BrainKing.info - the BrainKing game site knowledge base

I would like to ask everyone who is playing Plakoto on BrainKing with the higher set of pieces (and as the Statistics page says, Plakoto has already found a wide platform of fans, which is very nice) to switch to the smaller one, at least temporarily. The reason is that new "pinned" pieces had to be created for this game but they are not done in both supported sizes yet. Anyway, I want to confirm that if you see red crosses instead of some images in Plakoto, it is not a fault at your side.

This small problem will be resolved as soon as possible. And the particular settings page is Settings / Game Settings / Backgammon. Thank you for understanding.

Also, I would like to thank everyone who passed the second speed test and added comments with results. It gave us a couple of interesting information to continue with any further investigations.

My first intention was to write about rules of new games (implemented yesterday) but since the rules are still not posted yet (due to more important work to do) :-D, let me present another game idea of Andy Lewicki:

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I would like to propose a fast adaptation of Knight Fight, this time on a smaller board, 8x8. It was suggested by some players that 8x8 may have some advantage over 10x10 board - frankly, it was my original idea which I gave up for a bigger board due to elegant usage of all digits from 0-9. Board 8x8 has its own limitations because the numbers with digits 7,8,9 cannot have their own mirrors. So, I had to modify some usage of these numbers. Rules are basically the same as for Knight Fight so let me talk about differences.

Out of 64 numbers there are:

• 40 numbers that have their mirrors (example: 34-43)


• 18 numbers that do not have their mirrors (example: 27-72)


• 5 doubled numbers (11,22,33,44,55)


• 1 STRANGE number, namely 56, which for this game is attached to doubled numbers - that's the only number that doesn't have 7,8, or 9 in it, but still its mirror goes beyond the set of numbers from 1-64

Management of these sets:

• Numbers with mirrors behave exactly like in Knight Fight (mirror is taken out of the board)


• Numbers without mirrors behave exactly like doubled numbers in Knight Fight (after jumping on non-mirror numbers, player is asked to choose another non-mirror number to be taken out of the board)


• 5 doubled plus number 56 ( there is no consequence after jumping on these numbers)

This game is very aggressive and fast moving due to relatively large number of non-mirror numbers and list of choices we will have. The board is smaller and this also contributes to the pace of this game.

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My own opinion is that a game of this kind can satisfy players who like (as the author says) an aggressive fight which can be quickly over, so the games would not last weeks, months or even years. Which is what most users really like.
Comments please.

I admit that I never heard of something like a Cheshire Cat before (because I didn't read book), so when I had been presented the page of Lines of Action variants, the name of the game seemed to be a typical problem of "how the hell would it be translated to other languages?".

Anyway, it is not a problem anymore and since all listed LoA variations promise a great fun, I have added three new games today:

• Parachute Lines of Action


• Cheshire Cat Chess


• Cheshire Cat Lines of Action

Well, actually, Cheshire Cat Chess is not a line game but a very interesting chess variation (which means that BrainKing has 33 entries at the Chess category now). Full rules of these new games are not posted yet but a good excerpt can be found at the New Game page (here and here) and all important information is already contained there.

The title of this article means that the total number of games which can be played at the BrainKing game site has been increased to 111 and it is a very nice result - who would have expected that 5 years ago?

By the way, around the year 111, Roman Emperor Trajan sends Pliny the Younger to Bithynia.

I would like to add that all missing rules of newly implemented games have been posted as well and since the rules of Plakoto and Fevga are significantly different to the regular backgammon, their game boards can be distinguished by differently colored borders around them - one of them is light blue and the other one has been set to light green.

There is one more important note of the day - since we have asked our serverhousing provider to make certain changes to network switches, regarding our connection lines, I would like to call for another test of speed. Please, if you can spare a minute or two, visit the official BrainKing speed page - http://speed.brainking.com - and try to test the download and upload once more (and when you are done, please post a comment with the results here). Thank you.

If, for any reason, the provided URL does not work for you, you can use the former article containing the speed measuring tool - the code is just the same.

After some tests and discussion, regarding the recently proposed game Knight Fight, the game has been released today. Since I haven't posted the rules to BrainKing game site yet, and the final version is a little different to the original proposal, I would summarize them here, so this article can be used as a reference for those who want to try this game immediately:

• The game of Knight Fight is played on a 10x10 board. 100 squares are assigned, in a randomly fashion, numbers running from 00 to 99 (00, 01, 02, ..., 97, 98, 99). Each player has one knight of different color.


• The game starts by placing a white knight on any chosen square of the first row the board. If the chosen square is numbered with two different digits, let's say 57, then, as a consequence a mirrored number 75 is erased from the board making this square unusable for further game, which means, no knight may land on it till the end of the game.


