The Palace (computer program)
Encyclopedia
The Palace is a software program used to access graphical chat room
servers, called palaces, in which users may interact with one another using graphical avatars overlaid on a graphical backdrop. The software concept was originally created by Jim Bumgardner, an employee of Time Warner Interactive, in 1994, and was first opened to the public in November 1995.
While there is no longer any official support for the program, many Palace-based chat servers still exist on the Internet. Palace clients and servers are available for Mac OS 9
, Mac OS X
, Linux
, and Microsoft Windows
.
There is one major, unofficial community-based web site that still supports The Palace today: PalacePlanet
; now, the other major unofficial portal, PalaceTools.com, has been permanently closed. PalaceTools used to be mostly a live Palace directory site with some links to additional resources. PalacePlanet
has an active community forum, online manuals, a new user-based directory and a tutorial section for new users.
that can be seen in many places around the Internet today originated in The Palace.
By default, users are represented by spherical
smiley face emoticons, but can also wear bitmap
s called props. User messages appear as chat bubbles above their avatar
, similar to those seen in comic book
s. Each room in a palace is represented by a large image that serves as a backdrop for the users. By clicking on certain areas in a room called doors, users can travel either to different rooms in the same palace, another palace server, or even an address leading to a different service, such as Web sites and e-mail. In some rooms, users are allowed to paint on the backdrop using a simple suite of drawing tools similar to oekaki
.
The biggest Palace legacy on internet is in fact the Dollz
created almost 17 years ago as Palace avatars. Because the Palace has a flexible avatar system, someone figured it was fun to make a simple body you could dress up. Once the member has created an avatar to represent herself or himself, the member can pick up various pieces of clothing or other items, such as hats, handbags, cans of soda, candy bars, bicycles, or hand tools.
As in many other virtual world
s, prestige is shown through the intricacy of the user's avatar. Some users sign on with two or more clients in order to blanket their avatar across a larger area to give themselves more room to express themselves.
, a Forth-like programming language. The name is a play on the word "script", in Pig Latin
. One of the unique features of the Palace for its time, was that the server software was given away for free, and ran on consumer PCs, rather than being housed in a central location. This is one of the reasons why Palace servers are still running today.
Palace chat's popularity peaked around 1999-2000 when a famous metal band, Korn
, had their own palace chat room that fans could download from korn.com. Palace's popularity at this time could also be attributed to a palace which focused on the cartoon South Park
. There was even a link to the South Park
palace on the Comedy Central
website at the time. http://web.archive.org/web/19991115203900/http://comedycentral.com/southpark/noflash/cmp/palace.shtml
The Palace was the subject of a number of sales between companies until 2001, when Open Text Corporation
purchased the rights to the Palace software and technology as part of a bankruptcy settlement. The software is currently unsupported by Open Text or any of its previous owners, and many members of the community now consider the software abandonware
and provide support for existing versions on various unofficial web sites. The original thepalace.com domain was bought by a long time Palace user, and is now used as a directory for other sites.
Official Palace software development ceased when Communities.com declared bankruptcy, but at least four groups are working on Palace protocol compatible clients. All of these new clients support improved high-color avatars, larger room backgrounds (also in high-color), modern sound formats (such as MP3
), and are designed for modern operating systems. Like with many projects of this nature, there are some drawbacks to the new clients, such as not being fully compatible with older clients (because of the latter's limitations); and many users have chosen to remain with the older alternatives for as long as their operating systems support them. See: Other Clients.
Chat room
The term chat room, or chatroom, is primarily used by mass media to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing...
servers, called palaces, in which users may interact with one another using graphical avatars overlaid on a graphical backdrop. The software concept was originally created by Jim Bumgardner, an employee of Time Warner Interactive, in 1994, and was first opened to the public in November 1995.
While there is no longer any official support for the program, many Palace-based chat servers still exist on the Internet. Palace clients and servers are available for Mac OS 9
Mac OS 9
Mac OS 9 is the final major release of Apple's Mac OS before the launch of Mac OS X. Introduced on October 23, 1999, Apple positioned it as "The Best Internet Operating System Ever," highlighting Sherlock 2's Internet search capabilities, integration with Apple's free online services known as...
, Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
, Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
, and Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
.
There is one major, unofficial community-based web site that still supports The Palace today: PalacePlanet
Palaceplanet
PalacePlanet is a portal website built to support and unite the Palace community in 2000. The Palace community is a group of dedicated chat servers running the Palace chat software. One of the first visual chats invented by Jim Bumgardner in 1993. The original idea behind PalacePlanet was to...
; now, the other major unofficial portal, PalaceTools.com, has been permanently closed. PalaceTools used to be mostly a live Palace directory site with some links to additional resources. PalacePlanet
Palaceplanet
PalacePlanet is a portal website built to support and unite the Palace community in 2000. The Palace community is a group of dedicated chat servers running the Palace chat software. One of the first visual chats invented by Jim Bumgardner in 1993. The original idea behind PalacePlanet was to...
has an active community forum, online manuals, a new user-based directory and a tutorial section for new users.
Concept and Design
The Palace has a flexible avatar system that allows users to combine small, partially transparent images to create a unique look for themselves. Once the member has created an avatar to represent herself or himself, the member can pick up various pieces of clothing or other items, such as hats, handbags, cans of soda, candy bars, bicycles, or hand tools. The DollzDollz
Dollz, cartoon dolls or pixel dolls are small pixelated digital images, generally consisting of illustrations of people with clothes and accessories. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, they were widely spread on the internet and were considered an internet fad or meme, used in avatars and signatures...
that can be seen in many places around the Internet today originated in The Palace.
By default, users are represented by spherical
Sphere
A sphere is a perfectly round geometrical object in three-dimensional space, such as the shape of a round ball. Like a circle in two dimensions, a perfect sphere is completely symmetrical around its center, with all points on the surface lying the same distance r from the center point...
smiley face emoticons, but can also wear bitmap
Bitmap
In computer graphics, a bitmap or pixmap is a type of memory organization or image file format used to store digital images. The term bitmap comes from the computer programming terminology, meaning just a map of bits, a spatially mapped array of bits. Now, along with pixmap, it commonly refers to...
s called props. User messages appear as chat bubbles above their avatar
Avatar (virtual reality)
In computing, an avatar is the graphical representation of the user or the user's alter ego or character. It may take either a three-dimensional form, as in games or virtual worlds, or a two-dimensional form as an icon in Internet forums and other online communities. It can also refer to a text...
, similar to those seen in comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
s. Each room in a palace is represented by a large image that serves as a backdrop for the users. By clicking on certain areas in a room called doors, users can travel either to different rooms in the same palace, another palace server, or even an address leading to a different service, such as Web sites and e-mail. In some rooms, users are allowed to paint on the backdrop using a simple suite of drawing tools similar to oekaki
Oekaki
is the Japanese term to describe the act of drawing, meaning "doodle or scribble".-Ekaki uta/drawing songs:In Japan, songs that describe how to draw animals and/or favorite characters are called "Ekaki Uta". These songs are supposed to help children remember how to draw something by incorporating...
.
The biggest Palace legacy on internet is in fact the Dollz
Dollz
Dollz, cartoon dolls or pixel dolls are small pixelated digital images, generally consisting of illustrations of people with clothes and accessories. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, they were widely spread on the internet and were considered an internet fad or meme, used in avatars and signatures...
created almost 17 years ago as Palace avatars. Because the Palace has a flexible avatar system, someone figured it was fun to make a simple body you could dress up. Once the member has created an avatar to represent herself or himself, the member can pick up various pieces of clothing or other items, such as hats, handbags, cans of soda, candy bars, bicycles, or hand tools.
As in many other virtual world
Virtual world
A virtual world is an online community that takes the form of a computer-based simulated environment through which users can interact with one another and use and create objects. The term has become largely synonymous with interactive 3D virtual environments, where the users take the form of...
s, prestige is shown through the intricacy of the user's avatar. Some users sign on with two or more clients in order to blanket their avatar across a larger area to give themselves more room to express themselves.
