Liste des fonctionnalités des abonnements

1) Parties

Une possibilité d'améliorer son expérience du jeu est habituellement une des raisons les plus fréquentes de passer à un niveau d'abonnement supérieur.

1.1) Nombre de parties commencées

Une inscription gratuite autorise un joueur à ne jouer seulement que 20 simultanément et quand cette limite est atteinte, de nouvelles parties ne peuvent débuter tant que le nombre ne descend pas au dessous de 20. Des niveaux d'abonnement supérieurs résolvent ce problème de la manière suivante:

1.1.1) Niveau Fou et Cavalier

Un joueur avec un niveau d'abonnement de Fou ou Cavalier peut jouer jusqu'à 50 parties simultanément.

1.1.2) Niveau Tour

Un joueur avec un niveau d'abonnement de Tour ou supérieur peut jouer un nombre illimité de parties simultanément.

1.2) Nombre de jours de vacances

Comme toutes les parties de BrainKing se jouent avec une limite de temps (temps par coup ou temps par partie), BrainKing comporte un système de jours de vacances, qui donne à chaque joueur une possibilité d'éviter une défaite soudaine d'une partie à cause du temps lorsqu'il est hors-ligne pour une période plus longue (vacances d'été, Noël, etc...). Une inscription gratuite permet de définir 10 jours de vacances par an. Les niveaux d'abonnement plus élevés offre de meilleures conditions:

1.2.1) Niveau Fou et niveau Cavalier

Un joueur avec un niveau d'abonnement de Fou ou de Cavalier peut utiliser jusqu'à 25 jours de vacances par an. Après que certains jours de vacances ont été utilisés, il est possible de réinitiliser encore le nombre total de 25 (pendant la même année) si l'abonnement est renouvelé d'une année supplémentaire (ou une période plus longue).

1.2.2) Niveau Tour

Un joueur avec un niveau d'abonnement de Tour peut utiliser jusqu'à 35 jours de congé par an. Après que certains jours ont été utilisés, il est possible encore de réinitiliser le nombre total de 35 (pendant la même année) si l'abonnement est renouvelé par une année supplémentaire (ou une période plus longue).

1.2.3) Niveau Tour Noire

Un joueur avec un niveau d'abonnement de Tour Noire peut utiliser jusqu'à 35 jours de vacances par an. Après que certains jours de congés ont été utilisés, il est possible encore de réinitilaiser le nombre total de 65 (pendant la même année) si le joueur paie un abonnement (Cavalier ou Tour) de un an (ou plus) à un autre utilisateur de BrainKing. La raison de cette règle est que les Tours Noires ne peuvent acheter une année supplémentaire pour eux-même puisque leur abonnement n'expire jamais.

1.3) Vacances automatiques

Cette fonctionnalité (valable uniquement pour les abonnés) ajoute encore plus de protection à vos parties pour éviter de soudaines pertes au temps. Lorsqu'elle est activée (sur Réglages / Calendrier) et que dans l'événement la partie d'un joueur risque une perte au temps, le réglage des vacances automatiques utilisera un jour de vacance (s'il en reste) pour éviter la perte de la partie. Bien sûr, cette action ne se produit seulement que quand le joueur a au moins un jour de vacance restant et que le contrôle du temps de la partie permet l'utilisation des jours de vacances.

1.4) Sélection de la prochaine partie

Lorsqu'un nouveau coup a été joué (lors d'une partie), BrainKing affiche plusieurs options pour où aller après que le coup a été soumis, jouer et aller à la prochaine partie, jouer et aller à la page principale, etc... Cette fonctionalité rend le processus de jeu plus facile, spécialement lorsqu'un grand nombre de parties en cours est démarré. Les abonnés ont droit à une option supplémentaire qui rend l'expérience du jeu encore plus agréable et flexible, un menu déroulant avec toutes les prochaines parties à jouer affichées, pour que le joueur puisse choisir n'importe quelle partie en particulier (affichée avec le type de jeu et le pseudo de l'adversaire) pour jouer après avoir soumis le coup de l'instant.

