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Iwata Asks Downloader

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gingerbeardman

gingerbeardman

Moai Master
Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,027
Cornwall, UK
New from me: Iwata Asks Downloader — a tool to download a local copy of the famous interview series, for personal use:

https://github.com/gingerbeardman/iwata-asks-downloader

- this is a tool to download the interviews
- tool does not include any copyright content
- saves as Markdown and reformatted HTML
- separate step to convert HTML to EPUB
- easily read and search ~180 interviews
- detailed info at the link above

Note — this project is funded solely through donations (Patreon, Ko-Fi, PayPal)

Thoughts and support appreciated!
 
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metsallica

metsallica

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 27, 2017
11,696
This is unbelievable. Is the UK site comprehensive? I want to print and bind this.
 
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gingerbeardman

gingerbeardman

Moai Master
Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,027
Cornwall, UK
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GJ

GJ

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,792
The Netherlands
I feel like an idiot because I have no idea how any of this works, haha. Is there no easy to use GUI version or just a compiled pack of all the interviews already downloaded?

Having these interviews on my e-reader would be amazing.

edit: Seeing as the interviews are protected by copyright I guess that's a no no. A GUI version would be very welcome though, for noobs like me lol.
 
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gingerbeardman

gingerbeardman

Moai Master
Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,027
Cornwall, UK
Currently the tool works on Mac and Linux in a very platform agnostic way. It can probably run on Windows somehow, though I've not tried.

A GUI version would be a lot of work, especially cross-platform, so is not currently planned.

Maybe you know somebody who can run this for you?
GJ said:
Having these interviews on my e-reader would be amazing.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This is my personal goal. Almost there!
 
MisterSpo

MisterSpo

One Winged Slayer
Member
Feb 12, 2019
9,080
Amazing! I've been reading Volume 1 of The Untold History of Japanese Game Developers now that I've got all three volumes, and a number of the interviews touch on the difficulty not only of game preservation, but also preserving the culture around videogames - so this is a good contribution to that.
 
Asbsand

Asbsand

Banned
Oct 30, 2017
9,901
Denmark
This is especially good in a time in which their new CEO has expressed interest in reading it from history.

You can see it in his eyes. You can tell he has been planning to remove it.
 
Nabbit

Nabbit

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,421
This is super cool! Thanks so much for your hard work on this, I'm so glad to have the interviews so readily accessible like this to read and re-read!
 
Mexen

Mexen

Member
Oct 26, 2017
2,927
IGN, Kotaku etc... Pick this up, spread it. People need to know about this.
 
Kolibri

Kolibri

Member
Nov 6, 2017
1,996
Nice work!

Now I want a comprehensive Iwata Asks coffee table book :P
Nintendo should release that as a tribute to him someday.
 
Rover

Rover

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,417
I'm a designer and I'd turn these into a book if someone sent me the downloaded content
 
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gingerbeardman

gingerbeardman

Moai Master
Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,027
Cornwall, UK
Rover said:
I'm a designer and I'd turn these into a book if someone sent me the downloaded content
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The goal is fully automatic book creation.

With the next update, today, we are one step closer as I just got HTML to EPUB output working, and it looks good (using CSS).

0mQz2R1.png
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Kolibri said:
Now I want a comprehensive Iwata Asks coffee table book :P
Nintendo should release that as a tribute to him someday.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
There's an Iwata book out in Japan that includes some of the interviews and may be released in the West.
 
Kthulhu

Kthulhu

Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,670
gingerbeardman said:
Currently the tool works on Mac and Linux in a very platform agnostic way. It can probably run on Windows somehow, though I've not tried.

A GUI version would be a lot of work, especially cross-platform, so is not currently planned.

Maybe you know somebody who can run this for you?

This is my personal goal. Almost there!
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Do you need people to do testing or documentation? I don't really have experience testing software but I do write documentation for non-technical office workers occasionally as part of my job doing tech support.

I've got an Ubuntu laptop, a Raspberry Pi, and a Windows 10 desktop with WSL enabled that I could test with if you need someone to do it.
 

898

Member
Oct 27, 2017
387
This is so much better than my copy/paste jobs.

This is amazing. Thank you.
 
Now generates EPUB files!
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    gingerbeardman

    gingerbeardman

    Moai Master
    Member
    Oct 27, 2017
    1,027
    Cornwall, UK
    Just pushed an update adding EPUB generation! Easy and quick as it's a new script to run separately from the big download. Readme is updated.

    Next is a way to automatically merge the EPUBs into a single chaptered book, with interviews ordered by platform.

    Kthulhu thanks for the offer! WSL testing and docs would be great. Feel free to run the tool and suggest any documentation improvements in a Issue/PR on GitHub.
     
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