This documentary was first released in video form on the 15th of September 2020, it was first added to the Entropic Domain in article form on the 3rd of April 2025.
This documentary also has a premium release available on Gumroad, including BTS, an hour long production insight, producer/crew commentary and various assets from production!
Introduction #
When it comes to videogames, we might be a little spoiled.
We have access to so many games of different genres and scopes of magnitude that we tend to take them for granted. Gaming became corporate and the scene has changed since the discovery of hype. Yet despite these developments, any kid with a passion and a computer can create and sell a video game nowadays. Going indie has never been easier, with hundreds of independent productions releasing year by year, some of them amassing a gigantic following of players. With Early Access programs and better solutions for online marketing, releasing games that sometimes have not even left their alpha stage yet has been made incredibly accessible.
Investigating unreleased or abandoned productions comes with its set of problems. How do you research something that you do not even know exists? There is no real definitive answer for that. Development companies might have liquidated a long time ago, if they did not, the teams could have changed drastically and even if some developers from the good old days stood on board, you never know how much information -if any at all- they are willing to pass on.
Publishing a game was expensive and risky back in the day. A good idea does not guarantee a return of investment and getting that publishing deal can be exceptionally difficult.
What if investors back out? What if the game does not sell? For every released game, there might be a dozen more that were never even heard of in the public. Sometimes already released games were drastically different in their initial stages of conception and development.
What is Hab 12? #
Some games you stumble across have a mysterious air surrounding them. Hab 12 is one of those games. Discovered in a random gaming magazine, the game was supposed to be an experience that combined adrenaline fuelled action with thought provoking puzzles.
The game features alien creatures, held captive in habitations the player must progress through. There are no health bars, no heads up display, but a cinematic experience that does not interrupt gameplay. According to the gaming magazines, the game ran on the graphically impressive 3DGE engine by Twilight3D, sporting revolutionary technology for the time and harnessing praise by PCZone back in the day.
Every leaf is rendered. Every damn one.
Public information on the game is sparse and hard to find. Aside from one trailer on YouTube, two magazines on archive.org1 and some information on the game from the developers official website, there is no further discussion on Hab-12. Hab-12, developed by Ratloop, promised immersive, uninterrupted gameplay paired with a plethora of puzzle and action sequences to engage the player in its alien world. Visually, screenshots of the game displayed in the gaming magazines, looked very impressive. The game was an eyecatcher, especially when considering at what time it was supposed to come out.
According to Ratloops website two demos of the game existed. One featuring a habitation that was only created for E3 and another that features two fully playable levels, a forest habitation and a sub zero environment that presumably would appear in the finished game. Various prototype levels also appear to exist, but chances are more than likely, that most of these game versions have been lost to time.
Looking at the various screenshots provided in the magazines, inspired us with a sense of wonder. The main character would be stranded in habitations constructed by scientists filled with wildlife from specific ecosystems. Then something went wrong, the giant spaceship is destroyed and the lone survivor is forced to fight his way through the habitations in the Sentient. The player almost feels like an invasive force inside of these ecosystems disrupting nature itself. In the trailer, creatures turn their heads towards the player character. What are they doing? Sizing him up, considering he might be a good meal? What is this game? A man vs wild scenario? What are the inhabitants of those enclosed spaces really? Too many questions which sadly came unanswered.
Who are Ratloop? #
Who are the people that tried to create Hab-12? After looking into the companies history, I was met with one surprise after another.
The first success under Ratloop’s belt, is Malice, a commercial Quake add on released in 1997, developed during a time in which the company was called Team Epochalypse.
Ratloop was founded by 4 co-founders, James Anderson, Lucas Pope, Pete Gonzalez and Sian Yue Tan, making the company structure a bit unusual when compared to other companies.
Right now, Ratloop, is comprised of three different branches, Ratloop Incorporated, which currently is dormant and mostly handles Intellectual Property, Ratloop Canada which was founded by James Anderson and Ratloop Asia whose founder is Sian Yue Tan.
Ratloop Asia seems to be fully dedicated to the Rocketbirds franchise and is based in Singapore. Meanwhile Ratloop Canada is developing a turn based first person shooter titled Lemnis Gate. Ratloops catalogue of released games is rather impressive when taking the company philosophy into account. The people behind Ratloop strive to innovate in the video game market by delivering original games that preferably have never been done before.
A great example would be Mightier, a game that requires the player to use a webcam or a printer to overcome challenges. A multi-medial project that never has been done before.
Another game that is worth mentioning, actually utilizes technologies which were originally developed for Hab-12! This game is called Gearhead Garage and might be one of the first car mechanic simulation games. What makes this game unusual for the time, is that it is a car game in which you do not get to drive any vehicles. Gearhead garage managed to sell lots of copies, over 100,000 in fact! It became a small hit in the casual gaming scene and even attracted some modders further expanding the games replayability. The game was released under the brand Mekada, which was established by Ratloop specifically for more casual gaming experiences. Mekada later on merged with Ratloop Incorporated as a collaborative measure, not intending to diminish any future Mekada products.
While technically not released by Ratloop themselves, Papers Please was a gigantic indie hit created by Lucas Pope, one of the co founders of Ratloop. Featuring bleak world building, a sobering depiction of what eastern european countries during the cold war looked and felt like, while possessing gameplay that mostly consists of comparing legal documents, Papers Please is an original idea that at first glance seems to be rather boring in practice. Yet, thousands of players are fascinated by the games attention to detail, mood and gameplay, garnering an overwhelmingly positive reception on Steam and glowing reviews all around.
The current game Ratloop Canada is working on, Lemnis Gate, also is something no one has really done before. Hearing about a turn based First Person Shooter inspires wonder and some very valid concerns regarding gameplay. Yet the more you think about this almost ridiculous sounding idea, the more compelling it becomes.
The developers behind Ratloop proved the world more than just once that their focus lies in creating unique experiences for people to play through. Originality in the corporate world, regardless if in film, music or games, is a financial gamble. It is much easier to follow trends and just create what is popular at the moment, yet the studio managed to stay afloat for over 20 years without devolving into a purely corporate entity. Innovation still is what they are aiming for and that is rather commendable.
