by AdmiralAsshat
1 subcomments
- Huge loss to the community. She was, by all accounts, an amazing programmer. I remember when she uploaded the source code of her Doom 3DO port she indicated that she had to write her own string lib because the base one sucked:
> I had to write my own string.h ANSI C library because the one 3DO supplied with their compiler had bugs! string.h??? How can you screw that up!?!?! They did! I spent a day writing all of the functions I needed in ARM 6 assembly.
https://github.com/Olde-Skuul/doom3do
I can't even imagine the level of skill required to just say, "Fine, I'll write MY OWN string lib!" while chasing a deadline.
As an aside...I wonder what will happen to her personal artifacts. There was a media blitz awhile back when Tim Cain said he doesn't have the original source code to Fallout because he was "ordered to destroy it" by Interplay when he left. But Becky then chimed in to say that she did have a surviving copy, because she was a founder. [0] I hope someone else on her behalf would be able to continue that effort, but I worry that with her death, Bethesda would assert that no one else has "legal standing" to do so.
[0] https://thisweekinvideogames.com/news/fallout-1-2-source-cod...
- Rebecca was well known in emulation circles for her high quality work on various games of the era, often pushing the hardware in unusual ways. This article is one of my favorites, detailing the wacky tricks she used to get Another World's 3D rendering system running acceptably on a Super Nintendo
https://fabiensanglard.net/another_world_polygons_SNES/
Rest in piece, you absolute legend.
by thesuperbigfrog
7 subcomments
- Many years ago I played one of her works, Bard's Tale 3: Thief of Fate and enjoyed it very much.
It was a masterful blend of RPG, dungeon crawl, and puzzles and had a memorable soundtrack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ru5kg35dNso
Having a bard in your party let you choose a soundtrack and their songs brought magical effects. For example, the Rhyme of Duotime let your party attack more frequently in combat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oR4j7w4FIY
BT3 is available on the Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/msdos_The_Bards_Tale_3_-_Thief_O...
by erickhill
1 subcomments
- I had the honor and pleasure of meeting her in 2018 at PRGE (Portland Retro Gaming Expo). She was sitting at a signing table after being on a panel. When it got to be my turn, I asked her if I could get a photo instead of a signature. She quickly said yes and I bent down to get into the frame. She was extremely kind and always cracking jokes. What I didn't know until I got my phone back and later looked closely was that she'd given me rabbit ears in the picture.
RIP, Becky.
by DonHopkins
1 subcomments
- This breaks my heart, I will miss Burger Becky, she was the sweetest kindest person and a legendary programmer.
https://www.burgerbecky.com/becky.htm
The first "Boom & Bust" episode of Netflix's series "High Score" series told the story of her winning the first Space Invaders U.S. national championship as a kid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Score_(TV_series)
- "Legend" barely begins to describe. She is up there with the Carmacks et al.
She was probably the first programmer I knew by name as a kid, following the games industry as a kid.
- Rest in peace, Burger Becky! I really enjoyed her interview with CoRecursive a few years ago about porting DOOM to the 3DO[1] and highly recommend a listen.
[1]: https://corecursive.com/doomed-to-fail-with-burger-becky/
by Dilettante_
3 subcomments
- >Heineman's cancer fundraiser is now collecting for her funeral.
Am I crazy or does that sentence have, I don't know how to explain it, the 'rhythm' of a joke? Feels like accidental rhyming, a mark of bad writing?
by CursedSilicon
2 subcomments
- I was lucky to catch some of Becky's livestreams on YouTube over the years.
More than a brilliant programmer she was truly a kind soul. She never approached topics with any kind of ego. Just a joy and love for the things she'd worked on and the people she'd worked with
- Admittedly I didn't dive much into this to get the full context, but it's saddening to me that a legendary game designer had a GoFundMe. I was hoping achieving that level of status in a traditionally well-paid industry would leave one well off, financially.
- Very sad news. This one hit pretty hard for me as not only was she so awesome and contributed so much to so many great games, but the short timeline between "oh dang I have cancer and we're fighting it" to, well, today... was just way too short :(
by nebula8804
2 subcomments
- What a true legend. The amount of people she has touched with her work is enormous.
Feeling a bit of regret. I feel like I made a poor first impression on Rebecca when I first met her a few years back at VCF East. I saw her again recently but was suffering from severe undiagnosed sleep apnea so much so that I was practically asleep at the event. I didn't know about the cancer. Thought I would have another chance. This is happening more and more in my life. :/
Let us cherish all the great moments that she helped bring to us.
- She was responsible for a large part of my early gaming years, without me even knowing it. Another legendary account retired.
- As a retro-enthusiast, I was captivated by the stories she shared in her interviews,
particularly about working on the cancelled Half Life port to Classic Mac OS (supposedly it even ran on 68k Macintoshes, How amazing is that !?).
She said that she still had a CD of the gold master on her shelf.
I really fear that work may never see the light of day now...
- So scary to go from diagnosis to passing in such a short time.
Cherish every sunrise.
- RIP, https://www.mobygames.com/person/343/rebecca-ann-heineman/
by SequoiaHope
1 subcomments
- Aww I’m very sad to hear this. She was close friends to a partner of mine and I met her about ten years ago through that connection. She seemed to be a lovely person.
- I'd heard the 3DO doom port story linked here before and it is absolutely wild stuff. Legend.
- I saw her last few talks at VCFeast. Always extremely engaging to hear from someone with as much skill and knowledge as her. Amazing to hear how she built her own debugger for the (i believe, i have the memory of a goldfish) Atari 2600. I always tried to catch her talks if possible, if just to get a glimpse of what the past looked like. I'm going to miss having those to look forward to.
RIP
by VikingCoder
0 subcomment
- RIP, Burger.
I played BT1, BT2, and BT3 for hours and hours.
- Weird. I just googled it and it said her partner also died of the same thing?
by noufalibrahim
0 subcomment
- Wow. What an impactful person. I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that I did know about her till her death though I've played many of the games mentioned in the WP article about her. RIP.
- The first time I became aware of her was in the "Another World 101" series, about her SNES port:
https://fabiensanglard.net/another_world_polygons_SNES/index...
by markus_zhang
0 subcomment
- Damn I knew she had cancer but never thought it is so quick.
“We have gone on so many adventures together! But, into the great unknown! I go first!!!“
Such a legend. RIP.
by throw_m239339
0 subcomment
- Never heard of her name before, but I certainly heard of the game she developed, like many here. RIP to a prolific game programmer.
- rip burger o7
- What an amazing career. RIP.
by splitbrain
4 subcomments
- Offtopic: several of the embedded Bluesky posts at the end of the article show "The author of the quoted post has requested their posts not be displayed on external sites." Seems not to phase the PC Gamer "journalists".
- Meta: I think such black strip moments should be pinned at top of the hacker news while it lasts.
- Feature request: make it so the black bar is a hyperlink and it takes you to the thread it is referring to.
This article is not on the front page so it took me a while to find what the black bar was referring to.
- Pop-up when pressing back on mobile that stopped returning to HN.
Sheesh, the mobile web is really predatory. Good that I don’t use it much.
by empressplay
3 subcomments
- @dang could we have a black banner please?
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by JensenTorp
0 subcomment
- [flagged]
- [dead]
by alsothrowaway
1 subcomments
- [flagged]
by tony-john12
1 subcomments
- [flagged]
- Im inclined to blame the US healthcare system. It looks like a gofundme was setup to pay for her cancer treatment. A sensible system a) wouldn’t need patients to pay for treatment and b) might have caught it earlier through regular screening
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