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The Palace (computer program)

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majority of the protocol for proper communications between the client and server. Without David's mentoring of Jameson Heesen, Palace Chat would likely not exist, as David shared much of his findings with Jameson, including the XOR(xtlk) encryption used to encrypt chats and generation of client registration codes, prop encoding and decoding, and so much more. Much later(circa 2010) and after numerous source code leaks, Open Palace was developed by Brian McKelvey. Jameson utilized Brian's open source Open Palace to implement scripting support into Palace Chat. Brian also spearheaded the development of Type 1 avatars, which Palace Chat adopted and continues to utilize.
261: 139: 77: 36: 497:. 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. Two of the original beta testers, Ben LaCascia(Now Bethany O'Brien), and Justice LeClaire are still active(as of 2/2024). 541:
Official Palace software development ceased when Communities.com declared bankruptcy, but a few developers have created viable Palace-protocol compatible clients since then. The earliest contributions came from David Lee, Lead Developer of Phalanx. David worked for many years reverse engineering the
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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 provide unofficial support for existing versions. The original thepalace.com domain
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Dollz became popular with the users on The Palace, particularly teenagers, with several rooms dedicated to unofficial Dollz editing contests. Teenagers also used Dollz as avatars as a sign of rebellion against The Palace's older users. The popularity of Dollz has inspired several personal websites
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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
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Signing into The Palace does not require any registration or personal information. To begin chatting, users download the client, set their user handle and login to a server. A child filter is enabled on the client by default, which filters out chat servers with an Adult ranking and inappropriate
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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
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The Palace was originally created by Jim Bumgardner and produced by Time Warner Interactive in 1994, with its official website launching to the public in November 1995. Bumgardner incorporated many features of Idaho, an in-house authoring tool he had previously developed for making multimedia
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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
556:, took place at the Palace. This collection of essays, entitled Life at the Palace, consists of an analysis of Palace history, social relationships, "addiction," and deviance. Suler's work focused on the unique aspects of interacting via avatars and in a graphical space. 603:, written by a former Palace lead developer. The Manor includes embedded Python for user and room scripting with an encrypted data stream. Supports importing Palace avatars. Both new incarnations of The Palace support larger room sizes and 32-bit color avatars. 369:, 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 Time Warner in 1994, and was first opened to the public in November 1995. 426:
The Palace has an avatar system that allows users to combine small, partially transparent images. Once a member has created an avatar, the member can pick up various pieces of clothing or other accessories. By default, users are represented by
577:, created by Jameson Heesen (known in the community as PaVVn), which supports all original features of The Palace, as well as high-quality backgrounds and avatars, larger rooms and videos. This is the primary client in use. 501:
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
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had their own palace chat room that fans could download from their official website. Palace's popularity at this time could also be attributed to a palace which focused on the cartoon
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credited the creation of Dollz to Rainman, who based his "Sk8er" doll on his comic strip. Other sources claimed that Melicia Greenwood created the first Dollz, basing her avatar on
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In Q3 1997, several users began using doll-inspired images as avatars with a customizable appearance. The avatars were known as "Little People" before later collectively named
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email. In some rooms, users are allowed to paint on the backdrop using a simple suite of drawing tools. User messages appear as chat bubbles above their
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All of these new clients support improved high-color avatars, larger room backgrounds (also in high-color), and modern sound formats (such as
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dedicated to creating and customizing Dollz, outside of The Palace community. The majority of Dollz creators were female.
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Phalanx, primarily developed by David Lee by meticulously reverse-engineering the official client and was released by
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One of the first comprehensive psychological studies of avatar communities, conducted by
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was bought by a long time Palace user, and is now used as a directory for other sites.
468:. Other popular Dollz used on The Palace were Wonderkins, Silents, and Divas (based on 322: 944: 771: 465: 386: 318: 306: 533:
The Palace was the subject of a number of sales between companies until 2001, when
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as well as the Sci Fi channel's Mothership palace. There was even a link to the
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The Palace's popularity peaked around 1999–2000, when
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Archived from the original on 2014-04-12 485:CD-ROMs. One of the features of Idaho was 361:is a computer program to access graphical 259: 795: 732: 657: 655: 583:, an open source Linux client using GTK+. 241:Learn how and when to remove this message 223:Learn how and when to remove this message 121:Learn how and when to remove this message 824: 437:, but can also wear up to nine separate 14: 962: 652: 159:Please improve this article by adding 392: 609:, an online virtual world utilizing 132: 70: 29: 769: 24: 889:. 15 November 1999. Archived from 674:from the original on July 19, 2020 172:"The Palace" computer program 25: 986: 796:Greenwood, Melicia (2003-09-11). 45:This article has multiple issues. 733:Carpenter, Nicole (2018-03-29). 595:Incompatible Palace-like clients 568: 137: 75: 34: 922: 868:from the original on 2015-03-08 839:from the original on 2012-09-10 778:from the original on 2012-01-06 747:from the original on 2021-07-23 700:from the original on 2016-08-08 53:or discuss these issues on the 897: 879: 850: 825:Borgeson, Mitch (2003-10-07). 789: 694:"Palace Portal Live Directory" 686: 13: 1: 858:"www.avatarbodycollision.org" 772:"Where do Sk8ters come from?" 646: 565:language used in chat rooms. 161:secondary or tertiary sources 662:Suler, John (January 1997). 411:, and stored in a chat log. 7: 862:www.avatarbodycollision.org 622: 101:the claims made and adding 10: 991: 559: 479: 418: 414: 397: 975:Virtual world communities 949:: CS1 maint: unfit URL ( 441:images known as "props." 340: 328: 312: 288: 280: 267: 258: 668:Psychology of Cyberspace 276:, independent developers 588:Brainhouse Laboratories 274:Time Warner Interactive 798:"The Originz of Dollz" 611:user-generated content 421:The Dollz (girl group) 407:, similar to those in 148:relies excessively on 535:Open Text Corporation 530:website at the time. 930:"Life at the Palace" 893:on 15 November 1999. 827:"Playing with dollz" 255: 393:Concept and design 253: 86:possibly contains 387:Microsoft Windows 356: 355: 319:Virtual community 307:Microsoft Windows 251: 250: 243: 233: 232: 225: 207: 131: 130: 123: 88:original research 68: 16:(Redirected from 982: 955: 954: 948: 940: 938: 937: 926: 920: 919: 917: 916: 907:. 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Index

Dollz
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Developer(s)
Time Warner Interactive
Operating system
Mac OS 9
Mac OS X
Linux
Microsoft Windows
Type

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