A compressed 931MB txt file? Did you even click the link? He literally flips through the script in a very short video.
Sweet! Unlike the Sonic 2006 document, all the text is in Japanese, but it's nice to have these sorts of documents.
It's not exactly a "pre-production" script. It's an afureko script intended to be used by the voice actors when recording the lines (so yes, it could be possible that Junichi Kanemaru himself held it at some point). It's very handy as it even lists the exact filenames for each line and you can find said line in the game's files if you type it out. It's also pretty cool to see early stage names and the pages with story content having notes describing the events, which gives a better picture of how the writer plans out each cutscene. It's also helpful for someone like me when I can't fully understand a line from the game's files and need captions to exactly make out what the character said. Also that's the game's director/producer Tetsu Katano's signature on the cover there. Anyway, I've been planning to type out everything from the script's photos into an Excel document for a while, until I realized I don't know how to work Excel at all. I might just go cheap and make a text file like I did before to take out all the Japanese text stuff from the Forces doc. And speaking of scripts! Someone has been selling three (one is story content, the other two are "hint" content) Sonic Heroes script books on an auction site for a while... and it's 500,000 yen. I'm not sure if I should put the link out here or what because I'm scared some rich asshole will snipe it for himself, but there have been no movements on it for a month now. I would happily take pictures and make text files of all three books if I had that much money.
Double post, I know, but I think I should explain to you guys where this script actually came from. The guy in the Twitter link biggestsonicfan posted is my now exfriend. He bought the script from Kevin Eva, the former Sonic community manager who was selling it on ebay a few months back, and he agreed to scan it for me as soon as he got it. When he did get it, he realized that scanning all the pages would just not be feasible as the book could barely fit in the scanner and since it's paperback there was a risk of damaging the spine. He refused to send the book to me, so I settled with phone pictures as long as the text was legible enough. He then took an entire month to photograph all the pages, often taking several days to get around to it and ignoring me when I asked about it, and making me translate several rather complex texts from a series I'm not interested in under the threat of not sharing the pics he already took on top of it. He did indeed take pics of all the pages in the end, but this whole experience left a bitter taste in my mouth. I think you can guess why we aren't friends anymore. What I'm getting at here is if someone else has the 500,000 yen to spend on the Sonic Heroes books, I only want it to be someone who isn't going to take an entire month to take phone pics of all things without a good reason and who isn't going to exploit me for free non-Sonic related translations on top of it.
Whilst a tiny bit off topic, isn't there now a feature on Google Photos / Camera that with a phone pic, it does some OCR and then converts to a text'd PDF? May be worth a shot as the "modern day" scanner so to say. I can sympathise with not wanting to damage a spine though.
I use a free app called 'CamScanner'. Works quite well for that, and also has some neat cropping and filtering options.
That could maybe work, but these kinds of programs didn't have the text coming out 100% accurate from my experience. Also it may not work too well with photos that are a little blurry. I guess nothing stops me from going back and correcting each page, though. Going back to the Heroes scripts again, would community crowdfunding of some sort be a viable option? I don't know, Retro has been able to pull off miracles with Sonic prototypes in the past, I don't see why we should stop with game scripts. They are still important design documents after all. I just wish I knew the safe place to put the link. ...But I do realize that's kind of a long shot.
I was never super-into Heroes, but I can put down US $20 of that crowdfunding goal if you give me a paypal address to send to. It's just a drop in the bucket but if others are willing to pay in as well then we should be able to make it happen..!
I have a Ko-fi right here to start off. I set up a "Sonic Heroes script Crowdfunding" goal to keep track of any funds. Thanks for the help. And just to reassure everybody, I do have the means of getting those books with a reliable proxy service that I have used for years and everything, but obviously I don't have the 500,000 yen. And I really wanna see this happen.
You've definitely shown yourself to be a trustworthy person here, I have no problem trusting that you have a way to get the books should the money be raised. I've sent £24 which is a bit more than the US $20 I mentioned before. Here's hoping you can get those books! If the lofty goal isn't reached then I expect no repayment; you've already done so much for the community that I feel you're entitled some some recompensation.