So, I decided to join Ratloop Canada’s Discord server and shot the friendly community developer Bruno a message, just to try my luck not expecting too much in return.
Then something amazing happened…
Hab-12 uncovered #
I got in direct contact with three people from the original Ratloop team that worked on Hab-12. James Anderson, Lucas Pope and Pete Gonzalez, of which Pete managed to find and lend me confidential data to help me in making this documentary. Those files aren’t just some 3D renders either, but much more significantly, the entire game design document, detailing the story of Hab-12, establishing the world and characters, exposing how some of the technology in the game works and even information that I am not allowed to share publicly. Accompanied with this information, I got a 7 minute long video handed down to me showcasing the red forest and ice world habitations from the game.
On top of getting the game design document, which is the figurative holy bible of this investigation, Ratloop also trusted me enough to hand down the holy grail.
This is the first time in 21 years that the public can experience the full demo in all its glory. I got access to two different demo builds showcasing the same level. An older build from 1998 and a newer build from 1999, both of which feature slight differences. Playing these demos was a reassuring experience. A lot of the technical details that were promised back in the day, are present in these demo builds. The amazing looking interpolated animations and seamless 3D models, stunning volumetric fog and impressive creature AI.
The gameplay of Hab-12 was not represented all that well in gaming magazines of the time. Tomb Raider was the game most people thought of upon hearing that Hab-12 was an action adventure game. Yet, Hab-12 is a slower paced, cinematic, puzzle based adventure game experience. The demo is highly scripted and after playing the demo and studying the game design document, the rest of the game would likely have had a similar level structure. The red forest is big and vast, yet very linear as well.
Comparable to Crysis, the game world directs the player through the environment without the player really noticing that they are being lead towards a specific path. Hab-12 plays exactly like traditional 2D adventure games, just in 3D form. It presents straight forward puzzles for the player to master and offers some shooting action in between puzzling. The game is dripping in atmosphere and is noticeably similar in tone to its main inspiration, Another World. In terms of technical details, Hab-12 was feature rich, which ironically might have aided its downfall.
Technical details #
The game features simple controls with a minimal Hud making basic gameplay easy to understand for anyone that ever played a third person shooter beforehand. The game was loaded with various different features which made the game graphically stunning and engaging. Walking through the world with the dynamic music kicking in, treesloths climbing trees and flying through the red forest and 3D audio establishing a sense of scale for the alien world makes the game feel noticeably distinct. Some of the more interesting technologies in the game have been detailed in the game design document in an understandable way.
Ratloop initially intended to develop an engine of their own for the game, yet decided rather early on in development to utilize a third party engine after realizing how much dedicated work would need to be done to build an engine from scratch. A detailed explanation on why Ratloop decided to do that can be found in the game design document, an essay by Pete Gonzalez, who was the lead programmer of the game.
Why use a 3rd Party Rendering Engine?
Brief essay by Pete Gonzalez, Lead Programmer:
When we first began work on Hab-12™, we were faced with numerous design issues. One important decision was whether to write our game engine from scratch or license it from a third party developer, and that decision is the subject of this informal essay.
On the one extreme was our previous game Malice™, which was based completely on the Quake™ game engine. Using an existing engine had many benefits: it allowed us to focus our development efforts on the game itself; the basic object models were already in place (which in practice take a surprisingly large amount of design time); and it decreased the burdens associated with debugging and compatibility testing. There were also some disadvantages: licensing often is not cheap; you have to rely on someone else to fix engine-related bugs; and lastly, it limits your ability to innovate.
This last point turned out to be the deciding factor with Hab-12. From the start, we wanted Hab-12 to be more than “just another 3D shooter,” and trying to achieve this within a framework like Quake’s was obviously going to be cumbersome. Even with Malice, we were already pushing the limits of the Quake engine’s flexibility. So our first choice was to write a new engine completely from scratch – the other extreme.
However, this raised some new issues, the most salient being support for ever-changing hardware. At the time there were several competing baselevel API’s: Open-GL™, Direct 3D™, and 3DFX Glide™. We would have to support at least two of these, as well as a software renderer. The software renderer by itself is no small undertaking, and even abstract API’s like Direct3D typically require software to fill in wherever a particular video card might be lacking. So, just rendering polygons on the screen was going to require at least a few full-time programmers.
Secondly, standards for 3D graphics are continually climbing as hardware manufacturers and software developers push their various envelopes. In fact, the playing field changes significantly every six months, and developers who work on a game for much more than a year frequently find themselves hopelessly behind the times when their product is finally ready for release.
This, compounded by Ratloop’s emphasis of gameplay over technological glitter, led us into the market for a 3rd party rendering engine – something which would abstract away the details of video cards, while still leaving us in control of the game engine, and close enough to the hardware for cool custom effects like shadow casting and volumetric fog.
There were many renderers to choose from (Fly3D, Panard Vision, Genesis 3D, SKOUT, LithTech, SurRender, and JTGame to name a few). Surprisingly, some were completely free. After much consideration though, our attention was drawn to Twilight 3D’s “3DGE,” which had quite a few key advantages:
Twilight was targeting for all four platforms: OpenGL, Direct 3D, Glide, and software. 3DGE had all the latest technological features – z-buffering, fog, MIP maps, transparencies, environment maps, etc. The libraries came with source code (if you’re a programmer, you know how invaluable this is).
The libraries, written in C++, were object-based and very flexible. There was planned support for console platforms like Sony PSX and Sega Dreamcast. Most importantly, there was an open communication channel with the Twilight development team. This was a crucial factor, since we’d be depending on these people daily for explanations, bug fixes, and feature requests.
We were up and rolling in time to have a playable demo for E3, and the core game engine for Hab-12 is now complete. Thanks to Twilight, most of our design efforts have focused on the event scripting and creature interactions, with very few hardware-related hassles. In many ways it’s the same as if we had our own dedicated team working on the renderer, only this way there are many teams using it, so bugs are exposed and fixed much more rapidly.
I doubt that we’ll ever go back to licensing a complete game engine like Quake™, but as it stands now I think licensed libraries are a great middleground solution. You just have to ensure that the company is reliable, the design is reasonably flexible, and the developers recognize the value of user input.
