Bard's Tale IV - Rebecca Heineman On Resurrecting Code from the Dead

In her first ever Twitch broadcast (now on YouTube) Rebecca Heineman talks about the upcoming The Bard's Tale trilogy conversion based on her old Apple II GS versions.

Rebecca gets the video up to speed right away by explaining why Bard's Tale IV had to become Dragon Wars and by unboxing her old tuned Apple 2 from way back then.



More information.

Shared the video yesterday on the forums.

Link - http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29700

I hope she does more live streams in the future.

Yes, took it from there. This video rocks! The geek in me is very happy now. I wasn't aware how many of her games I have. Didn't know she created Tass Times in Tonetown and ported Ultima 1.

Long video with no time to watch it.

Can somebody give me the TLDR version?

Pretty hardcore video, a lot of talk about coding in assembly, Apple 2 gs and Github stuff. She mentions some of the code she has like Space Ace, Ultima I and run them in an emulator. At the end she mentions her comics regarding Sailor Moon. Those are the main things I remember. If you are looking for talk about her new RPG and older games rather watch this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGUB2ucu-eU although it is 2 hours long but fun to watch.

She said she will do a cast this Sunday as well, so she might be planning to do it every Sunday…

There's no denying it's a trip down memory lane but I stopped watching after 15 minutes - very little to do with Bard's Tale IV!

Space Ace. Man, there's a blast from the past. Used to play that as a kid in the arcade — back when those animated games were all the rage for dropping your quarters. That and Dragon's Lair, which was probably the most popular. Cliff Hanger was my personal favorite.

The only thing I don't get is the disputes in authorship. Brian Fargo and Michael Crawford say that it is Michael Crawford who was responsible for the programming of the first two Bard's Tale games, and that Rebecca Heineman only ported the original code to other platforms (although very efficiently and skillfully). The latter claims that all of Michael's code had to be rewritten. So who is taking undeserved credit?

Michael Cranford. While I am a big fan of Becky's work I would call it translating rather than re-writing for BT1&2. BT3 was the best anyway.

Can't wait to see how the remastered versions turn out.

Originally Posted by Humanity has risen!
The only thing I don't get is the disputes in authorship. Brian Fargo and Michael Crawford say that it is Michael Crawford who was responsible for the programming of the first two Bard's Tale games, and that Rebecca Heineman only ported the original code to other platforms (although very efficiently and skillfully). The latter claims that all of Michael's code had to be rewritten. So who is taking undeserved credit?

It's Michael Cranford. But I agree, there are inconsistencies present in the stories and the answer isn't entirely clear. Growing up, my assumption was that Michael was the writer and creator of Bard's Tale 1+2, whilist Rebecca Heineman was the lead creator of the third game.
Edit:
Forgot to say fantastic video! Loved its playful tone and technological exploration of the past.

Rebecca does say in one of the videos that BT3 was all her code. She only did some of the graphic routines etc on BT 1 and 2. I agree that BT 3 was the best as well though, but I might be prejudiced because it was my first proper RPG, which I played on my C64.