BrainKing.info - the BrainKing game site knowledge base

I am sure that there are people who would never agree with me but an experience shows (and proves) that an average BrainKing user does not want to learn more complicated strategic board games at all costs but, shortly said, to have fun and compete with other users in many different ways. It does not mean that we would never add a new game to our site in the future but the priorities are split to a couple of sub-projects and all of them are being developed concurrently, so to speak.

And my current favorite sub-project is called Achievements because their total number has recently exceeded 200 and more than 100 other ones are already planned to implement in upcoming weeks. One of the newest achievements introduces the feature named Reward, the achievement itself is called Bonus conqueror and is related to nothing less than a free Black Brain Rook membership level which never expires.

In fact, it is not an easy task to achieve - a user must successfully catch all available bonus color codes and use them for 1 year or longer membership purchase/renewal. Some of the partial achievements are difficult to accomplish but it would make little sense if everyone can easily get them in a week. Let me explain the advantages:

• The standard price of the lifetime Brain Rook membership is 360 Euro which is equivalent to 10 years of a normal Brain Rook level. Since you need to earn 7 different achievements and each of them would cost you 36 Euro. The outcome is that you save 108 Euro, paying only 252 Euro - not a bad deal.


• It is not mandatory to use all required bonus codes for yourself. In fact, you can do a nice favor to 7 different BrainKing users who, for instance, cannot afford to pay for a Brain Rook membership - the Pawn Registry is a good source for this purpose. Another option is to dedicate some of these purchases to prize tournaments. And, as a reward, the lifetime Brain Rook membership should be more than an adequate result.


• Since every BrainKing feature or functionality is, in some way, connected to many other BrainKing features, it helps us test them much better if more people use them. I am sure that a stable and rock solid site is what everybody wants.

And I am really glad to see how many people are already hunting achievements and, as a side effect, playing games they never played before. This observation gives us ideas how to make the system even better and user friendly.

The Easter Egg action is over but if you placed your order when the egg had been active, you still have about 2 weeks to make the payment (to the end of April 2009) and get the 125% bonus. Anyway, it was a nice success as usual and I would like to thank all participants for ... er ... well, for participating. And for supporting our site, of course.

The system of BrainKing achievements seems to be more popular than I expected, which is a good thing and motivates me to program and add new achievements almost every day. At the moment of writing this article, we have 171 achievements and I dare to foresee that this number will exceed 200 in a week or two. And, like for every new feature which is at least a little complicated, a couple of questions emerged and the answers follow:

• Why did I receive a "You earned a new achievement" message? What does it mean?
  It seems that not everyone reads this blog (or, more likely, not everyone speaks English), so I have added a Help entry, regarding this question. It can be found here, should be translated to other languages as soon as possible and every "new achievement" message now contains a link What is this? which points directly to the mentioned explanation.


• I earned a game achievement in the past and the system does not register it. What can I do to get the points?
  Since the specific game achievements were not recalculated from the archive databases (it would be too complicated and probably not worth the effort), they are automatically given to players since the day of their release. If you are absolutely sure that you really earned a game achievement in the past, please send me the achievement name and the game ID, and I can give it to you manually.

I would like to add that although many users sent me their suggestions of new achievements (and many of them are really interesting!), it is not possible to implement all of them. Or at least not immediately. But thanks for all contributions, I appreciate them.

The Easter action has been accepted quite well and thanks to the system of BrainKing achievements, its progress can be continuously watched, along with many other statistical values. To summarize it:

• A new achievement Easter Egg has been added and it is given to everybody who receives this bonus (which means everyone who purchases a year or longer membership when the Easter Egg is active).


• The Achievements page contains a list of the most recent achievements. It is a good thing to observe how and when people earn them.


• It is possible to show a list of all BrainKing users who received the selected achievement (so if you happen to get one of the most difficult ones, you can easily check if you are the only one or if someone else was as lucky/skilled as yourself). For instance, this page displays all members who got the Easter Egg achievement.

There are still more than 2 days left to get the Easter Egg bonus to a year or longer paid membership, which should be enough time for everyone who is not fully decided yet. It is 125% bonus to the subscribed period - it means that you get 27 months for the price of 12 (1 year), 54 months for the price of 24 (2 years) etc. And we never guarantee that a similar action or promotion would be created next year as well.