• If a knight lands on a "double" number, let's say 66, then any other "double" number can be erased and the player decides which one depending on his/her strategy. After a player leaves a square to jump on another the square, the square he/she resided so far, becomes unusable for further game.


• The first move (placing the white knight) is followed by placing a black knight on any available square of the last (10th) row of the board. A corresponding mirrored number is erased as well.


• When both knights are placed, all next moves are performed by jumping the particular knight (using standard chess rules for a knight, i.e. L-shaped jumps) to another square. A knight cannot land on an empty (unusable) square and also cannot land on a square which is under direct attack of the opponent's knight.


• A player gets points for every square visited by his knight (including the first move placement). The points are collected only from visited squares, not the mirrored numbers.


• The game ends when one player cannot make a legal move. When it happens, the player with a higher score is the winner. If both players have the same score, the game is a draw.

The second release of this day is another Greek variant of backgammon, called Fevga. Yes, not even this game rules are posted at BrainKing game site yet. Please read this page to learn how to play it and I hope that all pending rules (Plakoto, Knight Fight and Fevga) will be added tomorrow.

Plakoto is the newest addition to the list of games which can be played at the BrainKing game site. Actually, the real newest one is Knight Fight but since it is not released to public yet (game model tests are still being performed), Plakoto is more important at the moment.

The reason why I am writing about Plakoto (which is also known as Tapa in Bulgaria) today is that I have had no time to post the game rules to BrainKing yet, so people who never heard of this very interesting backgammon variant before could be a little confused.

Please visit this site for the complete rules of Plakoto.

As you can see, Plakoto is one of three backgammon games popular in Greece, the other two are called Portes and Fevga. The three games together are called Tavli and are usually played one after the other in matches of three, five, or seven points. BrainKing already has Portes (because it is just a normal backgammon without a doubling cube) and since we want to implement Fevga as well, our site could become interesting to Greek players soon. And, as I hope, maybe some of them would finish the unfinished Greek localization of BrainKing.

From my personal point of view, Plakoto's pinning feature is something what people, who never played this game before, must get used to first. But it is the great thing and I love it. Although BrainKing is mostly focused on chess and variants, we need this kind of refresh, from time to time.

This game has been sent by Michael Coan and it belongs to a multi-player game category (a good example is our Run around the Pond and its variants).

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Game Details:

Based: Game is some-what based on the card game War - where each player flips over a card, highest card wins.
Number of players: Between 2-10 players (works best with 5-7 players)
Game lasts: 13 rounds
Setup: Each player gets 13 cards - one of each "suit": 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,J,Q,K,A (Ace high, 2 low). (Player can see that cards in their hand & can see what cards the other player has left)

Scoring:

• 2-10 = 2-10 points (face value)
• J (Jack) = 11 points
• Q (Queen) = 12 points
• K (King) = 13 points
• A (Ace) = 14 points

Game Play:

Round: Each round, a player chooses 1 card to play from their hand. The goal is to have the highest UNIQUE card. You can only use each card once.

Round 1 example:

• Player 1 = 5
• Player 2 = 8
• Player 3 = K
• Player 4 = 2
• Player 5 = 8

Round 1 example (cont): In this round, Player 3 wins this "war" with the highest card of a K. So Player 3 gets 5+8+13+2+8 points (36 points). Lets continue on with a round 2 example:

Round 2 example:

• Player 1 = A
• Player 2 = Q
• Player 3 = A
• Player 4 = 4
• Player 5 = Q

Round 2 example (cont): In this round, Player 4 wins since he has the highest UNIQUE card. The two Aces take themselves out, and the 2 Queens take themselves out - leaving the winning card the 4. (So player 4 gets 56 points!)

Continue for a total of 13 rounds. The goal is to have the highest played unique card each round. At the end of the game, the person with the most points win.

Special Rules & Notes:

ALL TIE RULE: If all cards tie another (example of 5 players: A,8,8,A,8) - then those points are rolled over to the next round - making the next round a VERY important round. If a tie like this happens on the last round, then those points are just "lost on the battlefield"

ROUND TIME-OUT RULE: If a player times out during a round, by default the HIGHEST card left in the hand is used as a sacrifice - BUT the card does not count nor does this player win anything from this round. The card is just added to the "pot" for the others to win. So for example:

• Player 1 = A
• Player 2 (timed out) = so computer picks highest card left, A
• Player 3 = 4
• Player 4 = 8
• Player 5 = J

So for that example, Player 1 wins. Player 2 was not really playing, but just sacrificed their best card (14 points) to the battlefield for someone else to collect. So if a player does time out for 1 round, they would still be able to come back and continue the war... but at a slight disadvantage by losing their best card.

