BrainKing.info - the BrainKing game site knowledge base

Today, let me post a short note about the feature requests. The ones who were with us since the very beginning of BrainKing probably remember my almost instant reaction to all posts to the Feature Requests discussion board. Yes, it was easy 4 years ago because there was only a small community of active users. However, BrainKing was growing and still is, which means that the number of feature requests is growing as well and it is virtually impossible to handle all of them immediately.
The question is, is it still meaningful to post new requests to that board?
And the answer is YES! Of course. The only thing that changed was the form of my reaction. Basically, there are three cases:

• A request is very easy to implement, usually by changing several lines in the source code, and the work is done within one hour. Then the request is addressed instantly.
• A more advanced feature is asked to be done. Then, if no reaction from my side comes, it simply means I am thinking about it and I am not sure about the complexity of the task yet. Anyway, all such requests are noted and when the time comes, they are considered to be done or not.
• A too difficult or unworkable feature is requested. Then, usually, my short answer "it cannot be done" appears and the subject is closed.

The conclusion: Keep posting your requests and don't feel insulted if no response appears. No response is also a kind of response and means that I am aware of it, currently being occupied with other things.

As you probably know, there is a Search Page on BrainKing. This page contains front-ends of several popular search engines, including Google, Amazon.com, etc. And, as I have already noticed, the Google search was not much used because the search results were displayed on Google's site, which meant to leave BrainKing.

Fortunatelly it seems that Google guys were aware of this drawback as well and released a big improvement today which was immediately implemented on BrainKing. Since this day, if you go to the Search Page, write some keywords to the Google Search box and submit the form, you will be shown another BrainKing page (with our left menu column, right status column and other common features) containing an inner section with the Google search results. Shortly it means that you can easily search the whole web without leaving BrainKing.

One more tip for Firefox users - when you get the search results and use a middle-click (usually by your mouse wheel) on a target URL, it will be opened at a new tab of your Firefox window, so you won't leave BrainKing even in this case.

BrainKing does not follow the "standard" guidelines how to build a game site. Most likely because its creator always had a problem with his employer to make an agreement about the way to do the job, and finally ended up as his own employer. Which is a good thing, at least from BrainKing's point of view, because he can spend a lot of time to work on this game site and no other full time job distracts him.
The reason why I write this article, well, the reason is that some people wonder why BrainKing pages occasionally contain a strange content like the Search Page which syndicates 3 or 4 different search engines and none of them searches BrainKing itself, or what the hell does the Press Monitoring page mean?
The answer is simple. BrainKing is evolving. There is one thing I am very interested in and the thing is to find and use relations among different subjects and integrate them to one final product. The point is that the internet is a bottomless source of a free valuable content which, if it is well packed and presented, can create an interesting user experience for anybody. And, of course, it is still an optional addition to BrainKing - who wants to stick with playing games only, can do it with no limitations as before. However, everyone gets bored sometimes if he does the same thing over and over, and then, say, when a game of backgammon is played, a noteless link "show more information about backgammon" can become a good opportunity to take a break. The target information page will probably contain another link "show a list of backgammon friendly cell phones" (a hint to open a discussion about a mobile version of BrainKing client), etc.
On the other hand, paying members have a possibility to turn off many additional features.
The last note - all mentioned non-game enhancements are in a testing phase, so they will be probably changed or improved in the future. Just keep in mind that I like to test and see the reactions of the users. It is kind of a refreshing change when I want to stop programming games for a while.

I have added prizes to the recently created team tournaments, in order to make them more attractive for new paying members who never tried them before. Each member of every winning team will receive 200 Brains.

There is also one more point of the Action Points system to be clarified, because some users still seem to be confused about its correct usage. Let me try to explain it closely:

• Go to the Support Us page and find the section Promotion. It contains several BrainKing banners and, which is more important, the line about the referral points.
• This line shows your unique referral URL. It is http://brainking.com?refuid=*YourUserId* where the YourUserId contains the number which corresponds to your BrainKing user ID.
• Simply copy and paste this URL to your own homepage or any other page on the web where you want to promote BrainKing. Just make sure the result makes a clickable link.
• When someone clicks on your referral URL (which leads him to the BrainKing's start page) and registers on our site, you will be given the Action Points. Please note it only works if you refer unique users - if 100 people registers from the same computer, you would get points for referring only one of them.

If there is anything else which needs to be explained or discussed, please click on the Comments link above this article and post your suggestions or questions.

