MY WAY TO THE FORUM OF ROME
JULILLA'S SITE MEMORABILIA
by Julilla Sempronius

I am a history addict. Yes, it is true, I am powerless over my enthusiasm for ancient Rome, and the on-line chapters of SPQR are responsible for my present obsession.

An omnivorous reader, I had just finished Australian writer Colleen McCullough's novel, "First Man in Rome," in the fall of 1995. Casually I typed "ancient Rome" into AltaVista's search engine one day. Among the first hits to come up was link on the now-defunct Time-Warner Pathfinder mega-site.

Beautifully rendered images of the Arch of Severus in the forum very slowly came into focus over my screamingly slow 14.4 modem and materialized on my miniature IBM PS/1 screen. I was mesmerized (which probably helped deal with the limitations of my technology at the time.

I clicked on a scroll dropped beneath one of the arches and began to read Vestal Verania's diary. With each subsequent mouse click I was pulled farther in, eager to see more, intrigued by the tale that unfolded. The Senate house, Temple of Saturn and Caesar, the Rostra, Tullianum and the Sacra Via all unfolded. Occasionally I stubbed my toes on the bricks of a particularly devilish puzzle, and I discovered, on the bulletin board called "The Rostra," others who were just as caught up in the mystery as I was.

In order to throw myself on their mercy to help me divine the puzzle, I must needs choose a name and register. The name of the maiden who wed Lucius Cornelius Sulla came to mind, and I have been "Julilla" ever since.

From those early days came subsequent chapters, each eagerly anticipated, each with a new set of problems and, occasionally, lavish new renderings of the Forum and its environs. The online chapters gave way to the CD-ROM game, Time-Warner Pathfinder gave way to AncientSites, but the friendships I formed from those early days back in 1995 have been constant through all the vicissitudes.

I progressed, thankfully, to quicker computers, faster connections and much greater knowledge of ancient Rome, but I have never forgotten the delight that the chapters of SPQR gave me, or my amicii -- fellow history addicts all!

SPQR takes place in the Roman Forum at dawn on a day in AD 205, where the first scroll is to be found in front of the Arch of Septimius Severus. Dedicated by the Senate only two years earlier, on the decennalia of the emperor’s accession in AD 193 and in celebration of his victory in Parthia ten years before, it was the first major architectural addition to the Forum in eighty years.

Placed diagonally opposite the Arch of Augustus, which also had been erected to celebrate a triumph over the Parthians, it symbolically linked Severus, who had come to power after a bloody civil war, with Rome's first emperor. So debilitating was this struggle, as Roman legion fought Roman legion, that Gibbon considered Severus to be "the principal author of the decline of the Roman empire."

WHY THIS PAGE IS HERE
OR, THE HISTORY OF S.P.Q.R. AND THIS SITE, PARTS I & II
by Heraklia Aelius

In the early 1990’s, two professors at Columbia University would relax together after work discussing computer-generated architecture and the history of Rome. Both taught at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture; both were interested in developing software tools for the creation of 3D interactive environments. Rory had worked for two years in Germany in an architectural animation firm, and then in the mid-‘80’s as a project Engineer at G.E. where he designed patented electromechanical devices for space applications. Eden had worked since 1986 in CAD research, and had spent five years working both as a registered architect and as a graphics software programmer. As the two men kicked back a few glasses of wine, they discussed developing computer tools which would make a 3-D environment - such as Ancient Rome - come alive, letting the tourist "walk" streets vanished for 1600 years. Together, they were writing WebDevloper.com Guide to Creating 3D Worlds and Inside Form *Z" (books published in 1997 and 1998). Together, they had a passion for using the then-still-developing Web. The result was a small company called Cybersites, founded in 1995, and its first child, the on-line puzzle game, S.P.Q.R.

