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Comments by matthew_montchal
Stanley Random Chess 
. Missing description[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]For most of us, Internet costs money, and playing a game of Stanley Random Chess would certainly be bound to eat up a lot of time, and therefore cost a lot of money. Although you said that SRC is amusing, do you really think it is worth the money to play it? For instance, let's put the shoe on the other foot. Suppose I (or someone you don't know, but whom I were to approve of, and you had absolutely no way of locating that person) were the one to define the 'secret rules' behind Stanley Random Chess, and she alone were to decide on whether your moves were acceptable or not. That kind of a setup could certainly have the potential of driving up costs, don't you think? Not to mention 'bandwidth' in the form of noise, or near-noise. Would you still find the game amusing enough to play for a few months, or a few years? (Now for an 'opening the floodgates' argument:) The next hypothetical offers us even more food for thought: suppose a hundred thousand people or more found my version of Stanley Random Chess (with my own list of approved but anonymous rulemakers) engaging, would the increased consumption of bandwidth be worth it to you, to call it amusing? Or, if the ante is upped to an even higher stake, would it be worth it to society? After all, if robots could be programmed to play Stanley Random Chess - not that they are /that/ creative - and even if they would be answerable to their owners alone, and not to society, would you still find it amusing?
Rococo. A clear, aggressive Ultima variant on a 10x10 ring board (includes mirror array and Push-Pullyu variants).[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]If an Advancer begins its turn adjacent to an enemy piece, is it allowed to forgo movement, and instead capture the adjacent piece, refraining from actually moving into that space? or is movement a mandatory part of the Advancer's method of capturing? Is it safe to move a piece up to an enemy Advancer, positioning it right next to it, in order to hem it in?
As I was attempting to navigate my way around the website, clicking all over the place (not at all an easy thing for someone like me to do), I think I found the answer to my own question: the Advancer really does have to make a nominal movement of some kind 'towards' the enemy in order to capture it.
Game Courier Logs. View the logs of games played on Game Courier.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]I am not sure of where I was - I think that I was trying to access the game logs - but when I typed in my password and clicked the 'submit' icon (or button or whatever you call it), the following message to appeared: Warning: usort(): The argument should be an array in /home/chessva/public_html/play/pbmlogs/index.php on line 226
I think the usort() message pops up when I misspell my 'User ID' and the code fails to trap misspellings as such, and replace them with a reference to a null name being replaced with a guest name (for instance). I think I was trying to obtain a list of games already played from the Game Courier Log.
About Game Courier. Web-based system for playing many different variants by email or in real-time.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Fergus, I'm using Game Courier to play a non-serious (no time control, I think) game of Rococo with gwduke. We're just giving it a shot to see how the game goes. I'm having a hard time figuring out how to write down a move for Rococo where I move my Advancer straight across a rank, moving it towards an enemy Cannonball Pawn, but then stopping short by 1 square. This ought to be enough to capture the pawn. I was hoping the 'verify' button would draw the board with the Advancer moved, and the Cannonball Pawn deleted. It doesn't do it. The Cannonball Pawn is still there. To explain this more fully, there is probably a help file somewhere, but slow page loading makes it very difficult to locate. Here are the moves so far: 1. a2-a3, g7-g6; 2. c2-b3, e7-e6; 3. e2-f3, a7-a6; 4. h2-g3, h8-d4; 5. e1-e2, f7-d5; 6. a3-c3, d4-a7; 7. g1-g2, a6-b6; 8. b2-a2, e6-c4; 9. h2-h4, e8-e7 White's ninth move is a check. Is it permissible to put a plus sign in, or is that unnecessary surplusage? For White's tenth move, I tried to move h4-d4, capturing the Black Pawn at c4, but the Verify button doesn't seem to implement the capture properly.
Okay, I think I figured out what I did wrong. It was the notation. I should have entered 10. h4-d4 and then joined an extra move to it with a semicolon ;@-c4 So that your parser will store a zero into the position on the board where the Cannonball Pawn is. I naturally assume you are using some kind of a byte map to store the board, and then the parser comes along and ANDs off the superfluous bits of the script byte, before storing the result into the map? Thus the @ character turns into a zero that you can store into the byte map? Hmm. Okay. I prefer the form of notation where the many captured (and resurrected) pieces are listed, enclosed inside of parentheses, rather than connected as miniature moves joined by semicolons.