1.5) Pulldown list of games

Paying members have an advantage of using various dynamic functions, accessing additional data or information which would not normally fit to the page structure. One of the most important features of this type is a pulldown list of games to play, activated when a mouse cursor is moved to the red number next to Main page link at the left menu column. This action instantly shows a list of the player's started games, so the player can easily choose the preferred game to play, no matter which BrainKing page he is currently viewing. The same feature works at the list of online friends at the right column - it shows a list of the player's games started with the particular friend. It is very useful when the player prefers to play games with friends first, without looking for them at the full list of all started games.

2) Game system

Besides the mentioned members only functions and improvements of "head-to-head" play, BrainKing provides many advantages to players with higher membership levels, who want to compete in a larger sense - tournaments, team matches, multi player games etc.

2.1) Nombre de participations aux tournois

Une simple adhésion permet aux joueurs de s'inscrire à seulement un tournoi et tant que le tournoi n'est pas terminé, le joueur ne peut s'inscrire à un autre.

2.1.1) Niveau Fou et Cavalier

A joueur peut s'inscrire à un tournoi par type de jeu et tant qu'un tournoi en particulier n'est pas terminé, il ne peut s'inscrire à un autre du même type de jeu

2.1.2) Niveau Tour

Un joueur peut joindre un nombre illimité de tournois.

2.2) Nombre de participations aux escaliers

Une simple adhésion permet aux joueurs de s'inscrire à 1 escalier et s'ils souhaitent participer à un autre, il doivent quitter celui en cours en premier (et perdre ainsi les positions obtenues).

2.2.1) Brain Bishop and Brain Knight

A player can join up to 7 stairs and if he wants to participate in more, he must leave some current stairs first (and lose all gained positions).

2.2.2) Niveau Tour

Un joueur peut joindre un nombre illimité d'escaliers.

2.3) Membership in fellowships

Only paying members can join fellowships and take advantage of all their features (internal tournaments, ponds, or stairs, private discussion boards, team challenges etc.). If a player's paid membership expires, he remains a member in all previously joined fellowships but cannot use any fellowship functions, until his membership is renewed.

2.4) Team matches

Fellowship members can form game teams and participate in team matches with teams of other fellowships. Each team has a captain who organizes the team activity - sends match challenges to other captains, accepts/reject incoming match challenges, creates public team challenges etc.

2.5) Team tournaments

Fellowship game teams can sign up for public team tournaments which are regularly created at the Team tournaments page. Teams get Team BKR (based on their match results) and team tournament winners are highlighted at the Winners page.

2.6) Multi player games

Multi player games are designed to accept any number of players who want to participate (unless a limit is set by the particular game parameters). Only paying members can play multi player games.

2.6.1) Run around the pond

Run around the pond is an interesting and funny game with points only (no game pieces), played against all joined opponents at once. It also allows all participants to have a private discussion as a part of the game.

2.6.2) Run in the dark

Run in the dark is a "stealth" variant of the standard Pond game. The important difference is that no player knows which opponents are playing the game with him - they are displayed as ? (question marks) instead of names. The player names are revealed after they fell to the pond because they cannot win the game anymore.

2.6.3) Run in the rain

Run in the rain is the second variant of Run around the pond. It requires a different strategy because of slightly modified rules of "falling".

2.7) BKR charts and inactivity

In order to keep the BKR charts more accurate, all players who don't actively play the particular game anymore are temporarily removed from the charts. The inactivity period is measured by the date and time of the last finished rated game of the corresponding type and it was set to 1 month for non-paying members and 6 months for paying members. This feature simply avoids inactive players with high BKR to occupy the tops of the charts forever.

2.8) BKR graphs

Paying members can see a small graph icon next to a BKR value on many pages (Main page, game pages, Ratings page etc.). Clicking this image will generate and display a graph of BKR history of the selected player and game type, so it can be used to analyze the changes of BKR value since the first finished rated game of this type.

2.9) Tournament creation

Only paying members with Brain Rook or higher membership level can create any number of tournaments with various parameters to set - one or more game types (including a random game selection), time control, accessibility (public or private), tournament type (round robin, single elimination, ...), optional prize for the winner, etc.