The technical aspects of the game seem underwhelming nowadays, yet a majority of the detailed technologies presented by Ratloop were considered “bleeding edge” back in the day.
One of the more interesting details is how animations work. Ratloop utilized their own animation method called “dynamic vertex manipulation”. Before receiving the game design document, we speculated what this name could exactly mean. One of my tech savvy musicians, Márk, speculated that the animations were created on a skeletal system in engine and then interpreted into a vertex based animation method. Yet surprisingly we were wrong in believing that. Vertex manipulation works by assigning different body parts to animation groups. The vertices of the entire mesh get divided into different groups, allowing for a rather primitive form of animation blending without any blocky models and with completely seamless joints.
So our main character, Miray, can walk, run and crouch while aiming in any direction he wants to. When looking around the game world, his body follows his movement accordingly. It also allows for another welcome detail, which would be the inclusion of breathing animations, making Miray feel much more human.
Little details can go a long way, and Hab-12 was filled with them. A feature that is rather surprising and would have future proved the game, is interpolated animation. No matter what frame rate you run, the game adapts the animations frame rate dynamically, filling in frames with new generated animation frames. In theory, people with 144hz displays, could play this game in 60FPS and up without losing out on animation quality. Interpolated animation was also utilized to achieve animation blending. Instead of overriding the old animation with a new one without transition, in Hab-12 the animations have a smooth transition from one keyframe to the next, no matter what animation cycle the entity found itself in beforehand.
Graphical tricks we see everywhere nowadays, are Mip-Mapping and Transparent textures. Mip-Mapping is utilized to mitigate sparkling textures in the distance. Based on the distance of the object, one of a few available textures of varying resolutions is chosen. This specific technique was utilized throughout the industry already and thus is regarded as a more common technology, which still makes the game a bit prettier. The transparent textures are possible through alpha channels. An alpha channel, similar to a mask in photoshop, marks up a portion of the image that is intended to be shown in the end. The rest is not displayed and thus remains transparent. A rather simple solution, bearing impressive results. In 1999 seeing leaves on bushes and trees all around you, wasn’t as common as it is nowadays.
The lighting also does not leave much to be desired. The light sources in game seem to be dynamic. In the two builds there don’t seem to be any moving lights, but the lighting of 3D objects in a scene look gorgeous nonetheless. Walking past an overhead light, darkens the appropriate parts of the body bit by bit and standing in front of a lightsource enables beautiful rim lights to occur. As stated in the design document, the main disadvantage of dynamic lighting is mostly comprised of performance compromises. Yet if the code is optimized enough the game can perform better with better quality lighting in a scene.
Better hints at dynamic lighting can be found in the footage of the sub zero habitation which sadly has been lost to time. The taser weapon Miray wields in this habitation, emits a flickering moving light that illuminates surrounding entities and geometries relatively accurately.
In addition to the dynamic light sources, Hab-12 can also change light values and colours dynamically in the same level, something many games tend to struggle with. Descending into the caves on Hab-1 triggers the game to completely change the worlds light temperature and strength, resulting in a dark moody ambience, rather than a bright and misty forest ambience. What is also nice to see, is the usage of coloured lights in the demo. This was not uncommon, yet the careful usage of coloured lighting is. Normally, combining game developers with a whole new toolkit filled with interesting technologies to be used results in art direction getting flung straight out of the window. Bad examples of this problem can be seen all throughout the history of video games. Yet these problems cannot be seen in the Hab-12 demo. The tech might have been there to show off, but everything looked good and cohesive on an artistic level as well.
Another technology which relates to lighting, is Ratloops unique solution to rendering shadows. This specific way of calculating shadows took Ratloop months to perfect and apparently got to a stage which made it possible to implement in the game. It is interesting to look at not only to further detail the technical capabilities of the game. These dynamic vector shadow maps also highlight a major flaw in how the game was developed.
Those dynamic shadows look rather impressive. Judging by the screenshots, the shadows distort and wrap around geometry according to the lights position. The edges are smooth and according to the design document, Ratloops solution for vector shadows harbours none of the common problems normally associated with the technology. While the shadows are impressive and unlike anything I have seen from the late nineties, a lot of work flowed into these superficial technologies, without completely ironing out the base mechanics of the game.
The creature AI is not as intricate as I thought, Puzzle structures sometimes are contrived and hard to understand and the controls are a bit less refined than one might expect at first. Despite these few shortcomings, the demo remains enjoyable and feels like an adventure, yet the vector shadows made me reconsider how much time was spent on showing off, rather than working on the aspects of the game that are necessary for the type of experience Ratloop tried to build.
This thought is not meant to throw any blame on the people that worked day and night trying to finish the game, but it serves more as a cautionary example in terms of how big you think and what you can realistically pull off. A few of my video productions, suffered a comparable fate. Thinking too big and building expectations for your own product up too high, may lead to a hard failure which can be hard to recover from, not just financially but mentally as well. Creativity is great for innovation and art, yet if you get consumed by the will to be creative and different, it might lead to a pitfall of which your project cannot climb out from. This sadly was the case for Hab-12.
The World of Hab-12 #
Click here for a cut section about Hab-12's universe, unused in the video version of the documentary.
While the technological aspects surrounding the game are very important, what is a bit more interesting for me, is exploring what Ratloop visualized with said technology. Science Fiction has been done a multitude of times and a lot of media has taken inspiration from the science fiction horror series Alien. In the case of Hab-12 Another World might have been the biggest influence on gameplay, but when looking at the universe the story takes place in we can see a lot more interesting details about the world, which in quite a few cases even predicted life after Y2K.Hab-12 is set in what might be the 25th century. This timeframe might seem vague, because it absolutely is. Due to near lightspeed-travel and life in space without days or nights, absolute time scales are not practical, if not impossible to maintain. In the world of Hab-12 time is measured in a certain way to not impede on life on a spaceship. Words like today, yesterday or tonight only relate to a person’s own shift on a ship. At any time you will spot people waking up, working or getting ready to end the day and go to sleep in their designated cube, which is a small private retirement spot for a crew member. Governments in Hab-12 are mostly just the same compared to the governments in the real world. There still is conflict, annoying activists and government structures involving lawyers, politicians and taxes. A government in this universe is simply a gigantic monopoly which serves a legal system and some services in exchange for taxes. If anyone doesn’t like the government, they can just leave and live somewhere else. Long term prisons do not exist, people are either outcast or killed and currency has become completely electronic which is handled by private banks rather than government structures.
