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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
WHAT HAPPENED TO HABITAT? HOW COME IT WAS NEVER RELEASED BACK IN THE DAY?
In the 1980's, a few brave souls sat down at their computers to draft a new exciting virtual world... Since then Habitat has become part of C64 and early online lore, and as such, there are a lot of stories and rumors that have popped up over time concerning it. First off, let's state that Habitat was tested from 1986 to 1988 in beta stage, so some players did indeed have the chance to actually experience it back in the day. What was its fate? Some state that it was too ambitious and that the servers handling the game began to overload when the numbers of players got to be around 200, forcing LucasFilm / Q-Link to cancel the product. The real story is the issue of marketing (The money! Always follow the money!), while it was an ambitious project, the rumors about it being a server issue are bunk. Q-Link was worried about how to market an open-ended world. Remember this was waaay before MMOG'S were a commonplace thing. Marketing an open-ended game without clearly defined goals was considered to be a radical thing back in the day. (Will Wright, of Sim fame, would face similar issues a few years later in 1989 trying to find a publisher to market SimCity, an open ended city simulator) Of course, open ended games are common place now, but as with all pioneer ideas trying to convince the fat cats that it will actually be profitable, can be an extremely tough sell. Also, the fantasy elements - such as weapons and the abilities to play as non-human fantasy characters - were seen as not being very marketable. Also the concept of a player "avatar" was seen as weird, what in the world was an "avatar" anyways? Actually, it was Habitat that was the first online game to use the word "avatar' to describe a player's onscreen personage. Of course, the funny thing is now everyone and their grandmother knows what an avatar is!
But the legacy of Habitat would live on for awhile... On the C64, it lived on until the mid '90's in what would become "Club Caribe" (See below for more info). In 1989, LucasFilm sold the technology rights to the Japanese company Fujitsu, and they developed their own version of Habitat for a Japanese audience. Later in the mid '90's, Fujitsu's Habitat would be ported back to English under the name WorldsAway and was a feature on the Compuserve network.
Back in 1988, it must gave seemed that the initial dream of Habitat was gone, reduced to an obscure chapter closed in the records of computer history. But little did anyone realize back then, that almost 30 years later Habitat would be reborn and playable across the world over a revolutionary thing called the internet... But stranger things have happened... And as the new saying in the world of Habitat goes - "You can't keep a good avatar down..."
WHAT WAS CLUB CARIBE?
Club Caribe was a trimmed down version of Habitat that had a beach resort theme instead of Habitat's alternative on-line world theme. The map was smaller and many features of Habitat such as weapons and paper notes were removed. One of the major places were Club Caribe was trimmed down was in player housing, while in Habitat each "avatar" would get their own turf, in Club Caribe there wasn't places for each player to live. Also gone were Habitat's "avatars" now there were simply "guests".
Habitat, because of marketing reasons, never made it past the beta stage (1986-1988). Habitat was seen as too ambitious, too large, and too "odd" due to fantasy elements. Club Caribe was seen as the more marketable alternative and it went public and was available to play on Q-Link from 1988 to 1994. It used the same technology as Habitat and even the player disk, with the exception of the Club Caribe logo replacing the Habitat one, was the same.
WAS THERE ANY PRESS COVERAGE ON HABITAT BACK IN THE DAY?
Yes! Especially since LucasFilm Games' parent company - LucasFilm Ltd. - was so well known for the StarWars movies.
Many Commodore magazines back in the day ran articles on Habitat.
Today, thanks to archiving efforts, many scans of Commodore magazines can be found online.
Here are some links to Habitat articles from back in the day:
Ahoy! - Nov. 1986 https://archive.org/stream/ahoy-magazine-35/Ahoy_35_November_1986#page/n43
Commodore Microcomputers - Nov/Dec 1986: https://archive.org/stream/Commodore_Microcomputers_Volume_7_Number_6_Issue_44_1986-11_Commodore_US#page/n115/mode/2up
Compute! - Oct. 1986: https://archive.org/stream/1986-10-compute-magazine/Compute_Issue_077_1986_Oct#page/n33
Run - Nov. 1986: https://archive.org/stream/run-magazine-32/Run_Issue_32_1986_Aug#page/n25
Also here is an article on Club Caribe from the Nov. 1989 issue of Run Magazine: https://archive.org/stream/run-magazine-71/Run_Issue_71_1989_Nov#page/n51
WHAT ABOUT VIDEOS?
YouTube has a few Habitat / Club Caribe related videos.
