Fallout 1 and 2 are considered very well-known; however, a developer stated that the source code was lost. Now, a colleague of hers has come forward and explained: She made backup copies of all the games back then.
Which games are we talking about? Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 enjoy a legendary reputation among the RPGs you can play. The games were released in 1997 and 1998. However, Tim Cain, the lead developer of the original Fallout, lamented the loss of the earliest development documents of Fallout.
When he left Interplay, the publisher behind it, he was supposed to delete all copies of the game’s development. For this reason, the source code for Fallout 1 and 2 is considered lost. However, a developer has now stated that the source code is not lost at all, as she made backup copies of it.
Developer makes backup copies because no one else did
Which developer are we talking about? Interplay co-founder and programmer Rebecca Heineman explained to the English-language magazine VideoGamer that she has preserved copies of the source code for Fallout 1 and 2.
In 1993, Interplay released a CD that contained one game from the previous 10 years, including classics like Battle Chess and Bard’s Tale. Only Wasteland was not included on that CD, and Heineman discovered during her research that no one had bothered to make backups or backup copies. She explained:
I asked about the source and got a blank stare. I went to the COO’s office, and he gave me a box that looked like it had been run over by a truck, which contained some of the source code on floppy disks. Eventually, I contacted friends at Electronic Arts to get a copy of the source code we had sent them when we delivered Wasteland.
From then on, Heineman made a copy of every game at Interplay, a so-called snapshot. A snapshot refers to a representation of the state at a specific point in time.
I made it my mission to take a snapshot of everything and archive it on CD-ROMs. When I left Interplay in 1995, I had copies of every game we had made. Without exceptions. When I worked at MacPlay, which existed beyond my time at Interplay, I made a snapshot of every game we ported. This included Fallout 1 and 2.
Currently, she is not allowed to release the source code for Fallout because the rights, according to the developer, lie with Bethesda. But if Bethesda plays along, that could change soon. She mentioned, “I haven’t gotten around to asking them yet. They are on my list.”
The current installment of the Fallout series is Fallout 4. However, MeinMMO editor Benedikt Grothaus believes that another game in the series is much better: Fallout 76, the controversial online game in the post-apocalyptic Fallout world: Forget Fallout 4; you should start with Fallout 76 now