The computer technology in Hab-12 is also very much science fiction, yet large parts of it do not sound too far fetched. Most people possess an online account they can access on any terminal they log into. Those terminals are generally paid by the minute, and individual software like internet based services, come preinstalled in those terminals. The computers possess 3D holographic displays and voice operation controls, yet using a keyboard is still the most efficient way of using the terminal. Seems somewhat similar to how we use computers today doesn’t it? At least we don’t have to pay by the minute.
In terms of culture, the world seems to be somewhat similar. World religions still exist, shady politicians are also still present, so naturally annoying protesters are part of the world as well. Only little patriotism exists, since human civilisation spread out all across the cosmos.
With advances in Medicine human life can also be pretty much maintained for an eternity, yet humans tend to lose their minds after about 150 years of life. For that reason, the lifespan of humans is regulated, but a subculture of people would rather go nuts instead of having to die. For that reason small black markets exist which trade anti aging drugs.
Before we delve into Mirays adventurous fight for survival through the Sentient, we have to take a look at Questar. Questar was founded by a scientist named FIJ-125568 upon the discovery of the first alien life form capable of a primitive grammatical language named GL-1. FIJ’s purpose in life is to find intelligent life in the cosmos, yet his ambitions were met with opposition. Science projects relating to finding alien life have been funded in the past and yet nothing was found. But the difference between Questar and past projects and hoaxes, is that Questar not only found alien life already, but continues to find ecosystems and systematically categorizes alien life by building gigantic ecospheres containing the various life forms. Questar had difficulties receiving funding for their controversial research, but managed to build the company by exploring planets and selling research samples. Miray decided to embark on the Sentient to start his intergalactic career fresh out of university.
Running the Demos #
After various analyses of technologies utilized in the game and breaking down some background information relating to the game we should take a deeper look into the two demo versions Ratloop graciously handed down to us, to showcase in this documentary. As stated before, one demo is from ‘98 and the other from ‘99. Both demos showcase the same level, Hab-1; the Red Forest. The co-founder who decided to hand down those demos, Pete, was not sure if the demos would even work, so it was up to us to make them work.
After consulting a readme file, the game is launched by executing a batch file that is contained within the demo folder. Sadly playing the game is not that simple. Executing the batch file on Windows 10, results in… nothing. The game does not appear to even start. Getting the Demo to run was an undertaking which took us multiple days. Together with my good friend Márk, we sat down and pondered as to what could get the demos to run.
The first possible solution was to use a Voodoo wrapper software. Our wrapper of choice was dgVoodoo2, which simulates the now obsolete and obscure Glide graphics driver. Glide was utilized by graphics cards which were manufactured by the now defunct company “3Dfx”. Márk was the first person to get the demo running after over two decades by trying out different settings in the wrapper software and running the game in a small window.
Our overwhelming feelings of joy and success, were cut short soon enough with a major problem that seemed unavoidable at first. The game kept crashing mere minutes, -sometimes seconds- in, until I found a fix that worked seemingly at random.
I was able to record a full playthrough of the demo at the day I found the fix to the problem. Yet this “fix” turned out to merely being a string of luck. The day after recording the video, the demo did not work anymore, so another solution had to come by quick.
One program stood out to me, an emulator called PCem. The problems with getting old games to run, mostly arise from using modern hardware. PCem is a low level emulator, which simulates hardware accurately. With this program I was able to create a virtual computer, installed Windows98 on it and mounted an iso image file containing driver updates and the demo files themselves. After installing DirectX 6, a 3Dfx driver and unpacked the Demo files, we finally got the demo files to work consistently.
Playing the Demos #
After a long loading time, we finally find ourselves in the belly of the Sentient, outside of the contained ecosystem of Hab-1; The Red Forest. Exploring the environments was an odd experience. I was able to see things I thought I would never be able to witness just some weeks ago. We were the first people in over 20 years to fully experience these demos, originally intended for publishers to get a feeling for the game to ultimately invest in it. Exploring the Red Forest is an almost magical adventure, come to life with impressive animations, amazing art direction and an incredible dynamic soundtrack. The 3D audio applies much more context to the red forest and manages to bring the ecosphere to life. While exploring these alien environments, I ended up thinking about the player being a rather insignificant yet invasive force in those habitations. What would happen if Miray never needed to fight his way through those habitations? I think they would just keep existing without even being touched by the outside world.
The level structure is linear, yet the environments do not seem constricted. Looking into the crowns of the trees to observe alien creatures fly, listening to the ambience of the forest hearing treesloths howl and cry and sometimes even getting into deadly and curious run-ins with alien wildlife, made me understand what this game was truly about.
At this point it was clear to me that Hab-12 was supposed to be an action adventure unlike any other. While the environments are gigantic and detailed with meticulous level design, the level designers managed to funnel the player through multiple naturalistic puzzles. There are no written or verbal explanations as to what the player is supposed to do. The only thing the player is given, is the opportunity to observe a situation and think about the best way to go about the problem. With the rather simple control scheme an ordinary guy as a protagonist and a minimal heads up display, this game feels like a point and click adventure game in a 3D form. Sadly the adventure game feeling is not only accompanied by the positive aspects of any point and click adventure, it brings with it one big problem. Some puzzles are rather hard to understand and some people may need some time figuring out what to do in any given encounter. The basic ideas to every puzzle are straight forward enough, but in execution they can bring up more confusion then expected. Ratloop must have been aware of this problem, since they added in-game tips after the player failed a puzzle multiple times.
Puzzles are frequent, in fact, the very first one starts abruptly!
The Plant Puzzle #
Walking into the red forest, Miray falls victim to a plant based lifeform trying to devour him on the spot. Luckily, the lifeform has not matured and cannot eat Miray in one bite. This scene almost feels self referencial to the genre. The protagonist got himself into a depricament and now needs to find a way out to not die from it. Without any text box pop up, or an impending failure, the game communicates to the player rather effectively how to approach any given puzzle in the game by letting Miray hang there… up until the player wonders what would happen if you moved the player character. Swinging from side to side leads to completing the puzzle.
