| 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 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[1] has an active community forum, online manuals, a new user-based directory and a tutorial section for new users.
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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 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 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.
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'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.