Operating for long months out of metaphorical attics and their own home offices, Rory and Eden developed a team of programmers and put S.P.Q.R. online in July, 1995, nestled in a tiny part of the vast universe of the Pathfinder web site. The online game used state-of-the-art graphics technology to permit the user to walk through the Forum in the time of Emperor Septimus Severus, 205 A.D., solving puzzles concerning a plot against Rome. Soon a bulletin board sprang up for those who had heard of the game, to discuss hints and problems in solving its many puzzles. One of the first to hear of the game on the Pathfinder site was a woman who named herself FeAudrey (in those days, only one online name was needed). Soon along came Freddy the Penguin, Trimalchio, Skyros, L. Aelius Stilo, Julilla, and many more now gone; Canis Venaticus, Dr. Winston, Megaera, Histnacticus, Birba, Carlo Magno, Venusta. The "Cybergods" themselves (Emperor Hadrianus, Julia Aemilia, Gordian, Mars) frequently dropped by and chatted with their 20-30 subjects. What bound the site together was, identical to Cybersites’ founders, a mix of fascination with ancient Rome and what computers could do to recreate it.

Additional chapters of S.P.Q.R. came quickly in 1996; Chapter II in March; Chapter III in August; Chapter IV in December. The graphics from all four chapters and a far more advanced plot line and technology produced the CD-Rom of the Web game on December, 1996, which received good gamer reviews and increased the interest in the S.P.Q.R. bulletin board, known as The Rostra, now chock-full of gaming hints, discussions of Rome, and a small but faithful following, many of whom had now known each other for 18 months. The Rostra-ites (or "Subrostrani," as Freddy Pinguinus called them) had spun off their own Rome-based projects. Freddy was famous for graphic satires of all four online Chapters featuring his alter ego, the greyhound Canis Venaticus, called V.P.Q.R. . Aelius Stilo produced the magnificent reference Encyclopedia on Rome (focused on many game-solving issues) called the Encyclopedia Romana . Festus created Herculaneum, a virtual site set in 78 A.D. and described as "A guy, a volcano, and the eternal quest for meaningful employment." FeAudrey created The S.P.Q.R. Companion . Venusta prepared the comprehensive S.P.Q.R. walk-through.

This is where I came on the scene, in early February, 1997. My first CD-Rom game experience, S.P.Q.R. was magnificent, but I was totally lost. Hanging about at the walkthrough for clues led inexorably to the S.P.Q.R. Rostra board, and meeting this strange cast of characters, both infinitely more knowledgeable about Roman history and computers than I. I was far too intimidated to do more than lurk in the shadows, as did many others. Within two months, the "Beta Launch" was announced for a brand-new web site for the fast-developing fans of the game. S.P.Q.R.would abandon the Pathfinder site for a new site, name, and concept: an actual online community where "Romans" and those from other cities could actually find a "home" online. Rory and Eden already had a name handy - ANCIENTSITES.

Part I of this series reviewed the predecessor site to our current AncientSites: the Pathfinder Rostra which was devoted, initially, to game hints and spoilers for the virtual-reality online game, S.P.Q.R., developed by Rory and Eden based on the real architecture of Imperial Rome. But as the S.P.Q.R. game was the guiding lamp for all that followed in the development of the Seven Cities, it's worth a moment to go into the game itself, both in its online version (four chapters, appearing from July, 1995, to December, 1996) and the CD-Rom game which was also launched in late 1996.

Noted citizen and A.S. historian FeAudrey Pinguinus recalls that she was told that there were plans for twelve chapters, but in the event, only four made it online before the development of AncientSites and the ROM-version led to other projects! The first chapter, from which so much else would later flow, was launched online on July 11, 1995. This is how it came to be, in Eden's words:

"[The article] brought back a few wonderful memories of my apartment up there on 120th street across from Columbia's campus, and how we managed to get Silicon Graphics to donate a high- powered 3D workstation (which we named Jupiter--all our machines were gods!) to our cause for a few weeks. And of course every time the sales reps demanded it back, we said we needed it for just a few more weeks so that we could demo to Time Warner, or whoever was coming by. And in fact we never gave the machine back, and SGI just wrote it off on their PR budget eventually!