Last week I have implemented several minor improvements to the site and since they were not worth announcing at the official Server News, I can describe them here (feel free to post comments about this subject):

• The Discussion Boards contains a list of Today's top visited boards. This table displays the board names sorted by a number of unique users who visited the particular board today. The list consists of both public and private boards, so it gives a picture of a popularity of fellowships as well.
• There is a new option at the Move and go to form which appears when you want to submit a new move in a game, and the option is go to the next game of similar type. How does it work? When you use this choice, BrainKing submits your move and then display the next game of the same game group. For example, if you make a move at a backgammon game and it is your turn at a hyper backgammon game too (it belongs to the same backgammon group), the system will show this game as the next one. It can be useful if you play several hundreds games but you want to finish, say, all chess variants first. The list of game groups can be found at the top of the New Game page.
• There are games where the result of a move is not shown before the move is actually submitted. For example, if you play battleboats and shoot on a selected square, you don't know if you hit or miss until you click on the "Move" button. That's why many users switch to the "Move and stay here" option to see the result instead of going to the next game. However, there is a drawback - in order to play another game, you must go back to the Main Page and select the game from the list. Fortunatelly, there is a small improvement now - if you stay on a game page where it is not your turn to move, BrainKing automatically scans your other games and if it finds another game of the same type, it will add a link Play the next game of *game type*.

All right, The Link has been created. Starting today, you can see en excerpt of the most recent entry of this blog at your BrainKing's Main Page and when you click on the "more ..." link, you will be redirected to this site to read the full story.
In other words, it works as an instant notification right after the new blog post is released, which could help to promote the new BrainKing.info site a little. And, of course, I didn't forget about the magic "remove" link which hides the blog notification box until the next entry is out.

I am aware of several BrainKing users who has problem accessing our site when using the Google Web Accelerator. This is a short description of disabling that tool for BrainKing:

1. Click on speedometer icon in the google web accelerator toolbar.
2. Select preferences from the drop down menu.
3. At the bottom of the page that drops down is a memo box labeled "Don't Accelerate These Sites" type "brainking.com" into this box.

BrainKing is a web site, accessed through a web browser, that means it occassionally faces the common browser problems at the client's side. If you think BrainKing is not working properly for you (some images don't load, only a part of a page is displayed, the site is slower than usual), try to clear your browser's cache (where it stores previously loaded pages and images to reuse them later):

• Firefox: Tools / Options / Cache / Clear Cache Now
• Internet Explorer: Tools / Internet Options / Temporary Internet Files / Delete Files
• Opera: Tools / Preferences / Advanced / History / Disk Cache / Empty Now
• WebTV: Clearing cache with WebTV is very easy. Simply power off the unit completely and turn it back on. (Using the "Hang Up" option is NOT enough. The "Power" button must be used. Sometimes a "Hard" clearing of cache may be necessary. To do this, power off completely, and unplug every wire connected to the box. 15 minutes later, plug everything back in and power back on. (Thank you Rod! )

And when it is done, don't forget to restart the browser.

One of BrainKing's unique features is that it doesn't hide the exact number of registered users. Why should we? Instead of showing a grandiloquent banner "we have 2,000,000+ registered users!" without any further information or details, BrainKing enables anybody to check the current number at the Player List page and take advantage of more detailed statistics (e.g. the numbers sorted by most represented countries, fast AJAX search box to look for users without reloading the whole page, etc.).
So, what's the point? That page shows two date values for each users - the first login time (hint - in order to find out the exact date and time when BrainKing had been launched, read the first login value for the user with ID=1 - Fencer - that's me ) and the last action time. The latter one is a good indicator of the particular account activity - if the last action date value is, say, 23rd September 2003, the account is probably inactive and not used anymore. Finally, we've come to the purpose of this article. Let's summarize the consequences:

• Question: Why cannot my account be deleted? I don't want to use BrainKing anymore.
• Answer: The user ID is the most important value on BrainKing and is used almost everywhere - your ID is linked with your games, discussion posts, private messages, statistical data, etc. If the account is deleted from the database, the structure of all other tables which are linked with your user ID would become corrupted. It makes no harm to leave the account inactive - just stop logging in and if you edit your profile before that and remove all private information, there will be nothing left which could be misused.
  By the way, why would someone leave BrainKing? There is nothing better around the world! (just kidding)
• Question: I want to create an account or rename my current user name to something more attractive. When I try to do so, BrainKing returns a message this user name is already used. However, the other account which occupies my desired user name is inactive. Is there a way to solve it?
• Answer: There is always a way to solve virtually everything. This case is really simple - just send me a message with a request of unblocking the user name you want to use for yourself, and I will do it as soon as possible.
  Which reminds me - maybe I could add a feature which would solve these issues automatically. In the future.

Okay, that's enough for today. Time to relax with a mulled wine and some impressive movie from my DVD collection.

Whatever happens on BrainKing, there is always someone who wants more. I have already got used to it. This time it is related to the team tournaments, there were several requests, so I've created several more entries - Hyper Backgammon and Pente. Most likely this list is not finished, if you think your favourite game should be used for another one team tournament, just let me know and write a comment here. Don't forget to register first, it is really fast and easy. Unfortunatelly it's not possible to use your BrainKing login data at this site, so you need to have a separate account, but feel free to register with the same user name and password - like on BrainKing.com, they are perfectly safe.

