BrainKing.info - the BrainKing game site knowledge base

There was nothing new in this category for a long time, was it? All right, let me continue.

• July 2003 - no big news during that month, most likely because of the summer holidays. Several options to tournaments (unrated tournaments - no BKR is affected, and private tournaments - only invited players can sign up) were added. As I have said, no breakthough at all, but the site was up and running.


• August 2003 - performance problems appeared, which was the reason why the automatic refresh of the main page was temporarily disabled for non-paying members. Although it didn't help too much, we had some time to pinpoint the problem source and replace the damaged parts of the database server. The second significant event of August 2003 was the appearance of the first Brain Maharajah membership level (which was created mostly as a joke but there are always nice people who want to support us). Six months subscription only but a great help anyway.


• September and October 2003 - it is funny but I cannot find any notes which would describe the events of these two months. It means that nothing important had occured. Or was I too lazy to post the news? On the other hand, it is no necessary to comment all months.

Several months ago (actually in August 2006) I have posted an entry about BrainKing button for Google Toolbar which I have developed in my spare time (this is the link to the article). Then I forgot about it. However, when I have tried to search "BrainKing" on Google today in the morning, one of the search results has been pointing to the Google Toolbar Button Gallery, the Gaming category. And BrainKing is really listed there (see the screenshot). If nothing else, it is a good link to us.

I have also improved the Logik model because many players have realized that it is not too convenient to change colors of the current guess before submitting - they had to click the browser's Back button many times to get rid of already placed pieces to replace them. Now, if you are making a move and want to change one color without starting the guess over, simply click the color at the current guessing line of the board. It will disappear instantly.

And thanks for all responses to the yesterday's entry about exchange rates and Euro problem. It is always nice to see that every problem (or "problem") has a simple solution and even if it is mostly about an "edge case" (as we programmers say), it can finally turn out as a nice feature which adds some useful information to the site at all.

The last question of this day - is there, please, someone who can speak English and Finnish and could spend some time translating BrainKing game rules to this language? Don't hesitate to contact me as soon as possible. And a new Romanian translator would be very appreciated as well.

I give up. It seems that if certain people don't want to see certain things, they won't see them, even if a big red flashing arrow points directly to them and shows a big label "HERE! HERE!". It is the only explanation I can think of after receiving three different e-mails concerning The Question "What is EUR? How can I get BrainKing membership fees in USD?".

On the other hand, I don't like to give up. The ultimate solution is here.

The Paid Membership now contains a new subpage called How much is it in my currency? and this link is located next to Overview | Details links, just below the Pawn Registry link. When you click it, you will see a table of BrainKing membership fees in 34 currencies. The calculations are made using daily charts from European Central Bank and although they can be slightly different to the ones which are applied on PayPal, they give a good overview and answer The Question in the easiest way.

Starting today, who sends The Question once more, will be called an idiot.
On the other hand, we wouldn't have this if it wasn't for them.

All right, this is it. As we announced before last Christmas, ten new games have been added to BrainKing in January 2007 (and it is not the end of the month yet). Let me make a short recapitulation:

• Cheversi
• Hawaiian Checkers
• Dice Chess
• Grasshopper
• Dice Poker
• Recycle Chess
• Triple Dice Poker
• Ice Age Chess
• Frog Finder
• Logik

And Logik is today's addition, you might know the game named Mastermind and it is very similar to it but the game is for two players, like all other games on BrainKing.
Time has come to do something a little different.

Well, my former intention was to release the last one of 10 new games in January today but the development and debugging and testing process has shown to be more complicated than it was supposed to be at the first glance. Which means no bad news, of course. But since we need to sleep too (YES!), the game will be released tomorrow. Definitely. Actually, the game is finished, debugged and tested, but I am too tired to release it now. Who would want to find a message box full of complaints "where are the rules?" or "I don't know how to play it" as a wake up surprise?

The second thing I would like to comment today is the problem (well, not a problem at all) of games with more than two players. Actually, we have Ponds but it is not a typical multi player board game because there is no board to play on. As you might know, BrainKing system currently does not support multi player games, which means that when I get a question of "could you add Ludo for 4 players?" type, the answer is still "not yet". We plan to have games for more than 2 players on BrainKing, there is no doubt about it, and maybe some games for less than 2 players as well. But now we cannot say when and it is not a task of priority number 1. At least not at this moment.

The rules of recently added froggy game Frog Finder have been added a while ago. Although this game is not supposed to reach the top of the most played games chart (because it requires to think more than in dice games), I like it and I am glad that Michael invented it. Find the rules here.

Just a quick small improvement - the list of finished matches (on a fellowship page) is sorted by the match end time now, the most recently finished match is the first. It should make the list better organized, at least as a temporary solution.

Today, we have started the second hundred of game types on BrainKing (which doesn't mean that it will be finished as well ) and the current total number of new games introduced in January 2007 is 9. It means that only one new game must be added and the promise of the Christmas Action would be fulfilled (well, at least a part of it). Anyway, I think that the variety of games supported on BrainKing is already good enough and it is not necessary to expand it at all costs.

The game number 101 is called Frog Finder and was invented by Michael Coan in 2006. It is a nice two-player variant of the Minesweeper game which is included in MS Windows set of simple games. Since, as usual, the rules has not been posted yet, you can find a good overview here.

Please don't get used to see a new game on BrainKing several times a week, it is just a temporary status and I don't expect to follow this trend in February. Everybody needs a rest.

There is not much to write about today, most likely because we have a snow in Prague at last, so I have spent some time staring at it. But there are still two minor improvements which have been added this day:

• Ice Age Chess rules have been posted and can be found here.


• Team match links are automatically translated to clickable names of the matches, when posted to a discussion board. For example, http://brainking.com/en/ShowMatch?mai=5474 would be transformed to Casino Royale (Lorien vs. Purple World).

I am glad to announce a release of the 100th game on BrainKing. Although dice games seem to be the most popular ones, this one does not contain dice. However, some kind of cubes you can find there. Ice cubes, in fact, and the game is called Ice Age Chess. It is an interesting and original Chess variant, created by Köksal Karakus in 2000, and its most significant feature is that the initial game position contains ice cubes filling the former blank spaces. And, of course, the ice barrier must be broken before classic moves can be made. Moreover, after each 20th move of the black player, an Ice Age comes and empty squares are filled with ice again (well, not all of them, more info in detailed rules). And, which is even worse, isolated pieces cannot survive if they are surrounded by an ice, so they freeze, die and disappear.

I will post all rules later today. But as I can see, brave players are already testing this game anyway.

I have got a flu or something like that, so I don't plan to work too much today and if someone has a question, please save it for a later time.

By the way, you might have noticed a new element at the right column of this blog - a map of visitors. It is a neat feature and I am currently testing it here. If nothing goes wrong, I would add it to the BrainKing.com site as well, as an addition to our statistics. Due to the high BrainKing's traffic it will probably cost us a small monthy fee (us - me and Liquid, not BrainKing users, of course) but it's not a problem because I like it and I like to spend money for things I like.