... In late Fall '94, we "built" Ancient Rome, temple by temple. Rory did most of the 3D modeling on one end of my living room, while I was doing most of the research and story writing on the other. I was constantly taking long trips across the avenue to the famous Avery Library, probably the best architectural library in the world, which has huge folio drawings of every major archaeological excavation. But as we developed Chapter I, we realized that HTML was still incapable of providing the game play that we needed. There was no way to include artifacts, for example, or if-then statements for game logic, or variables for customizing the user's experience. Early HTML was an impoverished programming environment--there was no way to easily do the simple image-mapping that gamers were enjoying in Myst at that time--clicking on the right to turn in that direction, etc. I was also teaching Computer-aided design at the engineering school at Columbia. There I located a particularly brilliant com sci kid, Ben [who would later become "Gordian"]...who was a freshman, 17 years old, I believe. He was our first employee. We said, Ben, we have to be able to walk around Rome, clicking intuitively to navigate. We need to be able to pick up and store artifacts. We need game logic so that we can have puzzles, secret chambers, locks to pick,, etc. Ben said, "No problem," and proceeded to create a new language that we dubbed RAGE (Real Action Gaming Environment). Within days we were testing it on the big SGI, while we created little artifacts in Photoshop on the Mac, as well as titles and labels... It was an amazing time of concentrated creativity and productivity. Gordian, of course, is still with us 5 years later. Then we quickly hired a few more people and soon the apartment was like Grand Central Station! We started with Rory's early-morning schedule at 7 AM, and ended with my usual late-night 3-AM hours. Finally I had to rent a small studio in the same building because I wasn't getting any sleep!

Things began heating up when we got a positive response from one of our business initiatives. We'd attempted to contact Time-Warner, which had the big Pathfinder content site. The President of Time Warner Electronic Publishing said that he would drop by in a few days to see our product, which we had named SPQR. After a few frantic all-nighters in early 1995 we were ready for the big visit. We had a short demo prepared, with the ideal "walk" taking us down the path from the Arch of Septimus Severus to the Temple of Saturn, where we hid Sybil's scroll (it's still there!). It was during one of these late sessions that we finally, after much experimentation and hesitation, drew our grid of nodal positions over the archaeological map of the Forum. This was casting the user experience in stone, since unlike Virtual Reality (where you can go anywhere, shift left or right etc.), we were really just giving the users a series of linked static views. We knew we'd have to live with them for a long time - but of course we never imagined that SPQR would live on 5 years later! So in the door came the president of TWEP with an associate, glancing around at my humble pre-war apartment. They were drawn first to the bookcases where they perused the history books, and he said wistfully "you know, I was a history major..." Then he sat down at the big color terminal and started clicking. Of course he went the wrong way, through the Arch of Severus, down into the Forum past the Basilica Aemilia, and veered off toward the Temple of Julius Caesar. Then he ran up against a wall so to speak - a missing node - and was stalled! But he had a big grin on his face. He was hooked! "When can we put it on Pathfinder?" he said. We agreed we needed a few months to fill out the story and develop the RAGE engine, and work on the game play. So we decided on July 11, 1995. And the rest was history... Things actually speeded up after that frantic race to launch the game by the deadline. One day that fall we got a call from GTI - a major CD-ROM game publisher (Doom, Quake, etc). They had seen the web game and wondered if we could do a CD- ROM version. Sure we said, and the race was on. But that's, as they say, a whole 'nother story!"

EARLY DAYS AT ANCIENT SITES
FEAUDREY'S MEMORABILIA
by FeAudrey Pinguinus

AS History

MY WAY TO THE FORUM OF ROME
by Julilla Sempronius

THE CONTEXT OF THE GAME
by Lucius Aelius Stilo

WHY THIS PAGE IS HERE
by Heraklia Aelius

EARLY DAYS AT ANCIENT SITES
by FeAudrey Pinguinus

The Campus Martius group in Rome is being re-started under new management! The Campus Martius, which many remember from earlier days, is a military roleplaying group this time situated in the year 159 BC.

For those of you who do not know, Arturus Rex is under new leadership. Prosperina Curius has taken over the reings and has many ideas as to how to restart the group. If you love the historical Arthur, this is the group for you!

Visit the Temple of Cornellia and leave offerings of chocolate for the goddess of polite behavior and good manners. The Temple for the worship of the goddess Cornellia and her chainsaw. A place to make offerings to the great goddess and to hear her words and posts of wisdom.