BrainKing.info - the BrainKing game site knowledge base

The growing number of supported languages on BrainKing brings a small problem of understanding what the opponent says if he uses BrainKing in, say, Bengali localization and expects you to speak this language as well. Of course, it would make no sense to spend an awful amount of time to implement BrainKing's internal translation service (although there were some requests of this kind in the past). Instead, it's easier to use what is already done.

There is a nice Firefox extension called Translator (a descriptive name) which resides at the browser's bottom margin and when it's activated by a right-click, it offers a nice collection of instant translation services (see the picture). It can be configured to select one of six free servers to redirect the translation request to and simply returns the translated page at a new window or tab. Although it cannot make miracles, in most cases it can give you a picture of what is the foreign language text about and I have successfully used it recently on the Chinese board.

By the way, there could be a short downtime tonight because our ISP plans to do some network works. They should not exceed a minute, hopefully.

The number of Black Rooks is increasing and I would like to give my thanks to everyone who has taken advantage of the Christmas Action (or who plans to do it soon). Any kind of support is very appreciated. Today's new feature has been requested by a Black Rook member as well.

As the real game enthusiasts probably know, BrainKing offers a possibility to download a zip archive containing finished Chess games in pgn format from a selected time range. Although BrainKing is mostly focused on Chess, we have more game types which support an export to a text notation format. Ergo, if you are a paying member and go to the page of rules of a game which supports pgn format (Chess and many variants), pdn format (Checkers and many variants) or sgf format (Go in all sizes), you should see the same export to a zip archive form.

You have probably noticed that a new link "change" has recently appeared next to the combo box containing all available "move and go to" options when you submit a move in a game. The purpose of this feature is to give players a chance to reduce the number of actions (which is currently 18) and use only the selected ones. The link points to the Settings page where you can select/unselect checkboxes next to the move action names at the new section Submit move actions. I am sure many people will find this customization handy, especially those who don't want to install special Firefox extensions to modify the BrainKing pages locally.

And, as a bonus, a new action move and go to the next game with no vacation has been added as well. When used, BrainKing will choose a next game with red or green dot - a game where no vacation days can be used at all.

In order to increase the number of small but handy features of the BrainKing game site, I have just added two new automatic link conversions to the discussion board system:

• Stairs - http://brainking.com/en/Stairs?tri=3652 is transformed to Very Fast Fischer's Stairs
• Single posts - http://brainking.com/en/Board?bc=1&ngi=626836 translates to BrainKing.com (pauloaguia, 2006-11-23 15:55:53)

Let's make the boards look even better.

You might have noticed that the page of tournament winners has been improved a little (not to mention the numbers have been recalculated to reflect the real status). Since it is more difficult to win a tournament with 16 players than four tournaments with 4 players only, there is a new filter Minimum number of players which is set to 8 by default. Experimenting with this number can give interesting results - for example, who won the most Froglet tournaments with at least 10 players?

The former links from the Profile pages (won tournaments column at the Finished games section) are still the same - they point to all (4 or more players) tournaments of the corresponding category.

In order to make the current action as easy as possible, I have just added two improvements to the Black Rook membership orders:

• Automatic processing - due to a special nature of the Black Rook membership level it was not activated automatically when the payment was received. Now it is. If you use PayPal, it should work for you instantly. Thanks to an anonymous user who has already tested it but since his Black Rook membership is to be activated as of 25th December 2006, his name is confidental.
• The second Black Rook's price is 0 Euro - it's no longer necessary to make a single order and add a message please give the free Black Rook to blablabla user. Simply add your own Black Rook to the shopping cart, then go to your friend's Profile page, click buy a membership for this user and add the second Black Rook to the cart. You will see 300 Euro for the first one and 0 Euro for the second one. Place the order and after the payment is received, both Black Rooks will be activated for the price of one.

According to the current statistics (which might be a little different at the time you read this entry), the number of Brain Bishop memberships is equal to the number of Brain Knight ones. It is nice to see the new membership level is that popular and we hope its very low price will become attractive to even more players.

The most recent Brain Bishop membership has also confirmed that scheduled membership subscriptions really work as expected. If you plan to make a membership Christmas gift, don't be afraid to set its activation time to 24th December 2006.

All right, the action has been started a while ago. This is also a test of the first BrainKing agent connected to the payment process - when a payment is automatically processed, the extra month is added as well, and the agent should turn itself off after 31st December 2006 midnight.

It cannot hurt to copy the action details here:

Christmas Special! Like every year, we launch our Christmas action:

1) Everybody who pays for any kind of membership (or extends their current membership) before the end of this year (2006), will automatically get one FREE month of the same membership as a Christmas present.

2) The last chance to purchase a Black Rook (which never expires) and get the second one for free! It means that you pay for your own Black Rook membership and then you can choose another player who gets the same membership as well. IMPORTANT! This is the last offer of this kind. After 31st December 2006, there will be no more special actions concerning Black Rooks.

I guess we can announce and start the Christmas Special (as a synonym of a December action) tomorrow. Why should we wait for the 1st December? Such details only make things more complicated.

And there is one new small tiny neat feature related to the discussion boards system. Not a breakthrough of any kind but it was already requested several times in the past.

Please write down this number: 89.250.246.182

Since our server housing provider wants to make a switch to a new pool of IP addresses later today, it is possible that your web browser won't be able to resolve BrainKing.com name correctly due to a delay of your local DNS server update. If it happens, please use the mentioned number instead of BrainKing.com and there is a good chance it would work.

Please note it is only a temporary solution for those who would experience access problems. The address http://BrainKing.com should be always used as the primary URL to reach our site.

I like a simplicity. There is no point to make things complicated when we don't have to, although a complicated process might look more professional to someone (that's what I don't agree with). And if a simple thing turns out to be still difficult under certain circumstances, let's make it even simpler.

The "problem" is in buying a membership for someone else, which is popular especially during this month (and I guess the upcoming Christmas action won't be an exception). Although our system of automatic processing of PayPal payment is kind of sophisticated, it's still not smart enough to read human messages like "this is a membership for my friend blahblahblah" because it expects that if you want to purchase a membership for a friend and want to make it activated as soon as possible, you will use the proper action to do so.

All right, the entry is already long enough, let me write the meaningful part. If you go to a Profile, you should see a new link buy a membership for this user at the page top, next to the user name and level. Clicking this link will show the Paid Membership page with all required parameters, so you can only select the desired membership level and click Add to cart button. Now I really think it cannot be implemented easier.

Of course, there are several situations when the link buy a membership for this user is not available:

• Your own profile page
• A player with membership that never expires - Brain Kings, Brain Queens and Black levels