The “Slinky” Encounter #
After a brief walk through the beautiful forest, Miray encounters creatures falling from the tree crowns. Those creatures are named “Anklebiters” and they are far more dangerous than they look.
Good thing is, those anklebiters can be easily disposed off. One difference we found between the demos, is that in the 1998 version certain anklebiters spawn two more when killed, while this feature is void in the 1999 version of the demo.
The Taunting Treesloths #
After this unseemingly deadly encounter with those strange uniped creatures, a curious scene unfolds right in front of Mirays eyes. Treesloths jump back and forth between two trees to mock a predator trying to catch one of the flock.
The Chomp seems really busy though, I bet he won’t notice me slipping through!
Seems like those chompers are more territorial than I thought. This time, we can try to distract the Chomp, or maybe even help him in order to get past? With the glue gun, Miray can take aim and shoot down as many Treesloths as needed to satisfy the hungry predator. They all end up eaten and the Chomp decides to rest. It would be foolish to touch it, but he is sound asleep and won’t notice Miray slipping by. Examining the spots in which the Treesloths got eaten, we can take note of a feature that wasn’t detailed in the design documents.
Those blood puddles might be some of the most believable I have seen in a game from the late nineties. The blood pools in a believable manner and even seems to flow downhill, always adjusting its direction depending on where the fluid would flow next. This is most likely achieved by spawning and slowly enlarging the same generic texture while checking the changes in geometry around those textures. Interesting detail, which didn’t go unnoticed!
Treesloth ambush #
Walking past the sleeping predator, Miray feels like he is being watched. The aggressive calls of Treesloths surrounding him confirm his suspicion, it seems like these creatures know that you aided the Chomp in killing members of their pack. Maybe it is best to swiftly move on. What’s that?!
Maybe a bit more caution is needed. This time Miray will conduct some preventive measures.
A difference between the 1998 and 1999 demo, seems to be a fixed bug. When Miray doesn’t dispose of the Treesloths in both versions, he will end up dead, yet in the 1998 version, even if you shoot all Treesloths in the area, Miray will get assaulted by the Treesloths anyway, if not careful. These creatures really seem to hold a grudge!
Lunch Time #
Moving onwards, Miray spots a Chomp feasting on a Treesloth. It is unclear what to do, maybe you can sneak past this time? Now we are in trouble, Miray got spotted.
This time patience is key. Trying to sneak past will only alert the attentive creature. Situated behind some rocks Miray observes another Chomp hunting a Treesloth. Luckily for the Treesloth, the Chomp gets ambushed by a pack of Anklebiters.
This pack now is headed for the feasting predator enjoying its meal.
Between the versions here are some differences as well. If you play the demos on a modern Operating System, this scene will not be completable, guaranteed. The feasting Chomp will still lurk there but the other Chomp will never appear. The scene can be skipped by running ahead, passing a checkpoint, and then dying by the predator that is chasing the player. Other than that, in the ‘98 version the feasting Chomp will be completely stationary, while in the ‘99 demo, the Chomp decides to scan its surroundings, ultimately returning to its meal. In the newer demo, Ratloop also changed the cinematic sequence in this encounter, making it play out smoother. One thing is clear after this encounter, Chomp’s definitely are not the apex predators in this habitation.
Aerial Assault #
Moving on from yet another dangerous encounter, our hero is just passing through a peaceful part of the forest. But what is that? Up there in the sky, something is flying straight towards Miray!
These Avian creatures, named Rwarks, require the players full attention in order to be dealt with. In later encounters, those creatures can be dodged or killed. In this particular encounter, its best to kill them. The Rwarks can only be seen in the 1999 demo.
Death from Above #
Finally some time to breathe! Avoiding deadly slinkies, moving past danger on ground and dodging flying raptors we can just mo-
-ve on… Remember the first encounter with one of those carnivorous plants? These specimens here are fully grown instead of the smaller variety we encountered before. These plants can be avoided by simply jumping across the logs. It is not that easy though. In the ‘99 version of the demo, there is another plant out to kill you. You cannot jump or walk across this spot. After jumping over to the left log, you are supposed to simply roll under the plant to not get eaten. This puzzle easily is the one with the most frustration attached to it! What if you miss a jump?
Then a Chomp is waiting for you “downstairs”.
I got curious once and lured a Chomp from a previous encounter to this pit and found out that this happens. How the death animations work, is that a creature reaches the place where the player model last was and then immediately gets in an animation cycle showcasing a gruesome death. Miray is still there though! We can see by a blob shadow that the model has just been turned invisible, yet the player entity keeps its momentum for a little and moves past the death animation. The second Chomp goes to the current location of the blob shadow, and spawns a Miray clone. Interesting trick!
Where’s mommy? #
After almost getting devoured by a vegetable, Miray hears something in the forest. Two small baby Chomps are running about crying for their mother. This is by far the easiest puzzle of the bunch. The baby chomps get ambushed by Anklebiters and other unknown creatures and you need to buy yourself some time so you can escape before the mother Chomp awakes. If anything happens to her babies, Miray can get into big trouble!
In the 1999 version, Miray is also attacked by Rwarks in his escape from the mother Chomp.
Haulin’ Ass #
Miray is not exactly experiencing a string of luck. After evading numerous encounters and close calls, he jumps down into a meadow and makes some noise, making himself heard to a lurking Chomp.
Now it’s time to run! But where to?
The Mysterious Lungus #
Entering a secluded cave, Miray encounters a beautiful swarm of creatures flying past him. The caves are mysterious and ridden with stalagmites and life, some of it dangerous, some of it peaceful. In these caverns, a slumbering creature called the Lungus resides. Even though it is a predator, it seems to notice that you want to get past the gigantic pit in the cavern, so it lets Miray walk past it.
Even though it is a benevolent creature, it can accidentally kill you. The creature is so big, that its exhaust pushes Miray into the pitfall. To avoid this Miray must cross carefully.
