
Habitat (video game) - benbreen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_(video_game)
======
notphilcollins
Super cool to see this on the front page!

I'm part of the Neohabitat project, started by the creators of Habitat and
dedicated to bringing it back to life. We've got the original launch world
back up and running (over 5000 regions!), and you can play it directly in the
browser over at our exhibit site:

[http://exhibit-demo.spi.ne](http://exhibit-demo.spi.ne)

If you're handy with Java or JavaScript, we've also got an open source project
you can check out too:

[https://github.com/frandallfarmer/neohabitat](https://github.com/frandallfarmer/neohabitat)
[http://neohabitat.org](http://neohabitat.org)

See y'all in world!

~~~
supermatt
Would love to join, but I get as far as "press cmd-n or alt-n then any key to
continue" (or similar) and cant get any further. Using chrome on a mac.

~~~
notphilcollins
Ohh, Macs are a bit weird there, you'll want to use Option-N then press Enter.
If it works, you'll see a "Version 1.0" string come up followed by a lot of
disk sounds as all the imagery loads.

------
dyates
The Digital Antiquarian has an article that goes quite in-depth on the history
and context of this game:

[https://www.filfre.net/2015/07/a-new-force-in-games-
part-2-a...](https://www.filfre.net/2015/07/a-new-force-in-games-
part-2-a-habitat-in-cyberspace/)

~~~
ddingus
This author is impressive.

I value their work highly enough to savor, not rush it. Just wanted that
quality recognized here, should they read HN.

(Thank you)

------
whtrbt
Ah, it looks like this is what the graphical version of Community in Halt and
Catch Fire was based on!

~~~
OldSchoolDM
It is one of the inspirations according to someone on the project...

[https://www.fastcompany.com/3063135/welcome-
to-1986-inside-h...](https://www.fastcompany.com/3063135/welcome-
to-1986-inside-halt-and-catch-fires-high-tech-time-machine)

------
johnhenry
Promo:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVpulhO3jyc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVpulhO3jyc)

------
Jaruzel
The source for Habitat is available on GitHub these days:

[https://github.com/Museum-of-Art-and-Digital-
Entertainment/h...](https://github.com/Museum-of-Art-and-Digital-
Entertainment/habitat)

~~~
yakattak
This is one of the first “old” codebases, made public for historical purposes
that I’ve seen with really a really good README. It seems possible to actually
compile, if not run Habitat?

------
penciljencil
Not too long ago I was one of the contributors for this project. Despite my
mediocre programming skills, everyone was extremely supportive and gave me a
lot of constructive feedback. Hell, I even got a personalized note from one of
the original developers in-game, which was pretty awesome.

If you're looking for some fun, then I'd also recommend checking out some of
the dev docs.

[https://github.com/frandallfarmer/neohabitat-
doc/blob/master...](https://github.com/frandallfarmer/neohabitat-
doc/blob/master/docs/devdocs/ethics.pdf)

------
exlurker
Be sure to look at F. Randall Farmer's articles under "Literature", really
fascinating and entertaining!

[http://www.crockford.com/ec/anecdotes.html](http://www.crockford.com/ec/anecdotes.html)

~~~
_iyig
Was just about to link this! My favorite excerpt:

“Would anyone actually go to the trouble of disassembling and studying 100K or
so of incredibly tight and bizarrely threaded 6502 machine code just to
tinker? As it turns out, the answer is yes. People did. We were not 100%
rigorous in following our own rule. It turned out that there were a few
features whose implementation was greatly eased by breaking the rule in
situations where, in our judgment, the consequences would not be material if
some people "cheated" by hacking their own systems. Darned if some people
didn't hack their systems to cheat in exactly these ways.”

------
wernsey
Jeff Atwood had an article titled "The Organism Will Do Whatever It Damn Well
Pleases".

He summarized how some of the lessons learned from Habitat applied to
StackOverflow/StackExchange, or had to be relearned.

[https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-organism-will-do-what-
it-d...](https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-organism-will-do-what-it-damn-well-
pleases/)

------
dalksfjid
You can actually play this at the videogame museum in oakland, ca.
[https://frandallfarmer.github.io/neohabitat-
doc/docs//](https://frandallfarmer.github.io/neohabitat-doc/docs//)

I got to play with it, it's cool.

