Weltall

Weltall

Weltall is a native port of Xenogears (PlayStation, 1998), rebuilt in Unreal Engine 5. The goal is to make the game feel like a modern PC release while keeping the original gameplay intact.

You'll need your own copy of the USA release or a supported English undub. Weltall doesn't include any game data. Put your disc images in the Games folder and the game will find them automatically. BIN/CUE and CHD preserve movie audio; ISO/IMG also work, but the movies will be silent. Convert PBP, ECM or other formats to BIN/CUE first. You can add Disc 2 while the game is running when it asks for it. You can also start with only Disc 2, as on the PlayStation, to load your Disc 2 saves.

The undub plays with English text and Japanese voices, and its subtitles appear in the movies. If you have both versions, choose which voices you hear under Options → Sound → Voices. Options → Sound → Subtitles can also show the subtitles with the English voices, or turn them off. If you have Perfect Works Build too, Subtitles from picks the undub's subtitles or the mod's. The Sound page shows what it found, and says what you need for anything that's missing. Japanese retail discs aren't playable, but you can dump their files (see the modding guide).

Fan translations that only change the game's text, pictures and movies also play, such as the Spanish translation by Romhack Hispano. Patch your USA discs and put the patched images in Games. If the originals are there too, the patched ones play. Weltall's own screens, such as Options, stay in English. Translations that also change the game's program, such as the French one by Atelier Traduction, aren't supported yet.

Status: Both discs are playable, including field exploration, character and Gear battles, the world map, menus, the Battling arena and movies. Gameplay behavior has been checked against the original game's code. My own playthrough is still in progress, with over 18 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. If something goes wrong, the game displays an error and tells you which log to include in a bug report.

What Weltall adds

• Higher resolutions and widescreen up to 32:9, with scenery extending beyond the original 4:3 view.
• Smooth motion at any refresh rate, including 120 Hz and above, without changing the game's pace.
• A free camera on the field and world map, with rotation, tilt and zoom using a mouse or right stick.
• Per-pixel depth sorting to fix characters, Gears and scenery clipping or flickering over each other.
• Graphics options for sharper or smoother scenery and sprites, anti-aliasing, upscaled movies and a CRT filter.
• Softer battle flashes, or none at all, for the bright screen flashes from attacks and Ether.
• Separate volumes for the music, sound effects, battle voices and movies, plus a master volume.
• 3D Gears on the field and world map, using their battle models, plus full-size party sprites in Gear areas.
• Battle speeds of 2x and 4x, and faster text up to instant. Timed dialogue still leaves you time to read it.
• Balance options to earn up to four times the experience and gold, and to have fewer random battles, more of them, or none at all.
• Chapter titles displayed when each chapter begins.
• Custom party order, so any character can lead the party (see below).
• Always run, and doors that open when you walk into them.
• Keyboard, mouse and controller support: Xbox and PlayStation controllers and most other gamepads, with rebinding and controller hot-plugging. Button prompts match your current bindings.
• Save options to load from the menu anywhere, import PlayStation memory-card or emulator saves, and export memory-card images.
• Fixes for bugs in the original game.
• Modding options to export the game's textures as PNG, its music as WAV and its text and font to edit, dump the disc's files, and load your replacements from the Assets folder, including texture packs made for RetroArch's Beetle PSX HW core. You can also use parts of the fan mod Perfect Works Build from your own copy. See the modding guide for the details.

You can adjust these in Options from the title screen or in-game menu, including switching back to the original behavior.

The source also includes tools for turning Disc 2's narrated sections into playable sequences, with two examples. These are separate from the main port and aren't included in the downloadable builds.

Weltall is not affiliated with or endorsed by the owners of Xenogears. All game content and trademarks belong to their respective owners.

Playing

Download the build for your system and unzip it wherever you want. Put the USA or undub disc images in the Games folder (subfolders work too), then run Weltall.exe on Windows or Weltall.sh on Linux. Windows requires 64-bit Windows 10 or 11 and a DirectX 12 graphics card. Linux requires a 64-bit system with a Vulkan graphics driver. If neither disc is there, the game shows where it looked and what it found, then starts once you add one. If you start with only Disc 2, the game asks for Disc 1 when you choose New Game or load a Disc 1 save, as the original does.

Players have run the Linux build on a Steam Deck and on CachyOS with an AMD graphics card.

Options covers display, sound, camera, text speed, bug fixes, controls, and a Modding page with the balance options and the Assets page. During battles, R1 increases the speed from 1x to 2x to 4x, and L1 decreases it.

To keep the original PlayStation button symbols in prompts and menus, turn on Original PSX icons under Options → Controls. Your bindings still apply, and the rebinding rows show your actual keys.