The caves have many differences between versions. First of all, the Rwark in the caves which only appears in the newer demo. On newer operating systems, the Rwark’s do not respawn in the caves, but in the emulator they do. Other than that, the older 1998 version differs by featuring hostile swarms of those unknown lifeforms. We haven’t managed to figure out how attacks by the swarms can be effectively prevented, so, it seems that disposing of them is the only way to go about dealing with the situation.
End of the Demo #
After entering a short passage and reaching its end, the demo is finished! Both demos feature the same length and the only difference lies in how the ending of the demo is presented. For us, Mirays adventure comes to an end here…
But why is he in this place? What happened to the Sentient, the gigantic spaceship he is currently in? Where will the story go? Fortunately, we have many answers!
What happened to the Sentient? #
What happened before Mirays adventure through Hab-1 onboard the Sentient, Is an interesting Science fiction scenario which is not unheard of, paired with the Half Life brand of a normal day at work gone bad. Miray is part of the workforce on the spaceship named the “Sentient”. The Sentient is owned by the research company Questar, which is somewhat controversial in Hab-12’s universe. Another ship, called Oroborous, is owned by the same company. The Sentient researches bigger complex life forms while the team on the Oroborous is fully dedicated to studying bacterial and insect like lifeforms and viruses.
Upon completion of the twelfth habitation by completely reconstructing the ecosystem of Kalisis Prime, Miray was sent out to conduct a rather menial task which saved his life when regarding the things to come. He was sent out to deploy a beacon on one of Kalisis Primes Moons. Returning to the Sentient, Miray found the ship in a deprecated state, everyone was dead and what exactly happened is a mystery to him.
Luckily, the game design document details exactly what happened aboard the Sentient.
While Miray was headed to the Moon of Kalisis Prime, a breach happened in the recently completed Hab-12. Upon the breaching of the habitation, the scientists onboard the Sentient discovered the first intelligent lifeform they have ever catalogued. Nicknamed I-1, this plant based life form is responsible for the catastrophe aboard the Sentient. I-1 life forms intelligence far eclipses the human minds to the point where the scientists on board did not realize I-1 is intelligent at all.
This is a very interesting philosophical problem that may possibly reflect a reality we live in today. There is a chance that we are not the most intelligent lifeform on earth. It could very well be the case that the most intelligent being on earth is something we will never even consider intelligent in the first place and it might think the same way of us. In the case of I-1 aboard the Sentient, the plant based lifeforms did not even know they were kidnapped by humans and put into gigantic habitations, yet they noticed something was wrong, and activated a machine they brought with them. This machine bent space and time around the Sentient, making it disappear for one second. In this second 163 years have passed for the Sentient and the people aboard it. During that time the crew frantically tried discovering what went wrong and what is going on aboard the ship, yet the crew together with PAX were unsuccessful in recovering the ship, which resulted in the death of every crew member, except the biocomputer PAX.
Maybe a year or more after the disaster later, a few adventurous people stepped foot into the machine and suddenly found themselves on Kalisis Prime, together with Miray who just escaped the Sentient, being the last person to step foot into the machine. Regardless of when the subject passed through the machine first, everyone rematerialized on Kalisis Prime at the same time.
Taking a look at the Storyboard #
A storyboard is used in film, comics and games to structure the happenings and progression throughout a story. Hab-12 is no different and did utilize a storyboard as a means of organizing the progression of the story and unfolding events displayed in the game. Ratloop’s storyboarding is intricate, interesting to read and even details how they want to pull off a scene with minute detail.
Various interesting things jump out when reading the storyboard. For one, Miray was supposed to be a voiced protagonist, a rather human one at that! He is no hero, nor an exceptional guy. This can be observed with his mental breakdown in the beginning, during which he falls to his knees and screams into the void of the ship.
The storyboard also showcases a developing relationship between Miray and PAX collaborating to venture through the ship. Throughout the pages we also discover that Miray was supposed to have clothing changes and that there was a method to the traversal of the different habitations. The first three habitations are necessary to cross because they feature breathable air. Miray possesses a breathing apparatus, yet it is running out.
Each habitation features its own set of unique puzzles, which all have been detailed all the way through. The document is so detailed, that some people might be able to reconstruct the game with this information alone. The document is too long to show off in its entirety in this documentary, instead I will provide a synopsis documenting the general progression of the game.
In the beginning Miray boards the Sentient. The Sentient is in such a decrepit condition that Miray at first confuses the ship with another. He makes his way through the depths of the hull in search of PAX, the onboard bio computer. He re activates PAX’s life support by balancing out various chemicals needed to sustain his brain. After this interaction, Miray and PAX for the first time engage in conversation.
Miray: “What do I do now? How do I get off this ship?”
PAX: “I’ll get you out of this, but I need for you to help me. I can send out a distress transmission, but the Sentient’s communications dish has been misaligned and you’re going to have to manually set it straight.”
PAX: “It seems the rails were crushed, so you’ll have to go on foot. I see you are wearing a breather… You will need to Jettison at least 3 Habs in order for me to generate enough power to start up the O2 fans. The power drain on the ship is maxed out, and the Habitat modules all contribute.”
Miray: “Me? Can’t you do it?”
PAX: “Yes, but only up to a certain point. There’s a failsafe device that needs to be manually confirmed. It wont be hard to find or operate, and I’ll be guiding you through it.”
PAX: “It could take days or months before help arrives , based on Questar’s priority evaluation, and I doubt your breather has enough oxygen for you to last that long.”
Miray: “I was very fortunate to find a breather on board the Tugger, otherwise I would never have made it this far.”
PAX: “Wait a minute… According to the Tugger’s logs that breather has been used before. It’s supply has not been replenished since.”
—reading ship data—
PAX: “Miray, how long have you been using the breather for?”
Miray: “I don’t know…err…20 minutes maybe ?”
PAX: “I need to know the exact time”
Miray: “Can’t you check the ship’s log? It’s console was still working when I stepped off.”
PAX: “You have about 10 minutes left in your tanks. You won’t make the run to the ejectors…”
Miray: “What? I’m just going to die here ?”
