by Grace Smith

Like a sweeping Hollywood epic, Titanic: Adventure Out of Time immerses you in its grip. With 54 stunning, high-resolution sets, 30 interactive characters, and a story of mystery, espionage, and deception, Titanic takes users on an adventure to the past while they play out an elaborate suspense thriller involving spies, wars, and a revolution.

If you've not yet experienced Titanic, here's the scenario: You are in a one-room flat in London in 1942. Haunted by your failed mission aboard Titanic the night it went down in 1912, you are thrust back in time to the eve of the disaster. Although you can't stop Titanic from sinking, you have only a few hours to complete a new mission by talking with passengers, collecting clues, and solving puzzles. If you complete your mission satisfactorily, you may be able to alter history. To do so, you must collect all your items and clues, sort them out, and finish the game by leaving on a lifeboat before the Titanic disappears forever. Much of the gameplay focuses on your interactions with 3D-rendered, interactive characters. How you communcate with them and your ability to solve puzzles affects how well you succeed.

Extensively researched, historically accurate, and meticulously rendered, Titanic looms colossal, a remarkably exquisite jewel reincarnated from the Edwardian era. Digitally crafting the ship from drawings, period photographs, and actual blueprints, CyberFlix's team of artists has matched every cabin, corridor, deck, and engine compartment with its actual counterpart in detail, scale, and decor.

Developed with Cyberflix's DreamFactory authoring software, the two-CD-ROM adventure story features digital actors who are able to retain memory of a previous situation. Additional features include full player navigability, fluid motion, an integrated soundtrack and musical score, dialogue voices, and special sound effects.

Andrew Nelson, Titanic's producer and writer, is the creative force behind the adventure. Nelson's fascination with the ship first developed as an 11-year old while reading Walter Lord's now-classic story of the Titanic, A Night to Remember. He says, "The story is still incredibly dramatic. You've got this big ship with this huge engine that was the cutting edge of technology for 1912 -- and you know most of these people on board it are going to die." Nelson adds that the story of the Titanic deals with the concept of time on many levels including flashback, making new choices in relation to past experiences, and racing against the clock in real time, just as Titanic passengers did.

For more information on the making of Titanic: Adventure Out of Time and insight into the interactive game industry, read Writer/Producer Andrew Nelson's comments below.

GS: Andrew, what process did you use to create the mystery around Titanic? It's really a game and a story with a time element. How did you plot it out? Did you do all the writing or was there a team? How long did the scripting take?

AN: Multi-media's a collaborative effort like film, but at the same time, such a project must have a vision. The Titanic was mine. The characters and plot were mine that changed in accordance to the needs and demands of the game structure. The writing was mine. The script, with revision, was worked on for about 10 months.

GS: At what point does the technical portion of your team enter into the development of the game? What responsibilities does the technical team have?

AN: The technical team was there from the start. Todd Appleton was our lead programmer. We had difficulties at first as it is hard to wed a creative vision to what Todd needed, an engineered blueprint, but we succeeded, and the team became stronger because of it.

GS: At what point do you shift from writer to producer? What happens when the digital part is complete? What does your role consist of then?

AN: There was no time that I wasn't both. I had to be. DreamFactory allows writers to get in under the hood of the software and tinker with dialogue, etc. So if we needed a change, it was immediate.

GS: When you conceived the idea for the game, was it the 11-year-old Andrew you thought of during this process? Do you think that kids (people) are moving from reading mystery to playing mystery?

AN: I hope I still have the 11-year-old still with me. Think, if every adult lost that perspective, what trouble we'd be in. Everyone talks about kids not having concentration, but if they're truly absorbed, their concentration is so powerful -- very few adults can match it. Just look at 7-year-olds playing video games over and over. Now, what if you were to give them a game structured to be an immersive experience?

GS: Why would kids be so fascinated with the story of the Titanic today when the event occurred "before their time"?

AN: Kids are fascinated with the Titanic still because:

A. It's a powerful, incredibly poignant story. An entire community, a city if you will, dies in one night. Moreover, the inhabitants have enough time to contemplate how they will die and the manner in which they will die. The Titanic, her engines, guts, the staterooms and grand reception areas, is also a metaphor for the body.