First of all, I would like to announce a scheduled downtime of BrainKing game site which is planned to some time during the rest of this week. It should not be longer than 30 minutes and the reason is that our database backup system must be restored due to recent small problems (which are already fixed).

The second information is more important. The Easter Egg action has been started and it will be active to Monday 13th April 2009, 23:59:59 GMT+01:00. Click the Easter Egg image next to the Paid Membership link at the left column for more information. Many new BrainKing users appeared since the last bonus action, so it could be a good opportunity for them to get a 125% bonus to a paid membership. And, of course, everybody can take advantage of this action.

The bonus can be used for Black Brain Rook membership orders as well. Instead of adding 125% to a lifetime membership, you can choose another BrainKing user who would get the same lifetime membership for free.

The system of vacation days at BrainKing belongs to the most controversial features of the site. Really. Some people like it because it allows them (under certain circumstances) to use more vacation days (for games) than their membership level allows. Some people hate it because it allows their opponents to move in games very slowly which usually results in tournaments that last more than a year. An unbiased overview says that it is a no-win situation because no matter how the vacation system works, it can never please all types of BrainKing users.

So we don't try to create a flawless feature but the best possible compromise, in order to minimize the group of annoyed players. The new vacation system has been created today and the most important changes are listed below:

• Each level of paid membership defines the maximum number of vacation days that can be used every year - 10 for Brain Pawns, 25 for Brain Bishops and Brain Knights, 35 for Brain Rooks and 45 for Black Brain Rooks. This is the same as before.


• After some vacation days are used, it is possible (twice a year) to get some extra days (during the same year) if the membership is renewed by another year (or longer period) - 10 after the first renewal and 5 after the second one.


• If your membership level expires or drops to a lower one, the system will check if the number of already used vacation days (of the current year) does not exceed the active level maximum. If it does, BrainKing will automatically delete all "future days" which are marked at your Profile / Calendar page. The purpose of this functionality is to avoid situations when a Brain Rook player marks all available 35 vacation days, then his membership expires and he can still use all marked days, even if his current level (Brain Pawn) allows to use no more than 10. After unpleasant dealing with a few smarties who had tried to hack the system in this way, I have decided to put this check to automatic.


• The system remembers how many days you used during the current year. If, for instance, someone is a Brain Rook and uses 20 vacation days (out of 35), then his membership expires nad after 1 month he decides to upgrade to Brain Rook again, BrainKing will give him only 15 vacation days for the rest of the year.

I hope that many BrainKing users will like this change. From my point of view, it should be the best option for all normal players.

I would like to announce a new feature at BrainKing game site, which belongs to the statistical category of functions but also could be a beginning of new way of competition among players. As the article title indicates, it is just the very first version, released mostly for testing purposes. However, the basic functionality should be working with no significant problems.

OK, what is it about? The feature is called Achievements and everybody can find it at the new Profile / Achievements page. Shortly said, it is a reward system that allows all BrainKing users to earn points when they achieve certain goals - for instance, to win 100 games with different opponents, to purchase a paid membership, to win a pond game with 100 or more participants etc.

Each achievement is rated by 5-50 points, depending on how difficult it is to achieve. At the moment of writing this entry, the system mostly contains the ones which can be calculated out of the archive databases. It is planned to added more interesting achievements in the near future, related to particular games and game versions. Are you lucky enough to roll 6-6 10 times in a row? Can you win Dice Chess by capturing opponent's king with your own king? Would you dare to win Espionage by capturing opponent's base without revealing it by a spy? The options are endless.

In order to avoid repeatable questions, regarding this topic, some answers follow:

• We have tried to generate as many achievements (based on historical data) as possible but it is very likely that some of them were omitted. If you are sure that you should earn one or more achievements which are not marked as "completed" yet, please let me know and I will investigate it.


• I know that the Summary page is not well designed and does not show up good in some web browsers. It is about to be redesigned.


• More features (achievement points charts, comparing achievements with other user, etc.) are to be released soon as well.


• Yes, I have stolen this idea from the World of Warcraft game.

A discussion board will be added as soon as possible. Meanwhile, feel free to post any suggestions to this entry comments section.