By the way, I've noticed many people are not aware of this blog site because it is not much promoted at the moment. That's why I decided to show a short announcement on the BrainKing.com's main page when a new post is made on BrainKing.info. It doesn't work yet because it requires some additional programming but when it works, I will announce it on both sites.

The last note of this morning - if you are a Finnish or Danish native speaker and want to contribute to BrainKing's unique multilingual features, please don't hesitate and contact me. The localizations in the mentioned languages are almost finished but due to personal reasons of the translators, the problem of completing the pending entries (mostly the game rules) still remains. It would be a pity to leave them unfinished.

I have watched Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest in a cinema yesterday. Very good movie to relax after a mind boggling work. But that's not what I wanted to write about.

As you might noticed, I've created 8 new team tournaments on BrainKing, mostly to promote the recently added games (Lines of Action, Breakthrough, Ambiguous Chess, ...), but there are also some hot tips which are always popular (Backgammon). The deadlines are set to 10th September and the following days, so there is enough time to form a team (8 players) and sign up.

The last note before I get a lunch - I have extended the possibilities to get the secret action points to this blog site as well. Although they can be added to your account with a certain delay, they are really here. I am sure many users will find them very soon.

BrainKing is currently translated to 15 languanges and I proudly call it a "multilingual site". Which is great, we are open to many people who don't speak English and other English-only game sites are virtually impossible to use for them. By the way, did you know the third biggest community on BrainKing comes from Turkey? (after USA and Czech Republic)
So, what's the problem with that? I occasionally receive an e-mail of this type: "I have clicked somewhere and now I see BrainKing in some foreign language, I don't understand a word, help me!". Fortunatelly, the solution is very easy. After logging in, find the section of language flags:

This section is located at the top right or the bottom left corner (depending on your layout, but most users would find it at the top right). Click on the English flag and you are rescued.

Good morning (or afternoon/evening, depending on your time zone).

These summer holidays become very specific in the BrainKing history, especially because of the launch of Action Points. Besides the good consequences of this feature, which caused a big increase of our site traffic (a good test of our servers what they are capable of!) and an installation of several "restart-if-it-is-down" automatic programs (we can sleep much better, without waking up with a fear of our mailboxes full of complaints about the inactive BrainKing), it seems that several users went crazy when hunting down the Secret Points. In order to clarify this issue, there is some additional information:

• The secret points are not constant for the whole month. If you found them on one page yesterday, most likely they will be moved to a complete different location tomorrow. Otherwise, it would be too easy to earn them.
• In order to calm done certain too enthusiastic point gathereres, there is a cap of maximum secret points which can be earned each day. In other words, it makes no sense to click 200 times in a row at the same place if you think you have found the source. One single click can do the trick as well. Trust me.

Heh, two new entries in one day? I don't think it would become a standard of my blog posts, let's call it an initial exception There are still many admin features of this blog system to explore.

All right, why am I writing this? BrainKing was lacking one important page which had been requested many times by our partners or other friendly site owners. It is the page of Links to external pages/sites and I have added it a while ago. And, as usual, it is not just a page containing plain hyperlinks, a full authoring system has been created. Its basic features are these:

• Any registered user of BrainKing can use the "Add Link" page to suggest a new site to be displayed at the list of links. The site's content must be related to BrainKing somehow - for example, it can be another game site, a local chess federation homepage, a backgammon tournament chart site, a blog which writes about board games, etc.
• A user who already submitted one or more links, will see their list at the page bottom and can easily change them later, e.g. if the target URL would move to a new location.
• All submissions or changes must be approved by the administrators (me or Liquid) before they are visible. It avoids a possible spam attack.
Once the links are released, all unique clicks on them are logged and counted. It is important for the order of the links - they will be sorted by their popularity, i.e. the number of unique clicks (visits).
• The "Add Link" form also contains the "back link page URL" field. Please use this field to enter the URL of the page at your site which contains a clickable link pointing back to http://BrainKing.com. The back links are regularry checked and if a link to BrainKing is not found, your entry will drop to the bottom of the list and after some time, it can be deleted from the database.

Since BrainKing is a well known site with a high traffic (50,000+ unique visitors and 20,000,000+ page views each month), it might be a good idea to trade a link with us, using this new feature. And, of course, the system can be always improved, when new ideas emerge.

Hello and welcome to the official blog of the BrainKing game site. This page will be used to post important or interesting events related to BrainKing and its features. The main purpose of the blog is not to replace BrainKing's discussion boards, but to complement them - the BrainKing.info server runs on a different machine, so it can be up and running even if BrainKing.com is temporarily down, in order to keep our users informed about the latest news.

On the other hand, I plan to extend the usage of the BrainKing.info site by adding more categories which should be supported by other projects I want to release in the future. So stay tuned, there is more to come.