Source Code of Fallout 1 & 2 Has Been Saved by Programmer

Game preservation is extremely important, but such initiatives, sadly, often suffer from IP owners. The other day, Tim Cain, the co-creator of the original Fallout, lamented the code that had been wiped out, which he couldn't save.

"The amount of stuff that's been lost about Fallout and its early development saddens me. I had it. I had that in digital form and was ordered to destroy it," he said.

However, there is one hero who managed to keep the materials: Rebecca Heineman, Interplay's co-founder, programmer, and game designer, told VideoGamer that she saved the source code for Fallout 1 and 2.

She started preserving the studio's games' code after working on Interplay’s 10 Year Anthology: Classic Collection. Seeing how poor the preservation of games was, she was set on keeping what she could.

For the Anthology, she had all the materials except Wasteland, so she went to the leadership to ask for it.

"I asked for the source and was given a blank stare. I went to the COO’s office and he gave me a cardboard box that looked like it was run over by a truck and it had some of the source on floppies. I ended up contacting friends at Electronic Arts to get a copy of the source we sent them when Wasteland shipped."

After this, Heineman decided to take snapshots of every release she worked on, including the MacOS ports of Fallout 1 and 2, and archive them on CD-ROMs.

Cain was right about Interplay asking to delete everything, but Heineman had an advantage.

"Interplay had issues with people leaving the firm, and if you quit, they got… testy," she said. "I was a founder, so when I left, I kept EVERYTHING. Now, on Fallout, I did the Mac port for my company, MacPlay. So I have everything, including the source code to Fallout 1 and 2. Now, I don’t have Tim’s notes or other work in progress files. But the source code is not lost."

The company threatened ex-employees with litigation if they took assets home, but Heineman said "they had no legal leg to stand on which was why a suit was never filed on anyone," otherwise, she "would have been sued into last week."

We all want to see the Fallout code, of course, but it's not that simple: Heineman, who has shared her port of DOOM to the 3DO, wants to release it, but the franchise now belongs to Bethesda, so the games are protected under copyright.

"Art Data was totally defunct. I wrote the code, so I gave myself permission, and I asked id Software and they said, ‘Sure!’ Fallout would require permission from Bethesda. I hadn’t gotten around to asking them. They are on my list," Heineman said.

Let's hope Bethesda is reasonable, and we will see the original Fallout code one day soon.

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