Quite a few years back (heck, I'd say it was around '97 or '98), I got my first glimpse of a 2D graphical chat program called The Palace at a local cyber cafe.
Now we're talking about a time when IRC was still very popular and anyone with a net connection had ICQ installed, so you can understand why a 2D chat was such a big deal. Seeing little pictures as your avatar moving around from one crowded room to the next was a sure way to meet new people and have a lot of fun doing so too!
Nowadays though, that's nothing new and the idea has been done to death. Computers are faster and more powerful, as are our net connections, allowing us to have streaming audio, video and smooth 3D too. But for those of us who still yearn for the simpler things now and then, I am glad to say that The Palace is still around. Sure, it's nowhere near as popular and full of users as it used to be, but times change.
The best part however is that there are still some people out there working on updated client programs to chat in. My client of choice is PalaceChat. Here are a few reasons why:
- You can still use your favorite old avatars along with new 32bit color images (and much larger sizes, too!).
- You can import those old avatars from the original Palace client easily.
- Multiple connections to different servers at the same time displayed as tabs.
- Much larger rooms and background images to nicely fill your screen.
- Update checking on startup so you're never left behind.
- Vastly improved avatar creation and editing.
- Very nice colored rich text log window to keep up with the chat.
- You can even export your current avatar as a PNG image for use elsewhere.
- Improved scripting, too.
- Does not peg your CPU usage at 100% like the original Palace client did.
So there you have it. I invite you to try it out; after all it's free so there's nothing to lose. If you have any suggestions or bugs to report, you can leave a post about it in their forums. Reporting a little error earlier today got me a reply from the creator of PalaceChat himself in under an hour.
Happy chatting!
---
0 comments:
Post a Comment