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I like this idea because BrainKing does not have many games for more than 2 players and it could be a great fun for everybody. Do not hesitate to add your comments.

I have discovered a great tool to measure a network speed between your computer and our servers. It is very easy to use and can provide interesting results, useful for any further investigation.



If you want to, please click the Begin Test button and when the test is done, please add a comment with the download and upload values, along with your location. It would be great if these tests are performed more times during this weekend and Monday.

Thanks and have fun.

Another day of simple improvements, just to relax while working on more complex changes and full game implementations.

• There is a ... uh ... "scheduled" and very short downtime of all BrainKing sites, planned on Friday 22nd February 2008. It should not take more than 2 minutes and will happen at some time during the day. The purpose of this action is to test one of our theories about the international connectivity which requires some reconfiguration of network elements and similar things.


• Fellowship privacy levels, introduced yesterday, have been added to the selection filter at the Fellowships page, otherwise it would be quite difficult to locate fellowships which are open to everyone, etc.


• The popular feature of setting the number of started games which are displayed at the Main Page has been implemented for Ponds as well, along with the ability to hide the list of ponds waiting for the next round.

Still the number one?

Actually, there are three new features of this day and only one has something to do with some kind of privacy:

• Privacy level of fellowships - since a few fellowship owners have been complaining about a situation when they don't want any more people to join their fellowships but still receive new membership requests which must be manually declined, it is possible to make a fellowship more "private". There is a new option at the fellowship edit page and the option is called privacy level. It can be set to one of the following values:
  • Any paying member can join anytime (no requests or invitations are required) - a fellowship with this option would be "public", which means that any paying member would be able to join it instantly, with no approval process.
  • Members with accepted requests or invitations can join (the default option) - that's how it's been working so far.
  • Only invited members can join (requesting a membership is disabled) - this is the "full privacy" option. When it is set, the Big Boss is no more bothered by unwanted membership requests.


• Show games where it is opponent's turn to move on the main page - it is a new option at the Settings / General page. It can be useful if you want to make the total size of Main Page much shorter because the page would display only games where it is your turn to move. This option can be triggered at the Main Page directly, using the show/hide switch at the opponent's games section.


• Big Jungle has been released, as it's been announced yesterday.

Enough for one day, I guess.

I am glad to see that articles from the Board Game Ideas category are slowly hitting a top of the most commented entries of the BrainKing.info site. It is a very good news because it means that people are still interested in abstract board games and there is always an opportunity to invent something new or original. And it seems that an article is more popular or gets a better attention when a sample board screenshot is added to the text. It is also a message to all of you who would like to present your own game ideas here - please don't forget to make one or more pictures which could help to describe the rule details. It cannot make any harm.

Regarding one of the first contributions to this article category, I would like to announce that the game of Big Jungle will be released tomorrow. It has been thoroughly tested and since no problems have appeared, the game has been declared stable and playable.

Of course, it was not possible to check out all situations and positions which could occur during the game play, but nothing like that was the purpose of the test. Time will tell. And bugs can be fixed.

This new game proposal has been sent by Andy Lewicki, the author of the game called Cheversi, which is already implemented on BrainKing.

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The game of Knight Fight is played on a 10x10 board. 100 squares are assigned, in a randomly fashion, numbers running from 00 to 99 (00, 01, 02, ..., 97, 98, 99). Each player has one knight of different color.

The game starts by placing a (let's say white) knight on any chosen square on the board. If the chosen square is numbered with two different digits, let's say 57, then, as a consequence a mirrored number 75 is erased from the board making this square unusable for further game, which means, no knight may land on it till the end of the game.

If a knight lands on a "double" number, let's say 66, then any other "double" number can be erased and the player decides which one depending on his/her strategy. After a player leaves a square to jump on another the square, the square he/she resided so far, becomes unusable for further game.

A knight cannot land on an empty (unusable) square and also cannot land on a square which is under direct attack of the opponent's knight.

The whole idea behind all the jumps is to outsmart the opponent and by choosing correct square to jump on trying to corner the opponent and leave him without a square to jump to.

Game ends when on of the players has no place to land and the other player is a winner.
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Any comments would be appreciated.

This event was already announced a week ago, but since I prefer not to post more than 1 entry per day and there were other interesting things to write about, I am doing it now with a little delay. But I don't think it would be a big problem - the results remain still the same.