If all you have is a King and a Knight, I don't think you've got enough material to mate a solitary King using traditional chess rules, even if your opponent were to help you out and move his King where you want it to be moved. However, if you are playing chess on a nonstandard board, it might be possible. For instance, if the traditional 8x8 board had extra corners that were squares that a King could stumble into, a 'mate' of some kind might be possible. Naturally, we'd be talking about a pretty strange chessboard - for instance, a non-euclidean board - perhaps with an extra square just beyond each corner square - reachable by King or Knight, and entered as though it were just another square on the diagonal. But short of that, the simple answer to your question is: 'No - a King and Knight cannot mate a solitary enemy King, on a traditional 8x8 board., with no other pieces to assist.'
Mike Howe, Can you suggest a good, inexpensive JPEG, GIF, or PNG editor for either Windows or DOS? Although the graphics available here at www.chessvariants.org is suitable for the purpose at hand, I'm tempted to try my hand at changing some of the graphics around. What programs do you use? Unfortunately, my Windows computer crashes a lot. That means working on an ordinary 68000 system (plain vanilla ST, 2.5 megs, but at least it's stable) or a PC that runs DOS. Sigh. If only my HP laserfonts from the olden days could be modified for use on Internet, or changed around so they could be imported into Windows - but it seems like 99 out of 100 PC users have never even HEARD of laser font ID codes, or font management ESC sequences, it's hopeless to even broach the subject, and have them understand what I am talking about.) If you remember seeing my fonts from 1988, they were actually pretty good for 300 dpi laserprinter graphics.
Well, shoot, I'm not at all familiar with Windows. I just haven't had much luck with it. Using the Microsoft 'paint' program, how on earth would you get your images cut down the middle so the left side can be reflected over to the right side? For instance, most chess pieces are symmetrical along a vertical axis, and I simply haven't the slightest idea how to do it with the software that comes with Windows.
Black and white seems particularly appropriate to graphics for chess programs. What graphics editor did you use for the Macintosh?
Thanks! I'll give that a shot. Say, can you suggest a way for me to strip off the HP laserprinter headers to arrive at a Windows compatible font of some kind? Most HP laserprinter fonts predating the HP3 series were similar to .BMP fonts, and as such were non-scalable.
Game Courier User's Guide. How to play games with the CV Play-by-Mail system.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Fergus, I was using your Game Courier program to play Rococo at http://play.chessvariants.org (if I spelled that right) and elected 'mutual destruction' for my Swapper (white), and the enemy King (black) it was standing next to. So I entered a compound move along the lines of @-e5; @-d6 causing both the Swapper and King to be deleted from the board when the diagram got redrawn. Here's my question- Did I employ the correct notation? The User's Guide doesn't state the procedure for declaring victory. The Game Courier program just wants to keep going, not realizing that Black no longer has a King to defend. Shouldn't there be a subroutine somewhere checking for the existence of the King in Rococo? At the least, the subroutine could fall through to a status report of some kind, with an option to back up, or log it as a victory?
In a day and age where many people think it too much work to do anything other than rastering out a single line of pixels to the laserprinter, and then, as needs be, repeat it, row by row, until the picture is printed, it might go past some people - the ones that only have Windows - that there are still some people out there who sit around loading 'softfonts' into their memory, and then, after exporting those fonts to a laserprinter, find it convenient to juggle them around with no more than a short ESC sequence to effect an overall change in printout. (It sure beats having to reload 64K of bytes every time you want to switch from italic to upright, or from plain to bold, or large to small, including subscripts and superscript, just to print out a document of medium complexity.) Back in the olden days, laserprinters tended to have just enough room for a few dozen softfonts, and the only way to get them in, was by sending ESC codes to the laserprinter, almost always with a preliminary 'printer reset' code consisting of two bytes: 1b 45 - so I was wondering if you had any tips on how to modify my laserfonts from the olden days for use with Windows? Of course, things are more complicated than snipping off two bytes. It turns out that there are hosts of other ESC sequences that need to be fixed up, or turned around. Like whether a font is proportional or fixed, upright or italic, that sort of thing.
Game Courier Logs. View the logs of games played on Game Courier.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]When a player has won, it appears that a box ought to exist somewhere that he can edit to say who has won, but this box never appears for me. Exactly where can I find a box to click, that lets me declare who is the winner? Also, there appears to be a mysterious 'delete log' box. Can you explain the history behind this option? How often does one player choose to delete both logs? Finally, I'd like the option to backup and allow my opponent to change his move. There is supposed to be a button/icon that says 'GOTO' but I can't find it. What part of Game Courier has this button in it? This option doesn't seem to be available to me anywhere, and it doesn't make any difference whether I am white or black, I still can't figure out how to 'backup' and let my opponent choose some other move. This is in response to my recent game of Rococo with gwduke where I elected to mutually destroy the white Swapper and the black King; the only intelligent move I could see for Black was moving the black Immobilizer back to freeze the white Swapper and prevent it from engaging in 'mutual destruction.'
I can understand a player wanting to delete his own moves, and his name if he wants to, so that's why I naturally assumed that a game log consists of two logs - the moves that one player makes, and the moves that the other player makes. Shouldn't the 'Delete Log' option work only to delete the moves that a particular player makes, and not the moves of both players together?
Geeeeze, I hope I am not the only one who is having trouble with www.chessvariants.org. I keep running into the following browser problem with my game of Rococo with gwduke: 'Your browser was not refreshed when you entered this move. If this move had not been stopped, you would have overwritten your log with data for a past move, causing you to lose moves in your game. Go back and refresh the log page before entering your move.' Well, I've gone back to the log page four times, and I'm still getting the same error message. No matter how many times I go to the 'log page' and sign in, I keep getting the same error message. What good will it do me to attempt to 'refresh the log page' one more time? The Game Courier program expects the user to type out a URL manually each time a move is logged. I've always looked on that part of the interface with an element of suspicion, in much the same way I look at Java applets and other webbrowsing features with suspicion. If Fergus can't come up with an alternative to submitting game moves than typing a web address or URL in manually, I guess I just won't be willing to use Game Courier any more to transmit the moves. (I suppose I could still post my moves here in the Comments area, although that prevents me from looking at the chessboard diagrams at the same time.) Maybe this is just a West Coast to East Coast thing, assuming the site is actually being maintained on computers in New York? I'm certainly not in a position to authenticate (let alone inspect) the actual packets that are being swapped from server to server, to get my data over to New York... (And then people wonder why I don't trust this newfangled world wide web stuff....)
Okay, thanks for the information about holding the CTRL key down while I click the mouse. (?) My familiarity with Windows and Internet Explorer is limited to the disasters I've suffered from, and succeeded against, despite the odds.
Is there any way to change the defaulting font for Game Courier? I made the mistake of starting a game of Ultima with the Alfaerie font, and find myself now stuck with it. I find myself constantly having to click the other optional fonts, trying to fix the original mistake. Is there anywhere I can click to change the default, so I don't have to do this every time I view the board?
Pincer Pawn. Moves as rook, and takes by enclosing.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]In almost all species of Baroque (and Ultima) Chess, the pincher pawn does not capture diagonally. To bring about a 'custodial' capture, the pawn must move like a rook, and the enemy target must be between the pawn and a friendly piece.
Where can I find the formula for determining the players' ratings? Is there such a thing as a performance rating, and a provisional rating? All other things being equal, two computers that are both capable of 2 ply searches, and make their moves accordingly, with absolutely no regard to positional nuances, only material differences, ought to be rated 1200. If they are capable of 3 ply searches, then their ratings ought to be rated 1300. Similarly, a computer capable of a 4 ply search should be rated 1400. By allowing computers to play against live humans, an exponential standard of sorts could be established for measuring human excellence.
Where, exactly, is the ratings page? Are you suggesting the existence of a webpage that deals with this subject? How do I get there? I tend to have a lot of trouble (and that's an understatement) navigating around this website (http://www.chessvariants.org) and rely principally on the menu system in place. The time lag between clicks and webpages loading tends to frustrate my navigation also. Humans should not have to wait 3 or more minutes for any given webpage to load. If this were a direct-dial BBS (and not a website) with a real telephone number, it would load a whole lot faster.
The user identification subroutine truncates my name from 18 characters to 16 characters; 'Matthew Montchalin' shrinks down to matthew_montchal because of the way the website handles registrations.