History
The Palace was created by Jim Bumgardner, an employee of Time Warner Interactive, in 1994. Bumgardner incorporated many features of Idaho, an in-house authoring tool he had previously developed for making multimedia CD-ROMs. One of the latter features of Idaho was IPTSCRAEIPTSCRAE
Iptscrae is the scripting language used to give additional functionality to The Palace software and servers. Its name comes from the pronunciation of "script" in Pig Latin....
, a Forth-like programming language. The name is a play on the word "script", in Pig Latin
Pig Latin
Pig Latin is a language game of alterations played in English. To form the Pig Latin form of an English word the first consonant is moved to the end of the word and an ay is affixed . The object is to conceal the meaning of the words from others not familiar with the rules...
. One of the unique features of the Palace for its time, was that the server software was given away for free, and ran on consumer PCs, rather than being housed in a central location. This is one of the reasons why Palace servers are still running today.
Palace chat's popularity peaked around 1999-2000 when a famous metal band, Korn
Korn
Korn is an American nu metal band from Bakersfield, California, formed in 1993. The current band line up includes four members: Jonathan Davis, James "Munky" Shaffer, Reginald "Fieldy" Arvizu, and Ray Luzier. The band was formed as an expansion of L.A.P.D.The band released their first demo album,...
, had their own palace chat room that fans could download from korn.com. Palace's popularity at this time could also be attributed to a palace which focused on the cartoon South Park
South Park
South Park is an American animated television series created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the Comedy Central television network. Intended for mature audiences, the show has become famous for its crude language, surreal, satirical, and dark humor that lampoons a wide range of topics...
. There was even a link to the South Park
South Park
South Park is an American animated television series created by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for the Comedy Central television network. Intended for mature audiences, the show has become famous for its crude language, surreal, satirical, and dark humor that lampoons a wide range of topics...
palace on the Comedy Central
Comedy Central
Comedy Central is an American cable television and satellite television channel that carries comedy programming, both original and syndicated....
website at the time. http://web.archive.org/web/19991115203900/http://comedycentral.com/southpark/noflash/cmp/palace.shtml
The Palace was the subject of a number of sales between companies until 2001, when Open Text Corporation
Open Text Corporation
OpenText Corporation Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. As Canada's largest software company, it produces and distributes computer software applications designed to enable Enterprise content management solutions for large corporations across all industries....
purchased the rights to the Palace software and technology as part of a bankruptcy settlement. The software is currently unsupported by Open Text or any of its previous owners, and many members of the community now consider the software abandonware
Abandonware
Abandonware are discontinued products for which no product support is available, or whose copyright ownership may be unclear for various reasons...
and provide support for existing versions on various unofficial web sites. The original thepalace.com domain was bought by a long time Palace user, and is now used as a directory for other sites.
Official Palace software development ceased when Communities.com declared bankruptcy, but at least four groups are working on Palace protocol compatible clients. All of these new clients support improved high-color avatars, larger room backgrounds (also in high-color), modern sound formats (such as MP3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
), and are designed for modern operating systems. Like with many projects of this nature, there are some drawbacks to the new clients, such as not being fully compatible with older clients (because of the latter's limitations); and many users have chosen to remain with the older alternatives for as long as their operating systems support them. See: Other Clients.
Other Clients
- Linpal, an open source Linux client based on GTK+
- OpenPalace, an open sourceOpen sourceThe term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
, Adobe FlashAdobe FlashAdobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
implementation by Brian McKelvey which has -recently- been gaining popularity and receiving much support and feedback from many Palace users. - PalaceChat, created by Jameson Heesen (known in the community as PaVVn) which is now freeware and also supports Iptscrae scripting
- Phalanx, by Brainhouse Laboratories
Non-compatible Palace-like Clients
- iPalaces, also known simply as iP, contains updated and enhanced features in comparison to the original Palace client's, which are mostly(or similarly) implemented in newer Palace clients
- The Manor, which is a commercial program, written by former Palace lead developer, Carl McDonald. The Manor includes iptscrae support and even imports Palace avatars. Both new incarnations of The Palace support larger room sizes and 32-bit color avatars.
- Voodoo Chat, a popular web-browser based avatar chat
External links
- Pchat 4
- http://palacechat.usThe Palace Legacy Project
- http://hatenvanity.elitepalaces.com/Anime, Rock, Metal, Punk, Emo Palace Chat.