back      From the Ministry of Thought A Place for Fun and Friendship... C   l   u   b      C   h   a   t    Credits: Created in conjunction with Twin Sun, Inc by Ministry of Thought Art Design and Graphics by Jeff Hilbers Software Design and Programming by Mitsu Hadeishi, Jimmy Huey and Twinsun, Inc. Interface Design and Spec by Darlene Waddington and Susan Chow

	Voice Conferencing for the Internet Club Chat is the place to meet, to talk and to play games with friends. Based on a voice conferencing system which Ministry Of Thought helped to develop, Club Chat allows home users to hear up to 4 voices simultaneously over a 28.8 modem connection to the Internet. Initially, Club Chat will be tested in the Japanese market, where text based chat rooms have been little used due to the difficulty in keyboard selection of Japanese characters. Club Chat's technology is designed with the goal of fostering the kind of on-line communities enjoyed by English language speakers.    Choose an Avatar Upon arrival, visitors to Club Chat choose a look from the Club Chat portrait gallery. In future revisions of the product, Club Chat visitors will be able to use their own photographs.    Thank Goodness For Friends When visitors are ready to start interacting, they may search for their favorite friends or they can enter public chat and card rooms to meet new people. Chat room residents can post discussion group topics so that people with similar interests can find each other; card room denizens can advertise for new players; and private room residents can let their friends know that they are waiting for them to join.       Cards, Anyone?    The first version of Club Chat includes the popular Japanese card game, Daifugo. More card games are in the works for future versions as well as conversation-piece interactions such as fortune telling machines and board games.    Future Projects Future plans include 2D and 3D worlds which will allow navigation and exploration of richly detailed worlds for children and adults in products such as TV Planet and Mini Golf World.
	TV Planet    Make a TV Show Or Just Watch One TV Planet introduces Internet users to a strange new alien world, rich in cultural artifacts and funny AI avatars, where all attention centers around the theme of television. Visitors to TV Planet can make their own television shows and appear on a game shows; they can meet other on-line players to chat, exchange viewpoints and coordinate their TV show making efforts; they can swap views on real life TV shows as well as TV Planet shows. This is the place for everyone who ever wanted to be on TV or has an opinion about what to watch.    TV Show Construction Kit and Internet Homeworld The primary features of TV Planet are its TV show construction kit and associated homeworld; they complement and extend voice chat room technologies developed for Club Chat. TV Planet's homeworld and construction set are designed to enhance the individual user's self expression, performance possibilities and group participation on the Internet.    AI Avatars TV producers use the construction kit to make their own television shows. The user first chooses "actors" from a collection of AI avatars. Each avatar is programmed with the ability to make faces and gestures to which convey the avatar's feelings. The producer directs an animated sequence by using an intuitive interface to move the avatar around the set; the avatar's programming determines a convenient path which allows it to tiptoe past sleeping cats and jump over couches. The goal is to make simple movements easy to do and to give the user the sense that s/he is a director of avatar actors rather than an animator of graphical objects.    Add Your Own Voice TV show producers then add their own voices either by reading from pre-existing scripts or adlibbing their own dialogue. Or the user can choose to save a silent animation for sharing and dubbing with friends on TV Planet's homeworld. This outputs a highly compressed format for sending "animation commands," allowing visitors to the TV Planet homeworld to view and interact with each other's animations without consuming precious bandwidth. The construction kit is designed to output frameset animations too so the kit can also be used, for example, to add animations to the users' own web pages.    A Place for Hams and Couch Potatoes Visitors can meet each other in chat rooms to create and dub TV shows together or simply sit back to discuss their favorite Planetworld and realworld shows. Special event game shows may be staged, allowing users to display their talents to an audience; or users might find special rooms where a collection of new alien musical instruments are available for a jam session. They can watch home-made shows created by other users and submit their own shows for evaluation to be included in the homeworld's TV network and registry. While on the homeworld, users are invited to vote in TV Planet's version of the Academy Awards and to pick up hints, advice and scripts to build new shows. With a successful launch of the Internet site, more goodies such as additional graphics packs will become available for download too.    Fast Animation Because graphics and animation routines are shared between the construction set and homeworld, graphics performance is optimized, even while connected to the Internet. A much richer visual world is possible and TV Planet's vivid world of sounds, images and cultural icons will take full advantage of that.       Mini Golf World    A colorful, whimsical miniature golfing site and recreation MUD for fun and chat. Guests can play games or visit the coffee shop, where they are served by robot waitresses and get their fortunes told by table-top swamis.