I guess automating the gaming process by bringing in computers to play humans (or other computers) might overwhelm the website, but while I am on the subject, there should be some practical way of evaluating how well computers play against each other, even if a 2-ply computer will almost always lose to a 2-ply human, if only because the 2-ply human has a way of recognizing patterns and trends, and learns how to take advantage of them. I suspect an ordinary human capable of 3 plies will often beat a computer capable of 6, if only because the human can assess positions more deeply in a general, 'off-the-cuff' sort of way than computers can. Well, I'm not too likely to buy a copy of Zillions of Games, so your argument against implementation of a 'ply-based' ratings system using computer players for standardization purposes sounds more like an 'a priori' argument against it than anything else. Computers should be encouraged to participate against humans. If two computers made absolutely random moves, the likelihood of winning or losing would ultimately depend on their implementations of their pseudo-random number generators; and some platforms do that sort of thing much better than others can. Even still, a computer that made totally random moves should be rated 1000. Programs that were 100% 'open source' could be entered into the system for benchmark purposes. Computers otherwise operating on the basis of secret terms, or on the basis of undisclosed source code would find themselves ranked against those that were, just like humans are. In closing, if a computer that played utterly randomly could be rated 1000, and a depth of 2-ply would make it play with the equivalent of a 1200 rating, then it follows that 10-ply would bring it up to 2000, and 20-ply would bring it up to 3000.
David, you must be thinking of USCF ratings, NWCF ratings (if they still exist), or ELO ratings, and each of these provide some way of estimating probable future performance based on previously observed past performance. I need to read up more on the Glickman Chess Rating system to see how it differs from that of the Game Courier Rating system, seeing as how they seem to share the same acronym. I was suggesting, on the other hand, a way of measuring computer programs pitted against each other, and against humans that are allowed to compete with them. You've probably heard of http://www.pogo.com where you can play cardgames such as Hearts and Spades (but no Skat, the last time I looked). You even get to play with robot players if you want. There are lots of sites like that in Internet. It's my understanding that the Game Courier here at www.chessvariants.org could handle cardgames like that, though one might be a tad less graphical than another. As for ZOG being some kind of a reason to forbid the 'Game Plies Rating' system I suggested, that only applies to people unwilling to buy an upgraded ZOG with the feature I suggested. Since I don't have a copy of Zillions of Games (and I'm unusually reluctant to go out and buy something that I don't even have a hardware platform to run it on), it escapes me why, exactly, the program can't be upgraded to play out all the plies that it has been directed to search through, short of observing that the person who originally programmed it, must not have felt like designing that feature. It was probably a case of him shrugging, and saying, 'Why bother?' If someone gets around to upgrading ZOG so it *could* search through entire Plies' worth of information (with or without regard to time controls, or the peculiar predicaments inherent in data storage), I'm sure it could do the job just as well as the next one could.
Yep, that's me. I'm also known as Matthew Monchalin. It's a very frequent misspelling of my name. But while we are on the subject, try not to pronounce my name as 'Moncha Lin' (as it has the accent on the penult, so pronounce it 'mont CHAY lin'). I think there may also be a Matthieu Monchalin over in France, but I've never met him.
The FIDE Laws Of Chess. The official rules of Chess from the World Chess Federation.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Playing speed chess with one hand on the chess clock, and another hand moving the chess pieces, often results in a broken chess clock because the players, struggling to push their own buttons down simultaneously, in belief that they are completing their moves 'in the nick of time' break or bend the lever(s) inside).
Fergus, your reference to Zillions of Games being a constraining factor appears to be a 'non sequitur' and not a premise. Supposing the games on this website are adequately described, it follows that all of the games on this website /can/ be played; not just online, but face to face, should the opportunity ever arise. Computers could eventually be brought in to help people learn how to play these games; wasn't increased accessibility the main idea behind designing Zillions of Games? It's unfortunate that Zillions of Games doesn't have a ply-setting, as that would have been extremely convenient for entry into my proposed 'Game Ply Rating' system. Even five or six computers that limit themselves to 2 ply searches, are going to play wildly differently if they disagree on the values of their pieces, or employ even slightly different pseudo-random number generators. Even if they were all playing absolutely randomly (and were therefore all assigned initial ratings of 1000), there would eventually be a departure from that number, as their true colors started to show, and the game results began to produce a bell curve of sorts. The inherent differences in programming is what appears to be the real quandary behind using a 'ply' based rating system; each computer will naturally play a little bit differently. (What sounds good in theory may not work out in the long run.) As for computers that can play one or two of the games available at this website, I'm still working on my Baroque computer game (for an ST upgraded to 2.5 megs RAM, minimum). Boy, it sure takes a ton of work to do all of the graphics, but at least the calculation part is proceeding fairly well. My program just isn't marketable, or user-friendly, in the slightest. (And I'll probably end up giving it away for free, anyway.) Zillions of Games appears to be a remarkable product, even if it won't run on my hardware platform.