B. Destruction is cool. On the Beavis level, it's "Wow, here's all this fancy stuff, the product of millions of man hours of delicate craftsmanship and now we get to WRECK it!"

C. The Titanic's failure is also the failure of technology. Edwardians didn't think about the luxury as much as how technologically advanced the ship was. It had electricity, elevators, a swimming pool, and this wireless telegraphy, which became all the rage. It's funny. I kept hearing how "unsinkable the Internet was" while working on this project. Does our wired society have a similar fate? I don't know. Interesting that the Titanic legend surfaces whenever we get a little uneasy about the future and whether we're really in control of our destinies.

GS: What do you think is ahead in the computer world for the WWW and CD-ROMS as delivery tools? Do you see them merging or ......?

AN: CD-ROMS are only envelopes that deliver the letter. They'll be replaced by DVD disks, bigger envelopes. To most people, the Web's an interface. It is going to be very difficult to predict what will be on it. Will it provide video information? Somewhat, but isn't that why I have cable?

I think a lot of the Web will stay text-based information, plus, when and if the bandwidth problem's figured out, giant 3D worlds. We'd love that. The Web solves distribution problems.

GS: How does DreamFactory allow for "thinking" personalities that can remember, have personality, and are intelligent?

AN: DreamFactory is object oriented programming and that means if you teach the object to behave like itself, it will under certain conditions. It may also change when subjected to new conditions. You have to teach chickens to be chickens.

GS: How many copies of Titanic have been sold to date? Are there any spin-offs available or planned? (posters, mugs, screensavers, etc., as in MYST paraphernalia?)

AN: I can't give out the sales figures, but it's in excess of 100,000 its first two months and that makes us very happy indeed. We have T-shirts and you could e-mail Rand Cabus at rand@cyberflix.com and ask him how much they cost and what's available. I think they're nifty. Our philosophy about education was simple. Learning should be fun. People learn more when they're having fun. So we made the Titanic fun first, then educational. But I think it does both.

SG: By now you're going through a phase where the video is getting digitized, and you're getting revisions from the digital art people. Every time something arrives, it gets put into what is now becoming the final version of the product.

GS: How many hours does it take to produce a quality CD-ROM of this type? How many people working those hours? Do you have an estimate on the cost to produce Titanic?

SG: This took far too long. Nineteen months, no weekends off, late nights, angst, suffering, blood, you name it. The cost? Hitting the seven-figure mark.

GS: What advice do you have for writers who want to move into interactive screen writing? How do they start? What's the most difficult task an interactive writer has to face?

AN: Take risks. There isn't any other way to do it. You'll give up everything that makes sense to you, but if you have a vision for what you want to do and are lucky to find talented people with similar interests you can do something great. This is the start of the revolution. Lenin hasn't steamed into Finland Station yet.

GS: Of the game's personalities, who are your favorites? Who were your character models for them - people you actually know or knew or composites? Or, are they complete fiction?

AN: People really like poor, confused Willi Von Haderlitz, and surprisingly, Daisy Cashmore who was supposed to be a composite of everything haughty about the Edwardians. But she's full of gossip. Most of it true. I think my favorite is Carlson, and he doesn't say anything. Max Siedlemann's a favorite too.

GS: We know that Red Jack's Revenge is the next adventure from Cyberflix, and you'll have SkullCracker and Jump Raven 2 coming out, but will there be any other history-related releases, along the lines of the Titanic, in the near future? If so, can you reveal the era or event?

AN: Yes, there'll be more. Redjack is set in the golden age of piracy (18th century) and will have some pretty cool technological advances but is definitely in the fantasy-adventure realm. As for the Titanic sequel, I think you'll see Carson show up in some pretty interesting situations in 1917 in St. Petersburg. Other ideas include the Maya and Rat Pack Las Vegas. You want to be an advance man for JFK's election campaign?

GS: Hey, Andrew, I'd love to be an advance Woman for JFK's election campaign.....what great fun to be a 3D digital actor in an upcoming CyberFlix hit ... get that contract ready!

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