Summary
Falloutcreator Tim Cain recently shared thatthe source code for the first Fallout game had been lost, as Interplay apparently did a poor job of preserving the games it put out. He said that the retail version ofthe first gamehad since been recovered, but otherwise, so much from this period ofRPGhistory was gone.
However, it turns out that more had been preserved than initially thought. Speaking toVideoGamer, co-founder and lead programmer of Interplay, Rebecca Heineman, said that she made an effort to back up everything, despite orders from management that those leaving the company had to destroy their work.
There’s At Least One Other Back-Up For Fallout’s Source Code
Interplay found the source code for the retail copy, and Rebecca Heineman has a copy of the Mac port
“I have the source to all my projects, so most games I got running on the CD without issue,” says Heineman. “I made it a quest to snapshot everything and archive it on CD-Roms. When I left Interplay in 1995, I had copies of every game we did. No exceptions."
She adds that this includes Fallout 1 and 2, so there may have been more preserved than initially believed. However, Heineman does admit that she doesn’t have Cain’s files, such as mid-development notes or earlier builds of the game that used GURPs, not SPECIAL, so they could indeed be lost.
“Interplay had a reputation of threatening ex-employees with litigation if they were ‘poached’, and if they had assets taken home," she explains. However, she says that Interplay had “no legal leg to stand on”, which is why she got away with preserving her files and keeping them after she left.
This is in line with Cain’s account of working at Interplay, which is why we lost so much of Fallout’s history. “When I left Fallout, I was told ‘You have to destroy everything you have,’ and I did,” Cain said in a recent video. “My entire archive. Early design notes, code for different versions, prototypes, all the GURPS code – gone.”
At the very least, it does seem that some files have been preserved, including another copy of the source code. That is definitely for the best, given how easy it is for older games to be lost like this.
