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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Yes! Especially since LucasFilm Games' parent company - LucasFilm Ltd. - was so well known for the Star Wars 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.
Habitat Articles
Commodore Microcomputers - Nov/Dec 1986
CVG Magazine - Interview with Chip Morningstar - May 1987
Club Caribe Articles
Nov. 1989 issue of Run Magazine
YouTube has a few Habitat / Club Caribe related videos.
Q-Link / LucasFilm Habitat promotional video - Circa 1986
LucasFilm 1987 Company Meeting (Features Habitat along with other LucasFilm games)
Live footage of Habitat from summer of 1988
Live footage of Habitat / Club Caribe from Summer of 1988
Live footage/documentary of Club Caribe from 1994
LGR Tech Tales - Quantum Link: Origins of AOL (Mentions Habitat)
The Lessons of LucasFilm's Habitat by Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer (Paper from 1990)
VZones Network's Guide to Club Caribe
Wikipedia has a page on Habitat
The Digital Antiquarian article
The C64 Games That Weren't Site
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 interrupt" is a technique used to "interrupt" raster lines on the screen 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)
*Avatars are drawn directly on the bitmap screen. This is why avatars have a limited color palette.
*The only sprites on the screen are the cursor and the "quip" point that hangs down from text balloons.
*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. Habitat uses the bitmap screen for its background. 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)