Talk:Habitat (video game)

3D
This article states that Ultima Underworld was the first true 3D computer game. That's wildly untrue on just about every level. There had been dozens before it. I suggest that it's amended to "true 3D computer role-playing game". --User:Eurhetemec 06:27, June 23, 2006 GMT

Stub
What's so stubby about this? I mean, what's missing? I mean, I'm just happy Habitat is mentioned here. I sentimental... never played it, but just from reading an article in some US computer mag (I'm german) in the 80s, I was fascinated. --jae 00:24, Dec 26, 2004 (UTC)

Infobox
Just added an infobox and screenshot. This is my first one, so be gentile with me if I formatted something wrong. :-) Randy Farmer 19:56, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Habitat.gif
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BetacommandBot 06:05, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Rogue Leaders
There have been some recent edits to this page based on a book about LucasArts history entitled Rogue Leaders: The Story of LucasArts, published last November. Recently excerpts from this book about Habitat have been blogged on the web. The section of the book about Habitat contains several factual errors - the Beta test period for Habitat was 1986-1988 and there are several public documents with these dates, most of them are archived digitally - also check out the copyright date at the end of the promotional video now available on YouTube. The 1988 date given was the ship-date for Q'Links Club Caribe - again documented many places on the web and at Habitat Chronicles. When I get my copy of the book, I'll make a full post of factual corrections on my blog along with appropriate citations and then post another comment here. It's pretty sad, since Chip and I have made it quite clear that we'd talk with anyone who asks about the history of Habitat, all they need to do is ask[mailto:randy.farmer@pobox.com]. The author never approached us or apparently bothered to read any of the rich history of this project available through a Google search. Until then, please consider suggesting changes here on the talk page if they're based on this book. I don't like reverting other people's changes, especially when they think they are doing the right thing. Randy Farmer (talk) 19:00, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Windows
When was the Windows version released? Was it ever released for DOS? 2fort5r (talk) 02:18, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

There was never a Windows version available. It was created for the Commodore 64 only. Although now, 8 years after you wrote this original comment you can emulate Habitat using the VICE C64 emulator and login to a world! RenoProject (talk) 16:31, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Too technical? Don't think so.
In my opinion, the article is not too technical. I suspect that people are unfamiliar these days with MOOs and MUDs as terminology, and so kneejerk. These things are linked, and they are exactly the right terms in this context. I am not a games or IT industry employee or graduate; I am studying for a BA in English Literature. If I can understand the "technical" aspects, I don't see why others shouldn't be expected to follow links and learn more. --Froginvestor (talk) 10:16, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Though Club Caribe was considered a "stripped down version of Habitat" at the time, I propose that this is not correct by modern standards. By today's lingo Habitat, Club Caribe and Maniac Mansion were an early example of one game engine, multiple games. While they used the same Lucasfilm Games engine, no portion of the game worlds was shared between the three games.

Regards, Bill Herrin herrin@dirtside.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.199.133.22 (talk) 18:46, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

Source code release
The source code of Habitat is now on GitHub at Museum-of-Art-and-Digital-Entertainment/habitat Isofarro (talk) 06:46, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

How Much WorldsAway?
For some reason, someone just added 1500 words (a big block) about WorldsAway the third generation decedent of Habitat. And 100% of the Bibliography is about WorldsAway. Didn't WorldsAway have it's own Wikipedia page? What happened to that? There are *many* direct descendants of Habitat, and I'm wondering if this level of detail is appropriate for all of them. It feels like the WA information is now competing with the Habitat information, causing some confusion about what this page is actually about.

Randy Farmer, co-creator of Habitat, and many of it's dependents. — Preceding unsigned comment added by FRandallFarmer (talk • contribs) 23:26, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

WorldsAway addition - Discussion on undoing this merge
Habitat and WorldsAway are two different technologies. They were created by the same people, one influenced the other but they were developed around 8 years apart, using entirely different code and assets. They have been seperate pages for many years just fine. I'm not sure why the two pages have been merged. If anything, it confuses the timeline of Habitat. WorldsAway is not relevant to Habitat other than being mentioned as a descendant that came later. What happened with WorldsAway is enough to fill a novel as it stands, let alone a footnote clumsily put into the middle of the Habitat page.

Can we please undo the changes made and revert back to the last available copy prior to the merge? Having the Club Caribe page point to this one is fine because Club Caribe actually was the final released version of Habitat. They used the same software, art assets and were directly connected. RenoProject (talk) 15:47, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

NA: Habitat (Beta): Q2 1986

NA: Club Caribe: Q3 1988

JP: Fujitsu Habitat: Q3 1990

NA: WorldsAway: September 1995

This section in particular is wrong because Fujitsu Habitat was also an entirely seperate product, created by a different team using all new code and assets. It had input from the original creators but it was largely left to Fujitsu's development team. Also as mentioned above, WorldsAway is an entirely different thing and shouldn't be listed here at all under the release section. It should look like this:

NA: Habitat (Beta): Q2 1986

NA: Club Caribe: Q3 1988

RenoProject (talk) 15:54, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

I've been asked to mention that I have a conflict of interest here in that I am helping to work on the Habitat revival led by one of the creators of Habitat, Randy Farmer who is on Wikipedia as User:FRandallFarmer. However, that aside if you look at an archived version of the WorldsAway page and research the topic elsewhere you will see that reverting the merge of the WorldsAway page with the Habitat page is necessary to avoid confusion between the two. RenoProject (talk) 16:27, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Habitat and Club Caribe only ran on the Commodore 64/128 via the QuantumLink service. WorldsAway was designed for Windows and Macintosh and ran on the Compuserve service initially.

I am trying to clean this up a little bit. I don't know how to split the page back up, but I'd like to make the relationship between the projects more clear. Let me know if you have ideas. Thanks. RestonVAUnofficialFan

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Avatar
According to the Snow Crash article, this game didn't just use avatars but was the first use of the term - this should definitely be mentioned in this article, if there's a source for that. sheridan (talk) 14:43, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

It wasn't the first use of the term in a game, but the first use of the term to define an online persona. Ultima_IV:_Quest_of_the_Avatar was most likely the first time it was used in a game, however it is an important distinction because today, avatar tends to refer to an online persona.

Here are some sources for that: http://www.fudco.com/chip/resume.html https://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/magazine/10wwln-guest-t.html http://bokardo.com/archives/on-the-origins-of-avatar/

OracleKappa (talk) 03:47, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

Reception (sales)
There's no mention as to whether the game was a commercial success. If anyone knows, I'd be grateful to know. Enfascination (talk) 15:36, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Opening description
The opening paragraph says that Habitat "is considered a forerunner of modern MMORPGs unlike other online communities of the time". I'm not challenging this, but it does need a citation to identify who considers it to be such a forerunner. RichardBartle (talk) 11:38, 27 July 2022 (UTC)

there's no pictures
It would be enormously helpful if there were some pictures showing what this looked like. 101.98.178.115 (talk) 09:15, 8 August 2022 (UTC)