BrainKing Knowledge Base

The time is always against us, especially when Christmas is soon and we want to catch up with everything at once. Fortunately, it is going to be much better next year, regarding the time which can be spent on BrainKing development. Meanwhile I am glad to do at least small updates, which can be interesting anyway.

If you already use the previously annouced Message Preview tooltip, try to open a tournament game page and move the mouse cursor over the tournament link below the game board.
I know this feature needs to be improved, e.g. display the tooltip above the link (instead of below) when there is not enough space, or not to make it disappeared immediately after move the mouse cursor elsewhere. Everything is at the TODO list.

Yes, this is a short one, although I have planned to make a bigger update tonight but I have just spent several hours trying to install and configure my new web camera. Instead of tracking my face, it has been continuously scanning all light sources in the room. Obviously I am not smart enough to handle the Smart Motion Detection system.

All right, the JavaScript tooltip which appears when you move the mouse cursor over the red number next to the Message box link now works with all kinds of messages - even the system ones, containing a generated content. Which is a good start to use this neat feature at more places of the BrainKing's set of pages. Hopefully, something new could appear tomorrow.

You might have noticed (if you already use the Show message previews at the Message box option) that a small box containing the message subject and body preview appears if you move your mouse cursor over the red number next to the Message box link. Although this feature is not fully finished (it still does not display the generated part of a message - e.g. a tournament link, a game result, etc.), it can work as a nice hint when a new message alert shows up during a sequence of game play and you don't want to break the "move and go to the next one" line going to the Message box directly.

Since the hint (tooltip) features seem to be popular, I plan to add more of them, on different pages of BrainKing.

Although Christmas is soon, we still work. Adding small features and improvements is what we always like to do:

• Cloning Backgammon - the rules of the game has been finally added.


• Statistics - since there are many people who don't show up on the main Statistics page, now the page shows your own BKR sum and average BKR values, if you want to compare yourself to the top 50.

I guess the rest of this year would mean a sequence of short blog entries because I am too busy with many other things. On the other hand, how many people read the long ones?

There is a new inconspicuous option on the Settings / JavaScript page on BrainKing which has been added yesterday. I wanted to add it a long time ago but there were always more important tasks to do, as usual. Well, it is finally here and I am glad to use it.

Okay, the option is called Show message previews at the Message box and when it is activated, it allows you to see previews (limited to 1000 characters) of message bodies at your Message Box. Simply hover the mouse cursor over a message subject line and you should see a nice result.

There is one known "bug" (or a missing feature, more like) - the tooltip does not display the generated body part (e.g. the finished game result, etc.) yet. This small issue is to be solved soon as well.

• Question: Why do you offer a lifetime membership for the tenfold amount of a normal year subscription? Isn't it better to make people pay annually instead?


• Answer: A lifetime membership option is something like a promise that BrainKing won't disappear after 3 years. Furthermore, since we need to upgrade our hardware, in order to keep a good performance of the site (especially when we plan to implement even more cool features which would mean an increased server load), it is better to collect more money as soon as possible and purchase all necessary components as soon as possible.

Which is, er, um, eh, another good reason why a Black Rook level is a good investment.

It is just a small improvement but since it was requested several times in the past, I have just implemented it. If you visit a game page, for example this one - http://brainking.com/en/ArchivedGame?g=1 - you should find a new link Show all games below the game board. This link points to the Profile page of one of the players which displays all finished games which these two players ever played on BrainKing. The games are separated by their type, so it's easy to select the one you are interested in.

Quite a short one but I have been too busy configuring my new development computer. Time for some serious work, at last.

• Question: I am from *some country* and we have public holidays when I cannot access the web to play on BrainKing. Is there a chance you could add these days to the BrainKing's list of public holidays?
• Answer: BrainKing is an international site and if we support all possible holidays of all countries, there could be no normal days left and no timeouts would ever occur. Moreover, some people have made a sport of changing their country every week (on their profile pages only, of course), so the holidays system could be easily misused. That's why BrainKing support only Christmas (24th, 25th and 26th December) and New Year (1st January). If we add weekend days (2 days every week) and vacation days (up to 40 a year or even more if you renew the membership by at least 1 year), it makes a nice number of days off which should be suitable for everyone.

I have added a small improvement to the Discussion Boards page. When you visit this page, you should see a small frame at the page top, containing the most recent post of the selected board group (which is set to General BrainKing.com discussion by default). It is useful if you want to read something new but don't want to visit every single public board to find out which one has been updated the most recently.

Other details:

• The most recent post is picked from the boards according to your language filter setting. For example, if your option Show boards in this language (at the Discussion Boards page) is set to Portuguese, the post will be selected from BrainKing.pt and Fórum geral boards only.
• The post preview is reduced to max. 500 characters (if it is longer, the (more ...) link is added) and displayed in a smaller font, in order not to occupy to much page space.

There are more improvements to the discussion board system to be implemented, but it's always better to start with the simpler ones and test the overall performance first.

Since BrainKing is a game site, not a chat site, this entry it not too important but I always prefer to refer people to already posted answer than to send individual responses. Shortly said, I want to make clear who can do what on public or private discussion boards:

• Public boards - the boards which can be found on the Discussion Boards page. The main moderator of the board is responsible for the content and all complaints should be sent to him/her. The other moderators (if set by the main moderator) help the main moderator to maintain the board. The Global moderators can do the moderator work as well and change the main board moderator if necessary.
• Private boards - the fellowship or tournament boards. The main moderator - i.e. the Big Boss of the fellowship or the tournament creator - is responsible for the content. Global Moderators have no power here because the private boards are really private. It means that if something is wrong at a private board, no complaints should be sent to the global moderators.

And, as a general rule, Fencer does not with to be bothered with any kind of complaints which are related to any discussion board issues (unless they are of a technical kind).

There are several ways how to get a paid membership on BrainKing and one of them (the most recent one) is to post a request to the Pawn Registry. This feature allows you to let people know that you would like to have a higher membership level but cannot afford to pay for it, for any reason.

It is a good practice that a targeted request is always better than an anonymous one. The Pawn Registry offers a possibility to write a public message to the future sponsor which could increase the chance to get your request spotted. Moreover, the Paid Membership page now displays a randomly selected request from the Pawn Registry and the ones with a public message are always selected first.