System and method for limiting the number of characters displayed in a common area

摘要

A system providing a graphical chat room and/or virtual world on a website in which users can control avatars or other characters to participate in activities and interact with other users' avatars/characters. The chat room or virtual world has a large common location where a large number of users might participate with their characters/avatars, but where because display of all of the participants and/or all of the area becomes impractical or otherwise unwieldy, the system determines an appropriate portion of the area and a limited number of avatars/characters to display based on some criteria.

主权项

1. A method for providing characters for efficient display in a common room of an online entertainment system including at least one server, said method comprising the steps of:
providing a common area for participation by a plurality of characters engaging in the online entertainment system, said plurality of characters including a specific character of a particular user; receiving input which enables selecting a portion of said common area for display to said particular user using said server; using a computer processor provided to the at least one server, determining a set of local characters from said plurality of characters that are stored in said server and are linked to users, wherein said set of local characters are characters that are present in said portion of said common area; using said computer processor provided to the at least one server, analyzing information in said server that is linked to said set of local characters or linked to a corresponding user of said set of local characters for matching a selected criteria linked to said specific character or linked to said particular user; using said computer processor provided to the at least one server, determining a subset of said set of local characters for display to said particular user as being present in said portion of said common area, wherein said subset is generated using said selected criteria to determine said subset from said set and where said subset includes fewer characters than said set and is selected to be less than or equal to a predetermined maximum number of characters for display in a particular display area; using said computer processor provided to the at least one server, further determining said subset of said set of local characters for display to said particular user as being present in said portion of said common area by also using another selected criteria to determine said subset if the subset determined by using said selected criteria is more than said maximum to further reduce the number of characters in said subset to be at or below said maximum; and said server outputting data for displaying said subset of said set of local characters to a user computer associated with said particular user, wherein said data has said subset of said set of local characters for display on the user computer with fewer characters than said set of local characters, thereby resulting in displaying less than all of those of said plurality of characters that are present in said portion of said common area.