ManorHistory
From ManorManual
[edit] The History of Manor
Extracted from giani’s article, with gratitude.
The coding of Manor started back on January 30th 2002, with version 0.03 actually taking large portions of coding from other more complex projects Scotsman had been tinkering with for some time. As he may still bring this other project to the light of day, there is not much disclosure about it. The first versions of Manor were only available for Mac OS9, and were extremely crude. These first versions didn't have avatars, or even faces. They were just a static graphic and the basic client server. With these first versions came the first dozen or so regular users, several of whom are still around (Rhonk, Studio 12, and Scoots).
On March 22nd 2002, version 0.08 came in to force. In this version the first extras were added to the program. Props were added along with whispering and registration code dialog.
It was only the following month when yet another version of Manor came about. Version 0.08.7 was released on April 21st 2002. This again has more added to the program. We had the addition of Guest props; we had the facility to send this to a friend. In the past there had been a problem with the prop cache freezing and in this version of Manor the problem was ironed out. Another dialog was also added in this new version, the why killed dialog.
And then on July 18th 2002 Manor was released on the Windows platform. 2002 had been a busy year as Manor moved from the womb to infancy, but as all babies Manor continued to grow and as we moved into a new year Manor took her next steps as on January 5th 2003 the public servers were released for testing.
It was then on September 7th 2003 that the OSX native client was introduced. On October 18th 2003 life was made easier for the people using Manor. User lists were added, along with cross room whispers. Lumen checks were added for the bubble colors and the ability to put room numbers in Manor URLs was added. Along with this to make the users life easier another problem of the past was ironed out. The resizing of the list windows was now resolved. All this was making it far more enjoyable for the people using Manor. The servers also had added help and changes in October 2003. They had added support for user lists, cross room whispers and room numbers on URLs. They had their problems with purging loose props, and their problem with the server hanging unpredictably when the directory update failed resolved.
As the year of 2003 was drawing to a close there was yet another step forward for Manor. On December 20th 2003 Python scripting was added. Python is an interpreted, interactive, object-orientated programming language often compared to that of Java. Moving on to March of 2004 Manor was taken to the Scope Art Fair in New York. The Fair was held between March 12th -15th 2004. Manor was displayed there by the digital media students of Albright College in New York who had been set a project to create a cutting edge digital project as part of the international arts exhibition. They developed Scope Island, an online, interactive virtual reality during their Web2 Animating Cyberspace class.
Also in March of 2004 Manor added more new features. A thirty day trial, spoofing, personal sounds, data stream compression and room templates. Again adding to the enjoyment and ease of use for the client. On May 14th 2004 Albright students were doing another show and said that they would love some help showing what Manor was all about. As the year moves on we arrive in June when on the 15th a live data flag was added for spot graphics (i.e. webcams)
Life was being made so much easier for the user as time moved on and yet more was still to be added on July 20th 2004. The addition of being able to move back and forward between rooms, and the same back and forward for out chats. Manor also added cache size settings. Private and members only switches to server console was added, logins for private servers were added along with content ratings/child locks, and the ability to encode user name/passwords in Manor URLs. Some of the new security measures such as private servers and site ratings required some server build 158 to work so were not available immediately to everyone but once their sites were updated would be.
September 2004 arrived and on the 12th we had the latest additions to Manor, a lot of which are changes to Python. Compressed room descriptions were added. Python had sound objects added along with mouse down added. Sounds could now be interrupted by each other. Shape object and Rect object were added and an offset to Python Rect object. Keyboard event trapping and g world object were added. Render entry points and data passing functions were also added to Python. Also in September we get the upgrade of libPNG to 1.2.6, renderings performance upgrades. Cut and Paste is added to Preferences, along with Connect, Server Console, and Room Editor
What is Palace in 2005?
The Palace environment hasn't changed since Communities.com stopped supporting the palace community. The Palace Community now runs itself making the Palace an orphaned application. Communities.com, the company that was developing and supporting The Palace has long gone bust. Before that, it withdrew support for The Palace Chat programs (client and servers). This means that there are no new registration codes available. Illegal client reg code generators started up which lead to duplicate reg codes. The current Palace is a Hodge Podge of workarounds and make does, as such it could stop running with the next OS or upgrade.
Palace and Manor, so how do they differ?
Firstly they differ in as Palace was run by a company and Scotsman worked for them for 6 years as an engineer. Leaving the company to work for Apple six months before the company went bankrupt.
Both systems are run on different coding systems. Manor has developed quicker than Palace for a number of reasons. One since the turn of the century technology has moved on, and as Scotsman says, he has a clear vision of where he is going and the fact that not being a consortium means there are no office politics to get in the way. This slowed Palace down not allowing them to reach their full potential, conflicting views and the choices made by management did not fall in line with what the user wanted thus causing Palace to become stagnant. Scotsman admits to being obsessive about his work putting in sixteen hours a day seven days a week. This will assure that Manor carries on evolving, in a way that both fulfill Scotsman’s dreams and aspirations for His baby and also give his clients what they want and need from Manor. The fact that Scotsman is willing to listen to his users and give then as much as possible the things they ask for can only make this an ever growing population.
Technical differences:
