Rebecca Heineman
| Rebecca Ann Heineman | ||||||||
 |
||||||||
| ||||||||
Rebecca Heineman (formerly William Salvador Heineman) is an American video game designer and programmer. She was born and raised in the suburbs of Los Angeles, California. In 1980, she was a National Space Invaders Champion, which increased her interest in video games even more. Some of Heineman's best known works include The Bard's Tale III and Out of this World (SNES), and has single-handedly programmed many games. In 1983, Rebecca co-founded Interplay Productions. In 1995, she also co-founded Logicware. In 1999, Rebecca founded her own video game development studio Contraband Entertainment, which was sold to Olde Sküül in 2013. In total, Heineman has programmed over 200 video game titles.
Heineman is currently married to artist and designer Jennell Jaquays (formally Paul Jaquays) and they both live in Heath, Texas. They both still contribute to the video game business to this day, working at Olde Sküül.
While Heineman has not actually composed video game music, Rebecca has programmed sound drivers for various consoles.
Audio Development
3DO
On Doom (3DO), Heineman didn't have time to port the music engine (originally coded for the Atari Jaguar) over to the 3DO, and so had Randy Scott create pre-recorded versions of the game's soundtrack, with Heineman writing a simple routine that called the music playback functions in the console's firmware in order to play the music files.
GB
Interplay hired George Sanger to do the music for the game Track Meet (GB). Sanger wrote MIDI files in Performer for the Macintosh, which was then given to Rebecca. She coded the music into the game using her sound driver she wrote in the Game Boy's modded Z80 assembly language on an Apple IIGS.
NES
Rebecca's NES sound engine was only used by Scott La Rocca. He would write MIDI files which were then given to Rebecca to convert into her sound driver. The only two games to use her sound driver were Trog! and Star Trek: 25th Anniversary Edition.
SNES
Rebecca programmed two different sound drivers for the SNES. The first one was for Interplay and was used in a few of their games. She programmed it in 65C816 assembly language, and wrote a utility to convert MIDI files. It is unknown where the instrument samples are from. She provided support for Advanced Real-time Dynamic Interplay, which is co-programmed by Jim Sproul and John Phillip Britt.
Rebecca programmed a second sound driver for id Software for use with Wolfenstein 3D (SNES). The source code credits both Rebecca and John Carmack, though John stated that Rebecca programmed the driver. The instruments were taken from an Ensoniq SQ-1 keyboard. The driver was subsequently used in Super Noah's Ark 3D (SNES), as well as all the other game engine tools used for the SNES version of Wolfenstein 3D.
Gameography
| Released | Title | Sample | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1991-??-?? | Star Trek: 25th Anniversary Edition (NES) | Sound Driver | |
| 1991-??-?? | Track Meet (GB) (トラックミート めざせ！バルセロナ) | Audio Programming | |
| 1991-10-?? | Trog! (NES) | Sound Driver | |
| 1991-11-?? | RPM: Radical Psycho Machine Racing (SNES) (Ｒ．Ｐ．Ｍ．レーシング) | Sound Driver | |
| 1992-11-?? | Out of This World (SNES) (外の世界) | Sound Driver | |
| 1993-04-?? | The Lost Vikings (SNES) (バイキングの大迷惑) | Sound Driver | |
| 1994-02-10 | Wolfenstein 3D (SNES) (ウルフェンシュタイン３Ｄ) | |
Sound Driver |
| 1994-03-?? | Claymates (SNES) | Sound Driver? | |
| 1994-09-?? | Blackthorne (SNES) (ブラックソーン：福州の黒木峠) | Sound Driver? | |
| 1994-10-?? | J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings: Volume 1 (SNES) | Sound Driver? | |
| 1994-??-?? | Super Noah's Ark 3D (SNES) | |
Sound Driver |
| 1996-04-26 | Doom (3DO) (ドゥーム) | |
Programming/Sound Driver |
| 1997-05-?? | The Lost Vikings II (SNES) | Sound Driver? |
Links
- facebook.com/burgerbecky - Facebook.
- twitter.com/burgerbecky - Twitter.
- youtube.com/watch?v=rBbIil2HPSU - Heineman talks about the development of Doom (3DO) - YouTube.