Tony, to answer your question, I already have two ST computers, so I don't have to pony up for a PC computer, nor buy a Windows developer's license (which I understand is $1,500 on top of the purchase price of the hardware, and it costs even more to get a Mac and a Mac developer's kit, if that even exists, which I'm not sure about). And then there's the learning curve. I'd have to learn how to program a Mac or Windows, and that's one daunting task right there. Also, I prefer computers whose operating systems are in ROM, and therefore incorruptible. For the purpose of establishing benchmarks, maybe you and I could someday test out our programs against each other's? You could use a modern computer running at 2.5 gigaherz (or whatever), and I could use my little computer? I'm naturally referring to the game of Baroque - or one of its relatives (but no Rococo, please). And certainly not Chess, as there are enough Chess-playing computers already. Baroque is a more challenging game, and requires far more calculations than Chess does. (Markedly more, if we allowed either side to delay indefinitely the reversals of their rooks (causing one to become an Immobilizer), or the reversals of the King and Queen (Withdrawer)), which adds a whole extra element of long-range strategy to the game. When it comes to modern computers, there are zillions of programmers that are better than I am. I'm no virtuoso. I just put my nose to the grindstone, and keep toiling away at the darn thing until it works like it's supposed to. That means a near endless examination of the states that the 'programming engine' outputs, and you would not believe how poorly implemented the Atari support package is, you end up having to kludge out your own suite of programming tools, the kind that more or less work right most of the time. I've put in about 9 months or more on this thing so far. Sure is slow and tedious. As for computer contests, we /could/ use an ordinary telephone line with direct connections, no webmail involved. (Or we could just post the moves here or at some other mutually agreed-upon place.) The role of the user-attendant would be to type the moves in, as they come.
My program isn't ready yet, but I'll keep it in mind. I think there are a lot of programmers hanging out at this website (http://www.chessvariants.org) and many of them may have hacked together a program out of nothingness, using nothing but sweat and insight, and they should be encouraged to have their programs brought in as well. (Ditto goes for the people that are responsible for programming ZOG.) I think that a 'Game-Ply Rating' system would probably oscillate around a bit, with every re-calculation introducing a little bit of drag and a little bit of drift- considering how 0-ply systems would hover around 1000, 1-ply systems around 1100, 2-ply at 1200, and 3-ply at 1300, and so on. Using a 'Game-Ply Rating' system, to which computers could contribute benchmarks, would make the human performances more meaningful. And if a human's USCF or ELO chess rating were imported into the 'Game-Ply Rating' system, it would probably see a steep climb before stabilizing. For instance, if a handful of human beginners at 800 USCF started playing a few 0-ply computers at 1000 GPR, the human ratings would go up. I would oppose lowering a computer's GPR rating, however. If a computer has a GPR rating, it should only go down as a result of a loss to another computer. This is because humans are inherently smarter than computers. The computer GPR ratings ought to be independent benchmarks that only they themselves contribute to.
If people think they are going to be 'rated' on games that they have previously been told, don't count, there is going to be a chilling effect that discourages people from participating on the website here. For that reason, two separate rating systems should be used, if at all any ARE used: one would be for those adventurous souls willing to play games they've never even heard of (and are therefore attempting to learn), and another rating system for those souls that insist on playing just one particular game, something they actually know a thing or two about, and about which they have developed theories of play that are put into practice.
Game Courier Ratings. Calculates ratings for players from Game Courier logs. Experimental.[All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Fergus, I suggest you use a different rating system, especially considering how your current one is pretty arbitrary (we can nitpick about the 400 point difference as opposed to a 500 or 600 point difference, but we would do by knowing in advance that one number is just as arbitrary as another), and how it appears to be designed to judge people's 'future performance' based upon observations of previous games that users were told wouldn't count. (Although that's really not /that/ big of a deal.) And if you encouraged users to add their computer programs to the fray, the ratings, as such, would add an extra dimension of utility.
