Looking for early 3D chat room Rose

TheBeigeKnight

So I have been looking for this 3D virtual chatroom program I remember from my childhood called Rose. I confirmed with my mom that it was real, she and her friends and my grandma used to love it. I remember it consisting of early 3D graphical rooms with humanoid avatars. You could put pictures on the walls of your room and chat with people and make your avatar do poses. There was even some kind of menu where you could make your own custom poses and animations frame by frame.

I cannot, for the life of me, find a trace of this on the Internet. I know I once was able to, many years ago. Does anyone here know what I’m talking about? And if so can you point me to more info on what this was?

Edit: I should mention that this would likely have been sometime during the 90s.

oprel

I played an MMORPG called ROSE Online when I was younger. I don’t remember the exact chat or animation features, but most people that I knew mostly treated it as an online hangout space.

Could that be what you’re talking about?

TheBeigeKnight

oprel Definitely not it. My apologies I thought I had specified that this must have been from the 90s.

Thanks for posting though, I appreciate the input!

Blrb

If that’s not it… when was your childhood?

oprel

Hmmm, interesting! Did it look anything like Microsoft V-Chat?

TheBeigeKnight

oprel kind of, similar level of graphics I think but it wasn’t a large open space, it was enclosed rooms. And I’m not sure if there was a first person perspective or not, but I am pretty sure you could see it from third person. This is reminiscent of it though.

Neko

TheBeigeKnight i only remember cybertown.

treefroggy

Try r/Tipofmyjoystick !

tapevulture

Neko love to be in chat rooms in 1998 responding “hehehe” to jokes

exodus

I NEED more cybercash

kory

exodus

hellomrkearns

exodus in this cyber-economy?

bodydouble

There’s worlds.com, the original 3D chat room – it’s been around since the mid 1990s and is still running today! The client app actually still runs in Win10. Their history is kind of interesting as they’re one of the few 1.0 net companies that has continued to exist primarily as a vehicle for IP lawsuits. They have a page that lists their various patents pertaining to “3D multi server worlds”, and their most recent successful suit was against Bungie in 2018. (You’ll notice one Bernie Stolar listed on the board, where have we heard that name before?) Since worlds.com is public, they still file quarterly reports with the SEC – looks like their holdings are around $15mil USD.

Anyways, they regularly pop up in creepypasta about secret internet cults meeting in spooky abandoned virtual rooms. I do think it was the first experience a lot of people had with a persistent interactive online space.

sdead

Activeworlds is another thing you might have been playing. It launched in ’95, and is “true” 3D (ie not the “stack of bitmaps” system used in a lot of Worlds.com avatars). I’m not an AW player, but my vague knowledge of it tells me the community has a habit of referring to the game with the name of the place they’re hanging out in - for example, this YouTube video about “Hyria” (which is really about a World in AW called Hyria), or this Wikipedia article about Dotsoul (which, again, is really about a World in AW called Dotsoul). It might be possible that you were playing Activeworlds, but solely hanging around a place/community called “Rose.”

Also, re: Dotsoul, while looking into it I found what is implied to be an old (2006) screenshot from a blog post. Maybe the text bubbles will seem familiar? (although given the era it’s possible they’re edited in, who knows.)

sdead

I think I found it.

Searching the Google Usenet archive brought me to a thread on alt.games.the-sims where people talk about it a bit, and every detail I’ve skimmed matches up with what you’ve described in the OP. Later in the thread they link to this fansite called the “Daily Rose” which has a few screenshots and a download for the client that Wayback seems to have actually captured. I haven’t tried installing it myself, but the .exe lists the publisher “moove - Lothar Bongartz und Dr. Ali Burak Kozan GbR” - googling that name brings me to the About page for a similar game called “moove”, where they talk about launching “moove rose” in 1999. I guess rose eventually turned into moove?

TheBeigeKnight

sdead yeah this Roomancer stuff definitely sounds like it and looks similar to how I remember it. It was a long time ago and I was just a kid at the time so I don’t remember it as well as I’d like to but I will run all these posts by my mom and see if she can confirm this is it. I will report back later today!

Thanks everyone for looking into this, I really appreciate it! This has been really fascinating, these old programs like this seem easy to lose track of since they aren’t like, a proper game without a community of people engaging in them. Can’t help but wonder how many more things like this were out there and have maybe been totally forgotten.

JoJoestar

One could call this game archeology…

Blrb

Videogame people do, but ‘archaeology’ isn’t a word you apply to investigating recent history.

TheBeigeKnight

My mom has confirmed that it was Roomancer!

Thanks so much everyone for helping me track this down! Big thanks in particular to @sdead for trawling the Usenet and putting this one together!

I knew I could count on the Insert Credit forums, you guys rock!