Weltall 1.0.0

Weltall 1.0.0 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

After the ending

• Added a clear save. On the ending's last picture, wait a few seconds and press Confirm to save. Loading it puts you back before the final dungeon with your endgame progress.
• Added New Game+. With a clear save available, choose New Game on the title screen, then pick the clear save to start from. Choose whether to keep money, equipment, items, Deathblows and levels, and whether to remove the 7-AP limiter. Story items stay behind.
• Clearing the game also unlocks additional character looks and party options for repeat playthroughs. Their details are shown in the game after you unlock them. Hint: Select a character in the port's party reorder frame and press Square on them.

Playing

• Added a message log: press L, or a controller's L3, to read the dialogue so far. The game waits while it is open.
• Added auto-advancing dialogue under Options → Display → Auto-advance text. It's off by default, and choices always wait for you.
• Added save states on the field and world map. These are Weltall's own format; use Options → Saves → Export card to move a game to a PlayStation emulator.
• Added integer scaling under Options → Display, to keep the CRT filter's scanlines evenly spaced.
• The battle HUD's moving parts now move smoothly on displays above 60 Hz, alongside the battle scene.
• Options → Controls → Stop at doors pauses movement briefly after a map change, so a held or fidgeted stick doesn't carry you straight into the next scene. It defaults to half a second; you can change it or turn it off.
• Options → Controls → Camera buttons lets the shoulder buttons zoom instead of turning the camera.
• On the Assets page, choose which parts of a texture pack to use: fonts, faces, menus and HUD, characters, scenery, or models and effects.
• After the appropriate story events, select Citan or Emeralda on the port's party reorder and press Square to switch between the two versions of them. This is purely visual and does not affect stats.

Translations and modding

• Added support for SadNES cITy's Italian translation (version 1.2.1), including its subtitled movies and Japanese commands. Use patched USA images, or put the translation's .xpt and movie .ppf files in a folder under Mods. Options → Modding → Italian lets you choose its voices, commands and movies.
• Disc 2 expansions now load from the Mods folder, with a choice of expansion when Disc 2 begins. Two example scenes are included to extract and edit. Export Disc 2 writes the disc's maps and battle text as editable documents; Make shareable turns your edits into patches containing only your changes. See Writing an expansion to get started.

Fixes

• Fixed texture packs not loading on Linux when their folder's capitalization differs, or when a parent folder is reached through a link, such as on an SD card.
• Fixed 3D Gears appearing dark red in maps such as the Yggdrasil's hangar and the Battling arena's entrance.
• Fixed movies falling out of sync with their sound after a pause in rendering.
• Fixed battles stopping on missing enemy or attack names in the Brazilian Portuguese translation.
• Fixed the Gear menu leaving out defense from Perfect Works Build's rebalanced parts.
• Fixed 3D scenes being too large for their HUD in 4:3 and narrower windows, and map textures missing after a movie shown over the game screen.
• Fixed message portraits sometimes using a previous face, and party followers landing late after a jump.
• Fixed missing attack effects and gaps at the arm and leg joints of postgame Gear models.
• Android now saves changed settings when the app goes into the background.

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 Android 10 or later (64-bit, Vulkan), install the APK instead. Copy the disc images from a computer by USB into a folder inside the device's Download folder, such as Download/Xenogears (Android doesn't let apps pick Download itself), then start Weltall, tap Add folder and pick that folder. Weltall isn't on Google Play or registered with Google. When you open the APK, your phone may ask you to allow your browser or file manager to install apps. The README explains how.

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

What to expect

The whole game is fully playable, and gameplay behavior has been checked against the original game's code. I've finished my own playthrough, including the ending and a clear save. You can play from start to finish, and I'm fixing reported issues as they come in.

Players have run the Linux build on a Steam Deck and on CachyOS with an AMD graphics card. If you run into problems on Linux, please report them.

I've played the Android version on my own phone, and it's also been checked on Android's emulator. If you run into problems on Android, please report them with your phone or tablet's model.

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). On Android, tap Save the log on the error screen, or under Options → Saves after a crash, and attach the zip file it saves. A save from just before the problem helps too.

Support

If you'd like to help support Weltall or my future ports, you can do so through GitHub Sponsors or Ko-fi.