Weltall 0.8.1

Weltall 0.8.1 is a native port of Xenogears (PlayStation, 1998), rebuilt in Unreal Engine 5. You'll need your own copy of the USA release or a supported English undub. No game data is included.

What's new

• Fixed a crash at startup on Linux with AMD graphics cards (Mesa's RADV driver). The game was compiling Unreal Engine shaders it never uses, and two of them crash that driver.
• Fixed the floor hiding characters' legs in some battles.
• Added support for the English undub, which plays with English text and Japanese voices. If you have both versions, choose the voices under Options → Sound → Voices.
• Added an Original PSX icons option under Options → Controls. It keeps the PlayStation button symbols in prompts and menus while your own bindings still apply.
• Added modding options on a new Assets page in Options. You can export the game's textures as PNG and its music as WAV, dump the disc's files, and load your own replacements. See the modding guide.

Playing

1. Download the Windows or Linux zip below and unzip it wherever you want.
2. Put both disc images in the Games folder. BIN/CUE and CHD preserve movie audio; ISO/IMG also work, but the movies will be silent.
3. Run Weltall.exe on Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit, DirectX 12), or Weltall.sh on Linux (64-bit, Vulkan).

On Windows, settings and saves are in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Weltall. On Linux, settings are in ~/.config/Weltall and saves are in ~/.local/share/Weltall/Saves. You can import PlayStation memory-card saves from the Saves page in Options. See the README for controls and more details.

What to expect

Both discs are playable, and gameplay behavior has been checked against the original game's code. My own playthrough is still in progress, with around 16 hours played without a hang. Automated tests have run every map and story battle, along with long stretches of the story from save to save. You should be able to play from start to finish, and I'm fixing reported issues as they come in.

The Linux build has only been tested in Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL), using software rendering. It still needs testing on a Linux system with a graphics card. If you try it, please report any problems you run into.

If the game stops with an error on screen, attach the log file it names to a bug report and describe what you were doing. If it crashes, zip and attach the newest folder in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Weltall\Saved\Crashes (Windows) or ~/.config/Epic/Weltall/Saved/Crashes (Linux). A save from just before the problem helps too.

This release doesn't support the Japanese discs or starting Disc 2 without Disc 1 in the Games folder. In the Battling arena, gears always move at full speed instead of by how far you push the stick, and one piece of El-Fenrir's model isn't drawn.