I'd like to invite someone to play a game of Maxima but for the graphics currently designed for (or attached to) the game. If anybody has the means of editing the graphics so the pinchers look like chess pawns, could they volunteer their services? I don't have access to a reliable Windows or Mac computer, so that rules me out.
Can anybody comment on making your own plastic pieces, whether through casting (as in the case of acrylics) or through injection moulding? I'd guess that both methods would require first the making of moulds for churning out prototypes, and then obtaining material for filling the moulds up with? I read somewhere that plastics injection moulding employs little plastic pellets that are exposed to heat and liquefied, and then pumped into the moulds. I'd suppose that foundries specializing in plastics could work with initial prototypes before they actually do a real production run. Since the difficulty in making pieces is the same no matter where you do it, a more serious question to ask, is whether production expenses would be less if products were manufactured in one part of the world as opposed to another. Where are most plastic chess pieces manufactured in the United States? Are there alternative sources for plastic pieces than the US?
Somebody edited the Ultima preset to make it look for checks, checkmates, and stalemates. Could you return it back to the way it was?
Well, in any event, I'm glad you returned it back to the original.
How much work would it take to modify the Ultima preset to allow the Withdrawer to engage in additional withdrawals (in different directions, of course) if it ends up (fortuitously enough) in a square adjacent to an enemy piece that so situated it is subject to capture by the Withdrawer? This kind of a change would make the Withdrawer considerably more powerful than it is right now. Allowing 'bonus' withdrawals would, if implemented, make the piece enjoying that power a 'Multi-Withdrawer' (similar to the Multi-Leaper that is already part of the Preset). That may not be too important in an 8x8 version of Baroque (like Ultima), but in 9x9 and 10x10 versions with more pieces, and necessarily more Withdrawers, it could make the game that much deeper to ponder. Innovations along those lines *would* make it more difficult to calculate when a King is in check, but that's something I think I could live with.
Well, that's why the Presets shouldn't attempt to verify check,
checkmate, or stalemate. Let the players look at the diagram, and decide
for themselves whether the proper score is available to them. (And in
Ultima, a stalemate ought to count as 2/3 - 1/3 instead of 1/2-1/2, but
that kind of a change would probably screw up your rating system.)
And considering the large number of chess variants being discussed or developed at this website (with or without some other kind of 'real world' non-Internet avenue of promotion available to it), I can certainly understand why you'd find it a daunting matter to spend time on something you don't really spent much time playing, as it presumably involves a lot of spaghetti code that needs to be given a good looking at.
So, if that new Preset you mentioned allows players to type in anything they want, maybe it could be used for a variant of Ultima where a Withdrawer is given the honor of additional captures?
I just dropped by to see if my opponent had made a move, and when I clicked the newest implementation of Ultima (that's Baroque to the rest of the world), I was greeted with some kind of 'abstract' representations of the chess pieces. No matter what I clicked, I couldn't get the original 'staunton' style of chess pieces back. I tried selecting the 'chess motif' that was supposed to be available, but then after I clicked 'view' I got stuck at move 0. But the fact is, we are around 6 moves into the game. It appears that the most recent innovation (or innovator) in the Game Courier must like the 'abstract' representations of the pieces. But I don't. I prefer instead the Staunton design, as that is what is most historically accurate. Help!
The 'v' command works better now. As you observed, it kept reverting back to some kind of an 'abstract' or 'alfaerie' font, instead of the user-selectable font. I'm glad you fixed it. It was getting frustrating having the thing revert back to that weird font, over and over again.
I accurately described the problem; it existed; the problem appears to have gone away. It is unfortunate that your experiences were not the same.
Is there any way a 'button' could be added to the module that allows people to view the game logs from start to finish, more or less automatically? I was wondering if there was a simple, easy way of watching a game log play itself out automatically, assuming the user types in the point at which it begins? For instance, when I go to the implementation of Ultima (i.e., Baroque), I always choose the kind of pieces I want to look at, and then I always have to click 'VIEW' to translate the board into something that makes sense to me. It would be nice if there were a button that said 'VIEW CONTINUOUS' (with user-definable pauses inbetween moves) so I could watch the whole game play itself out automatically. But if 'VIEW CONTINUOUS' takes too much room to display on the screen, how about 'MOVIE' for an auto-play-out option?
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