Q-Link / LucasFilm Habitat promotional video - Circa 1986: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVpulhO3jyc
LucasFilm 1987 Company Meeting (Features Habitat along with other LucasFilm games) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWI8f9QpnR8
Live footage of Habitat from summer of 1988: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTtIzLZGNLw
Live footage of Habitat / Club Caribe from Summer of 1988: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7KwdqyyUO8
WHAT ABOUT OTHER PLACES ON THE INTERNET WITH HABITAT INFO?
*The C64 Games That Weren't Site has a page on Habitat. -- Though they might have to take it off soon, now that Habitat is being re-born. ;-)
http://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/habitat/
*Habitat Chronicles
*Wikipedia has a page on Habitat
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_(video_game)
WHAT ARE SOME OF THE TECHNICAL DETAILS OF THE COMMODORE 64 COMPUTER THAT HABITAT WAS DESIGNED FOR?
Habitat is truly an amazing technical feat when you consider that it was all stuffed into a Commodore 64, which is a 64K computer running at 1 MHZ!
The Commodore 64 (C64) was released in 1982 by Commodore Business Machines and became the most popular home computer of the 1980's. For most of the 1980's, the C64 platform was the entertainment standard, many games were designed on the C64 first and then ported to other machines later. Even though it was not the most powerful computer at the time, it was considered a low-end machine even in 1986, considering its popularity and its large user base, it was only natural that Habitat would be developed on the C64.
Basic C64 stats: *64K of memory *6502 processor running at 1 MHZ clock speed *Serial port *Cartridge port *User port (Used by modems - most Commodore users if they had a modem would either have a 300 or 1200 baud modem) *2 Joystick ports *SID chip - 3 voice music and sound chip
Some info on the VIC II graphic chip: *16 colors *40x24 text mode with the option of "re-definable" / custom character sets *Hi-Res Bitmap mode (320X200) with 2 colors per 8x8 pixel square (card) *Medium-Res AKA Multi-Color Bitmap mode (160x200) with 4 colors per 4x8 square (card) *All 16 colors can be used on a bitmap screen, but have to follow "card" restrictions *8 software sprites *Sprites can be 24x21 pixel Hi-Res or 12 (Medium-Res double wide pixels) by 21 pixels *Hi-res sprites can be 1 color and Medium-Res sprites can be 3 colors but 2 of them must be shared across all sprites and only 1 color can be independent / original *Sprites can also be "expanded" thus making them twice as large vertically, horizontally, or both ways - but at a loss of resolution as the sprite's pixels are doubled *"Raster splitting" is a technique used to "split" the screen on raster lines to produce effects like having split text / bitmap screens or having more than 8 sprites on a screen
So on one hand, the VIC II was pretty impressive for its day - remember at this time, most IBM PC's had 4 color CGA graphics! - but on the other hand, while it does have bitmap graphics and 16 colors there are color limitations to the bitmap screen that can make it hard to exploit its full potential.
1541 disk drive stats: *Most US users had at least one 1541 drive while there were other floppy drives - the 1541 was the most common *5.25" Floppy drive *Single sided drive - the back side of a disk can be used - but has to be manually "flipped" over *A standard 1541 formatted disk holds 170K per side *Up to four drives can be "daisy-chained" together *The 1541 drive is notorious for being slow - this is because of a cost saving measure by Commodore where they slowed the transfer rate between the drive and the computer in the standard DOS routines *By 1985-1986, most commercial games and programs used "fast-loaders" which are custom disk access routines designed to communicate with the drive faster (Habitat uses a custom "fast-loader" for faster disk access)
WHAT ARE SOME OF THE TECHNICAL DETAILS OF HABITAT?
*Avatars are made up of several C64 software sprites *There is a maximum of six avatars that can be on the screen at one time, though this may seem limiting, in fact getting that many sprites on the C64 screen is quite a feat. Normally there is a 8 sprite limit, but "raster-interrupts" can be used to split the screen up and allow more sprites, though this can be a tricky process to do especially without any flicker! *Due to the color limitations of the C64 sprites - multicolored sprites can be up to 3 colors but have to share 2 of them across all sprites - Avatars have a limited color palette and use blue, pink and black.
*The screen is split between a text mode screen and a multi-color bitmap (160x200) screen. The text mode is used up top and the graphics window below uses the bitmap mode. A lot of C64 games used "redefined" / custom character sets to design their backgrounds from "character tiles". The later SCUMM system used in Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken uses custom characters instead of a bitmap screen.
*The player game disk fits on a single 1541 double sided disk. (Disk has to be manually flipped over to access the other side)
*The in-between room music uses a random tune generator as a memory saving trick because memory was low