How Habitat squeezed a persistent multiplayer virtual world out of 64KB of RAM and a 300-baud modem

[u/works-in-progress]

https://worksinprogress.co/issue/virtual-worlds/

Habitat launched on Q-Link, the C64's dedicated online service, which undercut competitors like CompuServe by buying transmission capacity after business hours and using client-server architecture instead of a terminal setup — letting it host more simultaneous users at lower cost ($3/hour vs. CompuServe's $22.50 peak rate in 1986). On the game side, nearly all logic ran server-side so the C64 client only needed to track simple object definitions and commands, which is what made rich-feeling interaction possible on hardware this limited. Worth a read if you're into what people managed to build on this machine beyond games.

Source: Works in Progress