The Palace (computer program)

The Palace

Developer(s)	Time Warner Interactive, independent developers
Operating system	Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, Linux, and Microsoft Windows
Type	Virtual Community, client
License	Proprietary
Website	http://www.thepalace.com/

The Palace is a software program used to access graphical chat rooms 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 chatrooms still exist on the internet. Palace clients and servers are available for Mac OS 9, Mac OS X, Linux, and Microsoft Windows.

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 Dollz 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 bitmaps called props. User messages appear as chat bubbles above their avatar, similar to those seen in comic books. Each room in a palace is represented by a large image that serves as a backdrop for the users. By clicking in certain areas in a room called doors, users can travel to different rooms. In some rooms, users are allowed to paint on the backdrop using a simple suite of tools similar to oekaki.

As in many other virtual worlds, 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 iptScrae, 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 rooms' popularity peaked around 1999-2000 when metal band Korn had their own palace chat room that fans could download from korn.com.

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.

One main sites that still supports the Palace: Palaceplanet now the other website Palacetools has been closed for good. Palacetools used to be mostly a live Palace directory website with some links. Palaceplanet has an active community forum and online manuals, a new user based directory and tutorial section for new user.

Official Palace software development ceased when Communities.com folded, but two groups are working on Palace protocol compatible clients; PalaceChat created by Jameson Heesen(PaVVn) and Phalanx by BHLabs. One of the main differences between the official clients and the new homegrown variety is they do not support the official scripting language IPTscrae. This means that none of the old scripts have any effect on these clients, PalaceChat only supports Rbscript. But it does support custom roomsizes and 32bit color avatars. The PalaceChat client is fully functional but to get rid of the popup and use the operator / owner modes the user is required to buy a $10 registration.

Like many projects there are some drawbacks to the new clients and many users have chosen to remain with the older clients for as long as their operating systems support it.

There are two (non compatible) alternatives created by former Palace users, one is called iP with updated and enhanced features. And "the Manor", a commercial version written by former Palace lead developer Carl McDonald. The Manor includes an iptscrae support and even imports Palace avatars. Both new incarnations support bigger rooms and 32bit avatars.

External links

• On Being a God. An Interview with Jim Bumgardner, from: John Suler, "The Psychology of Cyberspace" (June 1996)
• Palace Historical Document Archive
• Avatar Palace
• The Palace community portal
• The Palace Directory (unofficial)
• Practice Palace
• The Palace.com