PAX: “Wait, there is another way…(see schematic) Every Hab has many entrances on each side. You can traverse the corridors and save your oxygen whilst moving along the inside of the Habs. Habitats 1, 2 and 3 are all oxygen based worlds. Their atmospheres resemble our own, most notably Oxygen and Hydrogen… Once you get inside the Habs, you’re on your own. I can’t transmit radio through the Hab plating”
Hab-12 was supposed to be filled with conversations like these. Miray was supposed to utter a line or two after completing puzzles and talk to PAX about current happenings and about what to do next.
Mirays Journey through the Habitations #
What ensues after the introduction to the world and general premise of the story, is an ambitious adventure throughout various habitations and connector levels. How ambitious? Let me put it like this. You name it: Miray did it!
Besides the interesting puzzles for each habitation, Miray did ANYTHING that was possible to implement into a game at the time. There are various high octane action sequences, ranging from dangerous chases through hazardous tundra environments, buggy thrill rides through vast alien saharas, Miray even explored the innards of a gigantic aquatic creature in a submarine!
Again; You name it, he did it!
Turret sections, horde shooter sections, stealth segments and escape sequences, Miray does absolutely everything to stay alive and get off the forsaken space vessel he finds himself on.
There are over a hundred pages worth of Story to dissect in the game design document, far too plenty to summarize, visualize and present in this documentary. But what we can take a closer look at is the developing relationship between PAX and Miray and the ending of this would be adventure game!
PAX and Miray #
Mirays journey through the sentient comes with its fair share of problems, many of them having to do with Mirays personality. Miray is not an action hero like Gordon Freeman, who for some reason is able to wield and operate various firearms without having any problems, does not whine and complain about the situation at hand and is able to single handedly destroy hordes of soldiers and alien lifeforms who are all trying to kill him. Miray is just a guy thrown into an unusual man vs wild scenario!
Throughout multiple points in the story Miray openly displays his emotions, whether it be outbursts of joy and victory or depressing displays of desperation and misery. Mirays character has been written in a believable manner and depending on the voice actors performance could have been a great or incredibly annoying character. Mirays role is difficult to pull off, since whining and complaining or snarky comments could be potentially annoying to the player. So, writing is great! How it would have been pulled off though… uncertain.
Miray is guided through the spaceship by the onboard biocomputer PAX, who unlike other onboard computers in various different media productions, actually possesses a personality. PAX is a complicated character who does not have much reason to help the protagonist but does so anyway. PAX cannot escape his doom, while Miray can! PAX is slightly unhinged and provides quite a few reasons for the player not to trust him completely. But the relationship that is built between PAX and Miray is endearing and personal. Whenever Miray is downtrodden and decides to give up, PAX always seems to find the right words to encourage him to move on in his quest for survival, making PAX a likable character who could have had the potential to form a deeper connection with the player over the course of the story.
Click here to read a cut segment about Miray's journey through the first 3 Habs, unused in the video version of the documentary.
Hab-1 The Red Forest #
Miray first arrives at the entrance of Hab-1. His adventure through the first habitation as we experienced it in gameplay together, would be pretty much unchanged, and segments we have seen realized in the demo, have been broken down into paragraphs and sentences in the storyboard. With that being said, let’s follow Miray to the entrance of the second habitation of the sentient!
Hab-2 an ice-cold wasteland #
The second enclosement Miray will walk through, poses a stark contrast in comparison to the last. From the red lush forest with surprisingly deadly creatures, to cold ice sheets which seem deserted. If Miray didn’t find this thermal suit thanks to PAX he would have died in these harsh surroundings. Strong blizzards take place in this unforgiving environment, littered with emerald green rock formations and thick layers of snow. Before setting foot to the wild, Miray stops by the neutral zone, a scientist encampment which was frequently used to stock up on provisions and rest. Miray encounters a big sheet of ice blocking his path, he destroys it with his Taser weapon and ventures on, stumbling through the thick snow he finds himself in the crest he spotted from afar. To his north he spots massive creatures which resemble mammoths, but the frozen ice sheets seem too brittle, so Miray decides to focus his attention downwards, spotting a tunnel underground. Miray aims his Taser downwards to blow a hole into the ice, but overestimating the strength of the ice, Miray collapses the entire area surrounding him upon firing the shot falling into the icy depths below. Miray hits his head and ceases to move…
Waking up in the icy pit, Miray wonders for how long he passed out, before him lies a tunnel which might take him out of this pit towards the north of the habitation. He notices strange sounds coming from the tunnel which sound friendly for a change! Regaining control of his senses, he marches on through the tunnel. After causing an avalanche to overcome a pit blocking Mirays path, he ventures into the network of tunnels, leading into a cavern inhabited by curious and lively creatures. Separated by a pool of water, Miray and the creatures stare at each other. Those creatures, named Mimics, seem to be a curious bunch and follow Mirays every step even from across the pool. If Miray jumps, they jump. If he moves left, they move left. Those monkey like creatures seem very excited of meeting their unexpected visitor!
Miray tries crossing the water by bringing down a stalagmite, he figures the Mimics might mime his movements on the other side of the pool so he calls out to them “Hey! Little guys! Do like me!”. Fifteen to twenty Mimics help Miray in bringing down the Stalagmite and after some pushing, it leans and ultimately falls. He is being stormed by Mimics excited to greet him, but a little one snatches his Taser! “Hey, give that BACK!” he yells, scaring the Mimics away from the cavern. “Oh GREAT, just what I need” Miray decides to follow the pack. He encounters a Flathead cornering and eating a Mimic, making Miray more determined to get his Taser back. He stumbles across a room filled with green fungi. In the middle of it is a Flatheads skull on a pole, used as a scarecrow to keep the Mimics away from the fungi. Miray lifts the pole and scares away the terrified Mimics, reclaiming his Taser in the process. But what put the scarecrow into the room in the first place?