2.10) Fellowship creation

Only paying members with Brain Rook or higher membership level can create up to 2 fellowships (Black Brain Rooks are allowed to create up to 3 fellowships). It also enables many consequential features - creating internal fellowship tournaments, ponds or stairs, creating game teams, sending group messages to the fellowship members, creating private discussion boards, participating in team tournaments etc.

2.11) Stairs creation

Only paying members with Brain Rook or higher membership level can create unlimited number of stairs in the fellowships they own (it means that they have the Big Boss rank there). These stairs are accessible to all members of the particular fellowship.

2.12) Game archive download

BrainKing supports an export of selected game types (chess, checkers, backgammon, ...) in text formats (pgn, pdn, mat, ...) which can be imported to many third party applications. Paying members also have an option to download all (or selected) games of the chosen type as a zip archive, containing text files of the particular games.

2.13) Multiple signing up for tournaments, ponds and stairs

A standard way to sign up for a tournament requires to visit the particular tournament page, select the game type and then click the sign-up link. It is not too convenient, especially when the tournament contains many game types and the player is interested in all of them, so he would be forced to make this procedure for every game type one by one. BrainKing allows a player to make a multiple sign-up to all or selected game types of the target tournament by checking corresponding checkboxes next to the game type links and clicking the sign-up button. This action performs all sign-up operations automatically and works for multiple sign-ups for Run around the Pond games and Stairs system as well. Due to restrictions of some membership levels, this feature is available only to players with Brain Rook or higher membership.

3) Community

Although BrainKing had been formerly created as a pure game site, it also contains many features known from social networking projects - discussion boards, chat rooms, friend lists, user profiles, user pictures etc. Many of these functions are available to all registered users, but there are still some extras to be unlocked after upgrading to a higher membership level:

3.1) Moderation of discussion boards

Paying members can become moderators of public or private discussion boards. Board moderators are granted to delete inappropriate posts, ban offending users, change the particular board description, set the board access mode, etc. BrainKing discussion board system allows to define more moderators for the same board, which can cooperate to keep the friendly feeling and proper content of the board.

3.2) Icons

Paying members can upload a small 40x50 picture (which is called icon) to their profiles. Icons are shown next to the player's name on many important pages - game pages, discussion boards, private messages etc.

3.3) Smileys

BrainKing contains more than 400 smileys (small images to express emotions or other actions) which can be used at discussion boards, private messages, in-game messages, user profiles etc. Only paying members are allowed to use smileys, either by their number codes or with a help of an interactive popup window.

3.4) Chat Box

BrainKing Chat Box, displayed at the top of every BrainKing page (if it is turned on), is a great opportunity to send short messages to other players who are using the chat box as well, without a need to interrupt the game playing process. The basic version is available to all registered users, but only paying members have the access to all chat box features, including fast automatic refresh, smiley popup window, many options to set/change etc.

3.5) Context menu

BrainKing Context Menu is a neat way to store and remember the name and address (URL) of any BrainKing page which is not linked directly from menu columns. Paying members have an option to store any number of such links and recall them easily on every BrainKing page either by a right-click or using the Show link at the page top.

3.6) Autosave

The autosave feature, available to paying members only, is a great backup tool to make an automatic copy of a text you are writing (discussion board posts, private messages, profile descriptions etc.) after a defined number of seconds or minutes. If your text is successfully saved (signalized by Autosave OK! message), you can easily restore it later, even if you lost a connection to BrainKing server before submitting it.

3.7) Notepad

BrainKing's Notepad is a page, available to paying members only, which can be used to store private notes of any kind, organized to any number of folders. The Notepad is fully searchable (to locate notes containing specific keywords) and the number of notes is not limited.

3.8) Advertisements

Some BrainKing pages can contain advertisements of different kinds (text links, image banners etc.) which generate an additional income to be used for hardware upgrade, financing of new services development and similar activities. Since paying members are already giving BrainKing their financial support, they have an option (at the Settings page) to turn off all advertisements.

3.9) Keyboard shortcuts

After writing a long message (to be posted to a discussion board or sent to a game opponent), it is not too convenient to look for a mouse, in order to click the Submit button. Paying members have a possibility to activate keyboard shortcuts, which allow them to perform certain mouse actions with the keyboard only - for example Ctrl-Enter key combination submits the text without any mouse clicks, which is a well known feature included in instant messengers.