To rearrange the party, open the menu and press Right from the command list. Select a character with ×, then select another to swap them. Press △ to restore the story's order. The first character leads on the field and world map, and your order also applies in menus and ordinary battles.

Your order is saved for that group of characters. If someone joins or leaves during the story, the party returns to the story's order; when the same group is together again, your order returns. In Member Change, a replacement takes the outgoing character's position. Cutscenes, scripted battles, and field scenes where party members are speaking or placed around the map use the story's order.

Default controls

PlayStation	Keyboard	Gamepad
Directions	W A S D, arrow keys	D-pad, left stick
×	E, Enter	A
○	Q, Escape	B
□	F	X
△	Space	Y
L1, R1	Tab, R	LB, RB
L2, R2	1, 4	LT, RT
Start, Select	P, Backspace	Menu, View
Turn the view	Mouse	Right stick
Zoom	Mouse wheel	Right stick up and down
Reset the view	Middle mouse button	Right stick click

On a PlayStation controller, A is ×, B is ○, X is □ and Y is △. You can rebind every control on the Controls page. Wherever the game mentions a PlayStation button, it shows the key or controller button you've assigned to it.

Saves and settings

On Windows, settings and saves are in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Weltall. On Linux, settings are in ~/.config/Weltall and saves are in ~/.local/share/Weltall/Saves.

Use the Saves page in Options to import a PlayStation memory-card image or an individual save file, including emulator saves. You can also export a card as an .mcr image to Saves\Cards.

Reporting a problem

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 crash folder:

• Windows: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Weltall\Saved\Crashes
• Linux: ~/.config/Epic/Weltall/Saved/Crashes

That folder includes the log and crash dump. A save from just before the problem is helpful too.

Development

The core (Source/WeltallCore) has no Unreal dependencies, so you can build and run its tests separately. You'll need CMake 3.25+ and a C++20 compiler:

cd Tests
cmake --preset windows        # or: linux, linux-clang
cmake --build --preset windows
ctest --preset windows

Tests that need game data look for disc images in Games/ and report a skip if a disc is missing. Oracle tests compare the port's results with stored digests from the original code, run in an emulated CPU with inputs from the same generator used by the tests.

Story additions are plain text files in Content/Story, loaded at startup. Each folder is a pack and each .txt file is a document. They can patch field scripts and messages, create maps from existing map assets, change battle narration, add world map locations and define subchapter titles. Scripts use the original game's instruction names and message markup. Each document references the original content it needs and contains only the additions.

The disc2 pack includes two playable examples: the rematch above the forest, and Elly's trip to the Mass Driver with a short dungeon. Both rejoin the original story afterward. The pack is only used if the player selects it when Disc 2 begins. Docs/Story explains how to write these documents using the existing files as examples.

WeltallMapText is built alongside the tests and prints a disc map in this text format, for example WeltallMapText 613. Use it to inspect the scripts you're patching. Its output contains original game scripts and text, so don't commit it. The tests check each document against its map or battle.

Packaging

Scripts/package.py builds standalone packages from a commit. It needs an Unreal Engine 5.8 source build, with UE_ROOT set in the environment or in a local.env file at the repository root:

python Scripts/package.py                     # Development
python Scripts/package.py DebugGame Shipping  # any of DebugGame, Development, Shipping
python Scripts/package.py --platform Linux    # for Linux, with the engine's toolchain in LINUX_MULTIARCH_ROOT

Packages are written to out/builds/<Configuration>/<Platform>. Run Weltall.exe or Weltall.sh from there. The script links your checkout's disc images into the package's Games folder. All builds share the same settings and saves in your user folders.

python Scripts/package.py --archive Shipping also creates a release zip in out/releases, without disc images, and a separate debug symbols archive.

python Scripts/release.py 0.8.3 builds both Shipping packages from a pushed commit whose ProjectVersion matches that version. It creates the archives and a GitHub draft release with the player downloads and release notes, using the GitHub CLI. Publish the draft from the release page.

Packages leave out the disc2 pack and play the original Disc 2 without asking you to choose a mode. Build with --expansion to include the examples; those archives are marked in the filename.

Credits

Four of Weltall's bug fixes come from the fan mod Perfect Works Build. When you use your own copy of the mod, Weltall also recreates the mod's changes to the game's code: the battle dialogue windows, the rebalanced party and items, and the Battling arena modes. All of this is done with the Perfect Works Build team's permission.

License

Weltall's code is under the MIT License; see LICENSE. Third-party code keeps its own license, listed in ThirdPartyNotices.md. This license applies only to Weltall, not to Xenogears or its game content and trademarks.

Support

If you'd like to support my open-source work, you can do so through GitHub Sponsors or Ko-fi.