The Palace (or Palace Chat, Chat Palace, Palace) is a computer program to access graphical chat room servers, called palaces, in which users may interact with one another using graphical avatars overlaid on a graphical backdrop.

This article relies too much on to. Please improve this by adding. ( June 2007) () () The Palace, independent developers,,, and, Website The Palace (or Palace Chat, Chat Palace, Palace) is a computer program to access graphical 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 and produced by in 1994, and was first opened to the public in November 1995.

While there is no longer any official support for the original program, a new client has been developed and is actively maintained by Jameson Heesen. Many chat servers are still operating and can be found on the Palace Portal Live Directory. Palace clients and servers are available for,,,. Contents • • • • • • • Concept and Design [ ] The Palace has a flexible avatar system that allows users to combine small, partially transparent images to create a unique look.

Once the member has created an avatar, 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. Originated in The Palace. By default, users are represented by, but can also wear called props. User messages appear as chat bubbles above their, similar to those in, and stored in a chat log.

Each room in a palace is represented by a large image that serves as a backdrop for 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 an address leading to a different service, such as websites and email. In some rooms, users are allowed to paint on the backdrop using a simple suite of drawing tools similar to oekaki. History [ ] The Palace was created by Jim Bumgardner and produced by 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 features of Idaho was, a -like programming language. The name is a play on the word 'script' in.

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. From around 1997, artists began to use the Palace as a site for experimental live performance. Notably, the group Desktop Theatre staged interventions and performances in their own and public Palaces from 1997 until 2002. In 1997 they presented 'waitingforgodot.com' at the Third Annual Digital Storytelling Festival, which took an interesting turn when another Palatian changed their name to Godot and arrived in the performance. [ ] Other artists working in The Palace include Avatar Body Collision (2002-2007). Palace Chat's popularity peaked around 1999-2000, when band 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, as well as the Sci Fi channel's Mothership palace.