Sail on the Titanic and never get wet with new CD-ROM

One quiet afternoon at the Defer Elementary School library in Grosse Pointe Park, Mich., an amazing world popped open in front of 11-year-old Andrew Nelson.

Between the covers of Walter Lord's "A Night to Remember," Nelson climbed on board a dazzling ship that was so enormous, it seemed like a floating city. The most gripping part of this adventure was the realization that most of the great ship's 2,200 passengers were doomed to die.

"The story is still incredibly dramatic," says Nelson, now 38 and the creative director of CyberFlix, a CD-ROM development firm in Knoxville, Tenn. "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."

This month, Nelson plans to resurrect that amazing story of beauty, drama and looming horror in a multimedia CD-ROM "Titanic: Adventure out of Time."

"Walter Lord's book still stands today as the best piece of journalism about the sinking," Nelson says. "But, until now, nobody's really been able to walk through the ship and see what it was like to be on that voyage."

It was a herculean challenge to re-create full-color, three-dimensional models of dozens of the Titanic's lavishly appointed rooms, lounges and hallways.

"Think about it: We put the Titanic - with 54 detailed sets, and tour guides to help you, and our story about secret agents, and 30 different characters - all on two CD-ROM disks," Nelson says, pausing for a satisfied sigh. "Well, it's pretty bodacious."

Of course, CyberFlix's staff of 30 are known for overcoming bodacious odds.

Four years ago, Nelson and three buddies launched the company in a basement. While scores of similar, shoestring CD-ROM companies have failed, merged or sold out to larger companies, CyberFlix is still owned by the original partners and is cruising on a series of hits.

The firm picked up a fistful of computer-industry awards for its first three titles: "Lunicus," an arcade-style outer space adventure; "Jump Raven," a shoot-'em-up strategy game set in a cyber-punk future world and "DUST: A Tale of the Wired West," an interactive adventure in 1882 New Mexico.

"It's been quite a ride," Nelson says.

The company's Worldwide Web site (www.cyberflix.com) sums up the creative struggle to raise the Titanic on CD-ROM the this way: "Two years in the making and hundreds of pizzas later ..."

Each lavishly appointed lounge, hallway and smoking room had to be designed for 360-degree mobility on the computer screen.

"The first-class stairway took the team 24 straight days," Nelson recalls. "This stairway was a beautiful place where the tony passengers would walk in their gowns and evening clothes, illuminated by a glass dome overhead."

However, when it came to designing the glass dome, there was a communication glitch between the historical researchers and the artists.

"They made it a clear-glass dome - and the real dome was frosted," Nelson says. "We wanted to make sure that everything was accurate. So, we had them go back and create the whole stairway over again."

That meant: another few weeks and countless pizzas.

But the result of all that research, design and pepperoni is stunning.

The CD-ROM invites people to wander freely through "Myst"-like high-resolution illustrations of the ship's many settings, including staterooms, engine compartment, smoking room, Turkish bath and the captain's bridge.

In the gymnasium, people are invited to climb on one of the ship's quaint exercise devices: a mechanical camel that was believed to improve a person's liver.

After the tour, people can play out an elaborate suspense story involving spies from several countries with the outcome of World War I and the Russian Revolution hanging in the balance.

Central to this plot is the theft of a priceless volume of Persian poetry.

"Of course, we do know that there was a copy of `The Rubaiyat' on the Titanic when it went down," Nelson says.

More than any previous CyberFlix title, Nelson says that "The Titanic" represents his goal for CD-ROMs.

"So far, most interactive multimedia has been reduced to one guy just walloping the be-jesus out of another guy," he says. "I want to take this marvelous technology and use it to tell stories and to create characters that people really care about."

He dreams of thousands of 11-year-old kids watching the story of the Titanic spring to life - as it did for him 27 years ago.

While adults also are likely to enjoy the Titanic, kids seem to be in the forefront of Nelson's mind. If this CD-ROM is successful, he plans to come back in 1997 with an interactive exploration of the world of cut-throat pirates.

"The working title is `Red Jack's Revenge.' The best way I can describe it is like a user manual for would-be pirates with another wonderful story to go along with it," he says.

Despite CyberFlix's successes, Nelson claims that he doesn't take all this new technology too seriously. He wants to spin a good yarn, but stops short of boasting that the Web and CD-ROMs will change the world's future.

"There's an interesting similarity between the Titanic and today," Nelson says. "The Edwardians thought they were on this grand path toward conquering time and space and making the world a better place. Then, the Titanic sank and World War I started a few years later. Their whole faith in the future was horribly shaken.

"In almost the exact same words the Edwardians used to describe the Titanic, people today describe their awe and fascination with our new technology. They said the Titanic was unsinkable; they say the Internet is unbreakable. We want to conquer space and distance - just like they tried to do."

Nelson suspects there may be some big surprises ahead in the computer world. The Web may crash or may be transformed into an entirely different kind of service. CD-ROMs may be replaced.

"I don't know exactly what will happen, but I keep thinking: The designers of the Titanic succeeded in building the largest steam engines in the world and they're still the world's largest - of course, they're now 2 miles down in the Atlantic Ocean."