Kasparov Chessmate

[Andrew]

Hi, I recently bought this program and am really pleased with it, its a good solid chess program.
One thing I am having a problem with though, and have been unable to find any solution for, is reviewing games. Basically even though I have my own saved games, as well as the kasparov historical games, if I choose review from the menu and then select either historical or saved games, a message appears telling me no files of this type are available.
If I browse to the installation directory on the PPC, I can see my saved games and the historical games, so they are all definitely there. Does anyone know how I can make this work as the review feature was one of the reasons why I bought this program. (Incidently I tried emailing the listed support address for the supplier and it got returned saying that the address doesnt exist).
I installed the game on to a 128MB SD card, on an Ipaq 5450, any help would be appreciated.

TIA

Andrew

[Pony99CA]

Hi, I recently bought this program and am really pleased with it, its a good solid chess program.
One thing I am having a problem with though, and have been unable to find any solution for, is reviewing games. Basically even though I have my own saved games, as well as the kasparov historical games, if I choose review from the menu and then select either historical or saved games, a message appears telling me no files of this type are available.
If I browse to the installation directory on the PPC, I can see my saved games and the historical games, so they are all definitely there. Does anyone know how I can make this work as the review feature was one of the reasons why I bought this program. (Incidently I tried emailing the listed support address for the supplier and it got returned saying that the address doesnt exist).
I installed the game on to a 128MB SD card, on an Ipaq 5450, any help would be appreciated.
I have never used this program, but may have a suggestion.

Where are the saved games located? If they aren't in a My Documents folder, that could be the problem.

Steve

[tanalasta]

I purchased this game a while back and have had the same problem. I'll save you an email to support (that's what I did).

It is a known bug that occurs if you install the game onto a storage card. They did promise to fix it when they next update the program and let me know, but seeing that was MONTHS ago, I doubt it'd happen.

If you install the game into main memory, you'll find that the review games function works perfectly.

NB: If your game is already installed into main memory and it's still not working, I can't help! sorry!

[Raynne]

Same here. I bought it when it was first released. Same bug. Emailed support and was told they would fix it in the next update, which has never been released.

[Andrew]

Thanks for the responses guys - Steve I thought of that too and Ive tried copying my saved games to various locations, including the my documents folder but nothing worked.

Its a shame though that the game has to be installed in main memory for it to work properly, as I wanted it on the storage card to save space. Did any of you try installing it into the ipaq filestore? Or does it have to be main memory?

I think Ill give it a shot and I'll post back here and let you know, its a pity such a quirky bug got through QA though, surely someone must have noticed something like that?

Thanks again for the responses guys

Andrew

[Pony99CA]

Thanks for the responses guys - Steve I thought of that too and Ive tried copying my saved games to various locations, including the my documents folder but nothing worked.
Before you reinstall, where are the saved games stored by the program? If they're in the program's folders somewhere, maybe creating a Progam Files folder on the storage card and moving the program to \Storage Card\Program Files\... would work.

If the saved games aren't stored in the program's folders. did you try creating a My Documents folder on the storage card and putting the saved games there?

Steve

[Andrew]

Hi, Im sorry that its taken so long to respond, but its a quite busy time a t work just lately.
With regards to the game, I didnt have time to reinstall it yet either, but what you suggested Steve already occured to me too, but as I have the game installed on the storage card, I tried creating the folders on the device itself.
The saved game files are stored in \\Storage Card\Hexacto Kasparov Chess\historic games <-- These are the games Kasparov played
\\Storage Card\Hexacto Kasparov Chess\replays <-- These are your saved games.
I have tried recreating the above folder structure in main storage on the device and copying some of the saved game files there, but this didnt work.
I dont believe copying them to the my documents folder will have any effect as they clearly have their own subfolder for the saves, but I will try it anyway.
So far after 10 mins of looking, the only registry key I found is installdir which points at the storage card. What would be useful is if someone who has this installed in main memory on their device could post if they have different keys or extra keys visibile. If not, when I finally have time Ill try it myself and see if it creates any addtional ones that point to the saves.

Bear with me a bit, but I will keep you informed.

Regards

Andrew

[Pony99CA]

The saved game files are stored in \\Storage Card\Hexacto Kasparov Chess\historic games <-- These are the games Kasparov played
\\Storage Card\Hexacto Kasparov Chess\replays <-- These are your saved games.
Do you see the games in those folders? If so, the program obviously knows where to save them, but doesn't seem to know where to read them.

If the games aren't there, the program probably uses \Program Files\Hexacto Kasparov Chess or \Program Files\Games\Hexacto Kasparov Chess to store and retrieve games.

If those paths are hard-coded in the program, no registry key will help you; Hexacto would have to fix the program. My understanding is that the Pocket PC doesn't support relative folders (for example, .\replays ), so the program would need to check one folder, then the other if the games weren't there. The sad thing is that it should be a five-minute fix. :-(

However, if you have a binary editor for the Pocket PC (like the free SK one), you might be able to search for the directory string and punch your own path in. The problem is that you would need a path that was no longer than the ones hard-coded into the game (otherwise you might erase other data). You would also need to enter the paths in Unicode and ensure they were null-terminated.

Steve

[Andrew]

Hi again,
Yeah the program saves the games into the right folders, so it does know where they are so to speak.
Youre right in what you say about the path being 'hard-coded' too, or at least the possibility of it (I havent checked), but Im kicking myself that I didnt think of it either.
To be honest with you though, Im wondering whether its worth going through the effort to fix this when as you say, it seems its something the publisher could fix in 5 minutes. I think I will just bite the bullet and reinstall it during lunch time :)

Andrew

[tanalasta]

Actually, I remember trying everything I could when I had that problem. Even to the point of copying EVERYTHING from the storage card to RAM and then running it from that. Didn't work. Looked in the registry... didn't work.

I'm not sure how they coded it but installing the hefty 4MB game into RAM is the only way that I've managed to get the review games function working :P

[patrickwest]

I've tried several things and the only thing that works is to copy the entire folder and its two subfolders to the main memory program files folder.

Then the saved games can be found. When I've done I copy it back. It runs fine for playing and saving games on the storage card. so only when I want to review a game to I need to copy it to main memory.

Using an ipaq 5555 and Resco File Explorer it takes a minute to copy the files.

Not an elegant solution but it works.