Very well, what results? Since BrainKing recommends to use Firefox for browsing its pages (and the rest of the web as well), I keep watching the site of Firefox Add-ons and, from time to time, an interesting extension appears and it is worth mentioning at out Firefox Add-ons category. And because Mozilla obviously wants talented developers to make good add-ons for their web browser, they created a public contest called Extend Firefox. The contest is over now and the results (along with the winners) can be found here: Announcing the Extend Firefox 2 Winners.

I have installed and checked all 3 winner add-ons and 12 "runners up" as well. All of them are of a high quality and deserve their final positions. And this is my personal Top Three List:

• Shareaholic by Jay Meattle - this extension makes it easy for you to submit the web page you're on to your favorite sharing or bookmarking service, including: digg, del.icio.us, facebook etc. I always liked "one click solutions" and this one is one of my favorites. Besides, a direct outcome of my experiments with this add-on is an addition of a "Bookmark This" toolbar at the end of each BrainKing.info article.


• qtl by Gilad Kutiel - I was already writing about this great add-on a month ago and I am glad that it made it to the runners up list. I use it at least 20 times a day and not just for quick translations, its functions make typical tasks (like copy and paste, go to selected non-clickable URL, search on Google, etc.) extremely easy and mouse only, without a need to look for a keyboard.


• Update Scanner by Pete Burgers - if you don't like RSS feeds or want to monitor any changes to a site which does not support RSS, this add-on is the best solution for you. I have tested it with BrainKing.info site and each time the main page is changed (a new article or a new comment is posted), a small notification appears at the Firefox bottom bar. Simple and very useful.

The page of results also says that Extend Firefox 3 contest should be launched in early March. If you plan to make a nice Firefox add-on for BrainKing, this is your chance to become famous.

BrainKing is not a typical community (or social networking) site, although it provides many features to allow users to communicate one another, giving a "touch of life" to abstract games. But it is also understandable and perfectly OK that not everyone is eager to chat while concentrating to an interesting game, or because of a risk of being bothered, harassed, etc. After all, BrainKing is a game site, not a chat site (who was the first one to say that?), so it does not ignore the needs of people who incline to the "game only" category.

Actually, there are functions which allow anyone to filter out all messages from an obtrusive opponent - the Blocked users list. However, although it is a powerful feature, it can be mostly used only to solve an effect, not a cause. In other words - a player usually puts another player to his Blocked users list after a communication problem with the respective user, not before.

Furthermore, I have already seen a few user profiles with a note "I want to play only, not to chat". The universal solution is here.

You can see a new line Allow other users to send messages in games: at the Settings page. This switch can be used to define a group of game opponents which are allowed to converse with you while playing games, and nobody else has a possibility to do so. The feature contains three options:

• Nobody - this is a real "Silence of the Universe" because your games will be about a pure playing. Nobody, not even the site owner, can pass a single word to you, when he submits a move in a game with you.
• Friends only - this option enables to use your Friends list as a group of privileged users who can send you in-game messages.
• Everybody - the default option. Any other player can freely have a chat with you, unless you put him to your Blocked users list.

I have also fixed the filter of incoming game invitations - the section Settings / Game Filter / Select games which you allow other players to invite you to. Now it is possible to uncheck all games and not to receive any kind of game invitations anymore. This configuration is indicated by a note The user does not wish to be invited to games at the particular profile page. A typical player who would use this feature is the one who wants to create and accept only public invitations.

This message has been written by MadMonkey who has asked me to publish it:

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Well, thanks to Eriisa, we seem to have ChatZilla working and BrainKing has its own Channel (Live Discussion Board / Chatroom)

ChatZilla is a Firefox Extension, and is an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client. In other words, a place to create a Live Discussion Board or Chat Room

Those of you that have used any form of IRC (Interent Relay Chat) before should have no problem finding it on the dalnet server.

Everyone on BrainKing is welcome to log into it, whether by ChatZilla or any other IRC program.

So, please just download ChatZilla, follow the Instructions and hopefully you will find Myself & Eriisa there

Those using any other form of IRC, i am sure will know how to get there , just type /join #brainking from the dalnet server.

There is no real reason to create a live discuccion forum as such, but it has been talked about many times on BrainKing.

This is just a nice way to do it in the form of a Firefox Extension and just for BrainKing users

The room is there all the time, and hopefully an Operator (Eriisa & myself at present, more will be added) will be there to help answer any questions.

So if you just fancy a chat with friends or there is a problem with the site and you want somewhere to go and vent yourself(within reason), you now have somewhere to go LOL

Come and join us either through ChatZilla OR any IRC provider

If you need help, just contact me or Eriisa
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End of message.