarium's IDeA. Or something new.

Added onto that a simple way to combine the processing power of two PCs / Macs and for me this would be a useful product.
Michael Blake
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Location: Cheshire, England

Post by Michael Blake »

I have been watching the TCEC competition and really enjoy some of its features. I have seen piece difference mention don the wish list for HCE and would suggest that the manner this is reprinted at TCEC is very good. To show the difference they use a small box above and below the board display, hence you can quickly see if White has an extra Bishop and Black a Knight etc. It looks a good way of representing this useful feature.
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Mark Uniacke
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Post by Mark Uniacke »

Carl Bicknell wrote:Here's my feature request:

More heavy-duty automated analysis features. Something like Chessbase's Deep Position Analysis or (even better) Aquarium's IDeA. Or something new.

Added onto that a simple way to combine the processing power of two PCs / Macs and for me this would be a useful product.
Improved game analysis and position analysis are features we hope to address in HCE v2.
Best wishes,
Mark

https://www.hiarcs.com
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Mark Uniacke
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Post by Mark Uniacke »

Michael Blake wrote:I have been watching the TCEC competition and really enjoy some of its features. I have seen piece difference mention don the wish list for HCE and would suggest that the manner this is reprinted at TCEC is very good. To show the difference they use a small box above and below the board display, hence you can quickly see if White has an extra Bishop and Black a Knight etc. It looks a good way of representing this useful feature.
I would be concerned about using too much vertical screen real estate as that is rather limited on modern wide screen displays. Material balance is something we want to address in v2 so we will be considering how best to address this. Currently I favour something which can at a glance provide the material imbalance (if any).
Best wishes,
Mark

https://www.hiarcs.com
chess666
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Joined: Sat Jun 15, 2013 8:47 am

Post by chess666 »

Mark Uniacke wrote:
Carl Bicknell wrote:Here's my feature request:

More heavy-duty automated analysis features. Something like Chessbase's Deep Position Analysis or (even better) Aquarium's IDeA. Or something new.

Added onto that a simple way to combine the processing power of two PCs / Macs and for me this would be a useful product.
Improved game analysis and position analysis are features we hope to address in HCE v2.
Very good news Mark !

I really think HCE has a place for positions deep analysis tool because the Fritz one is too elementary and the Aquarium one (well know under IDeA ) is a mess.....
michaelmatthews
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Joined: Fri Aug 31, 2012 6:43 pm

Post by michaelmatthews »

I would really like to be able to use Hiarcs as a memory aid for opening variations. That is, I would like to be able to set up a game with an opening sequence plus variations, and then play against Hiarcs, with the engine choosing one of the variations and letting me how if I pick the incorrect reply.
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martinus
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Joined: Sun Aug 12, 2007 7:49 pm
Location: Portugal

Post by martinus »

Hello people! Berlin chess fonts/chess pieces (from the books of old editing house Sportverlag Berlin, from the old RDA times) are high on chess culture (I have two Sportverlag chess opening books a friend bring to me from a travel to Romania in the old Ceausescu times!) and they are free, right? I have seen them in many other chess freeware and commercial programs. Can we have them in HCE as well?
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martinus
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Location: Portugal

Post by martinus »

RDA is portuguese for: República Democrática Alemã
GDR is english for: German Democratic Republik
DDR is german for: Deutsche Demokratische Republik
browniesbane
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Joined: Mon Sep 08, 2008 1:39 am

Post by browniesbane »

I'd like to see the ability to read the current cbase data files and to covert to pgn
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