Unbeknownst to him, the scarecrow was set in place by a rival Flathead. Miray encounters not one, but two of them which he had to face in a brutal battle. Killing both Flatheads, he drives the scarecrow into the body of one of the Flatheads to prevent Mimics following him into the tundra of the icey habitation. “Take on someone your own size for a change…”
Facing many challenges ahead of him, Miray jumps from iceberg to iceberg and tries to stay unnoticed for predators surrounding him. He encounters a flathead in a chasm, which was grey this time instead of blue. Miray wisely chooses to go the other way, spotting two blue Flatheads blocking his path. Cornered and nowhere to run Miray decides to trick the rivaling gangs of Flatheads to fight each other. Successful with his plan, Miray slips away unnoticed. At the end of his journey through the ice, he spots a cheeky Mimic atop an overhang right in front of an exit from the habitation, Miray calls out to the Mimic and starts jumping up and down. The Mimic mimes Mirays movements and manages to make the overhang crumble, scaring the Mimic away and making Miray rejoice in victory! It was finally time to say goodbye to this icey nightmare!
Hab-3 #
After Mirays dangerous venture through the icy habitation, he feels discouraged. The taser lost charge, and the challenges he has yet to face seem insurmountable. Miray was on the brink of giving up on his quest for survival, yet the cunning biocomputer PAX knew just the right things to say.
From begging…
PAX: “This is it… this is the last one… we’ve come so far…. Don’t give up now?”
To indifference…
PAX: “Wellp, it’s your life… do whatever you want to, I have given up. Go ahead and throw your life away.”
To straight up insulting…
PAX: “Miray is a Chick-en is chickiechickie - chicketiechick a chicken?”
That must have done it, Miray gathered up the strength to arm up and proceed into the connector, venturing into Hab-3, an environment littered with very dangerous wildlife and excessive armaments. Venturing out from the subterranean access tunnel into the wild Miray encounters a strange looking scenery. The Bunker is heavily armored and his tropical surroundings are surrounded by a red water like liquid and strange alien plants were hanging over the yellow beaches like palm trees. Miray spotted what may be a volcano off in the distance too! After following a path into the jungle he hears something…
TURNS OUT the tropical island is inhabited by reptile like super predators! Miray runs back to the bunker as fast as he can, frantically manning and operating a turret to lay waste to everything that moves.
The Ending #
Throughout the game PAX guided Miray to the Hab-13 construction site, where PAX and Miray believed to find a space vessel to escape the ship. After running into the construction site, Miray was shocked to find out that there was no ship in sight, distraught about this situation, Miray and PAX had a final exchange of words:
I cannot say how, or why, but I get a distinct feeling that perhaps those crew members did survive… My logic tells me otherwise, if I had a gut I guess you could call it “gut instinct”…
So you’re saying that I should jump through?
What about you PAX? I guess this is goodbye…
Oh, I’ll be around…
After this conversation, Miray decided to venture into the mysterious twelfth habitation, finding an ominous structure in front of him. Two towers built from manmade structures, held together by a seemingly magical force. His surroundings were charred and crystallized. Miray heard a self destruct countdown from outside. He mustered up his courage and decided to enter the portal.
Upon entering the portal, Miray finds himself in a foggy strange environment. Another habitation? Turns out he was teleported to Kalisis Prime!
This is the ending of Mirays epic adventure through the habitations, stranded on an alien planet, condemned to fight for his survival yet again.
A sequel was supposed to follow, but obviously never was fully conceptualized.
Hab-12 is all about man vs wild, but also a remarkable story of an unlikely friendship between a normal guy and an unhinged biocomputer. Pete Gonzalez even planned on writing a book based on the story of the game!
While we now fully understand what Hab-12 is about, let us take a final look at the people who created it.
Insights from the Developers #
The biggest fans of Hab-12 gotta be the guys who worked on it. In the email chains and discord direct messages between myself and the two co founders Pete Gonzalez and James Anderson, it was abundantly clear how much passion still lies behind this project even though the rest of the world does not even know it exists. Reminiscing about their time on Hab-12, both Pete and James decisively stated that the failure of Hab-12 was mostly linked to over ambition. In retrospect, it seems obvious that Hab-12 would never have been finished in under two years and while publishers liked the game, none were convinced to invest into an up and coming studio making their first moves in the gaming scene. When I asked Pete about potentially revisiting the game, he said this:
We’ve talked about revisiting Hab-12 many times, but it probably won’t happen. The game concept is now somewhat dated, so substantial rework would be needed. Also, if we redid the game and made a significant amount of money, I’d feel like we should pay a share to the original contributors to compensate them for all their hard work. But quantifying that might be potentially messy. It would be simpler just to start over with a new concept
If we will ever see Hab-12 released, seems unlikely, but it is important to look at things from the bright side. There is no point at looking back and pondering about what could have been, what is much more valuable is to look at the now and appreciate that we now know of this project that happened to be forgotten in time. Hab-12 might have never released, but what we have now is an exceptionally well executed prototype accompanied by a design document, a proof of concept that could inspire modern productions or entire mod development projects. We also don’t know what Ratloop Canada and Ratloop Asia are up to in the future. What is for sure, is that the developers learned from their mistakes and that their experience with Hab-12 carries into future games. Of course this is highly speculative, but we might be able to see the best ideas of Hab-12 in future Ratloop productions. Cancelled games coming back from the dead or influencing future projects in the portfolios of different companies, is a common thing.
Nowadays, developing and releasing a game is simpler, but do not be fooled! It still is a formidable challenge to get a game into stores. You don’t necessarily need a publisher, nor a team of developers or rich parents, but the passion and motivation needed to create any game HAS to be present. Even with tools like complete engines you can use for free or license at a low price, game making software which make creation of assets much easier for the less artistic indie developer and access to open source libraries and video tutorials, game development still requires a lot of time. Creating and selling became more accessible, but creating something good still takes just as much effort. You can’t polish a turd, a good product only comes with passion and skill.
In the late nineties times were different. The industry was reliant on publishers, online marketplaces for games did not exist yet and the separation of “indie versus AAA” was not even a thing. While the times have changed, revisiting or in this case, rediscovering history is important. Not only to learn from the mistakes of past companies, but also to appreciate the awesome worlds and characters of forgotten games.
With that being said, it is time to conclude our investigation on Hab-12. Good bye for now and thank you for reading the pilot episode of [oscuro]!
Changelog #
Edit 1 - 03/04/25 - Removed a leftover cut content disclaimer and quote mark, line breaks when chapter titles are right underneath images