Xeno-gears

Akari · Nov 10, 2005

Oh well, I finished. I spent all the night arranged all I know about Xenogearses formats. I put it all into single html page. Here it is XENO-GEARS, the beginning =)

mirex · Nov 10, 2005

Nice

( although I have no idea about Xenogears )

Cyberman · Nov 10, 2005

Xenogears is a square soft game written coeval with FF7 actually a little bit after it was released 1998. It was also a incomplete release but pruned considerably more than FF7's very minor removals. (FF7 is quite complete in my opinion).

Akari - Eeee

I'll hopefully have time to add Xenogears 'probing' into my PSXviewer soon enough. I just have things like WORK to do LOL

Micky · Nov 10, 2005

This is soo cool. Now I'm ripping my Xenogears CD and have a look at it!

It was also a incomplete release but pruned considerably more than FF7's very minor removals.

True. You could say most of the second disc is missing.
Does anyone know if the Xenosaga guys have the rights to remake or rerelease Xenogears, or if they can just make prequels and sequels in the same scenario?

Akari · Nov 11, 2005

It was also a incomplete release but pruned considerably more than FF7's very minor removals.

Hmm =) I'll add your description to introduction.

Does anyone know if the Xenosaga guys have the rights to remake or rerelease Xenogears, or if they can just make prequels and sequels in the same scenario?

I don't think they have rights to that name, since it still a trademark of Square, but they seems was able to use the scenario of the game. But since the Soraya Saga left project it seems that we never see the same Xenogears as before.

Cyberman · Nov 11, 2005

Guys Xenosaga is Xenogears complete. Some of the people who worked on Xenogears are working on it (namely the person who created the concept of Xenogears). Yes 45% of the game was scraped by Squaresoft because it wasn't complete enough to package and send out the door. The project had already taken 3 years and they decided to ship what they had.
Xenogears is the tail end of a long epic saga. (chapter 6) and Xenosaga was Chapter 1
So you will be seeing prequels for Xenogears without using the copyrighted stuff from the original. If you have played Xenosaga (I am almost done myself) you'll find lots of parallels to Xenogears.

Back to the subject (cough cough)

I see you have been toying with sprites

Cyb

Threesixty · Nov 11, 2005

...You're kinda wrong.....

Xenogears and Xenosaga are not from the same storyline. They were never meant to be part of the same story. Not that it matters, now. But Xenosaga was never intended to be a prequel of Xenogears.

You can think of it as a Tenchi Muyo anime, I guess. But even less so, being that most if not all of the characters are different. Even if Nephilim looks like Elie as a little girl. And the boy with the blocks looked like Fei.

And by the looks of it.... unless he's introduced in Ep3... looks like that boy might be a dropped plot.

Micky · Nov 11, 2005

Oh well, I finished. I spent all the night arranged all I know about Xenogearses formats. I put it all into single html page. Here it is XENO-GEARS, the beginning =)

I tried to decode the file table from an image of my NTSC U/C version and so far didn't get very far. How do the first few entries look like in your version?

Xenogears and Xenosaga are not from the same storyline. They were never meant to be part of the same story. Not that it matters, now. But Xenosaga was never intended to be a prequel of Xenogears.

From what I understand Xenosaga plays > 10000 years before Xenogears, so obviously the characters are different. After the events in Xenosaga 1-3 (which I don't want to spoil for people who haven't played) they load the Zohar onto a ship. There someone starts it up again and triggers the events of the Xenogears intro cutscene.
I think there was a complete timeline published around the time Xenogears was released, as a part of an artwork or data book. There are differences between that timeline and the events in Xenosaga, but they are either the result of licensing troubles or because the Xenosaga team liked the revised version better.
Update:
Okay, looks like there were quite some changes

(spoiler alert!)

Akari · Nov 12, 2005

I tried to decode the file table from an image of my NTSC U/C version and so far didn't get very far. How do the first few entries look like in your version?

I own English, Japanese and Russian version of the game. And all of them has first file starting from 24sector and lasts till the 40sector.

The beginning of that file looks like

Code: [Select]

Code:

Offset      0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7   8  9  A  B  C  D  E  F0000C000   29 00 00 EF FF FF FF 29  00 00 00 F2 1B 00 39 030000C010   00 00 4D 8A 00 61 12 00  00 99 84 00 E9 20 00 C00000C020   BE 5D 00 2F 2B 00 00 BF  CA 00 67 41 00 00 DB DB0000C030   00 7F 59 00 C0 00 6C 00  55 65 00 00 41 7D 01 1D   0000C040   8F 00 00 CE 3E 01 0D B2  00 00 58 BD 00 CD C6 000000C050   00 57 2D 00 C5 CB 00 00  13 23 00 9D CF 00 00 13

I used this function to parse this file

Code: [Select]

Code:

extract(char *filename){    unsigned long start_sector, file_size;    unsigned char start[3], size[4];    char numero[10];    // first directory number 0    int directory_number = 0;    // create file with cd file index    create_index_file();    index_file = fopen("index_cd.bin", "rb");    for (i = 0; ; i++)    {        file_position = fread(start, 1, 3, index_file);        file_position = fread(size, 1, 4, index_file);        // reverse bytes order (low endian)        start_sector = start[0] | (start[1] << 8) | (start[2] << 16);        file_size = size[0] | (size[1] << 8) | (size[2] << 16) | (size[3] << 24);        // end of file        if (file_size == 0x00ffffff)        {            break;        }        if (start_sector == 0 && file_size > 0)        {            filename[9] = 0;        }        // directory        if (file_size > 0xff000000)        {            // create directory name (name - number of directory)            filename[9] = 0;            sprintf(numero, "%d", directory_number++);            strcat(filename, numero);            strcat(filename, "\\");            mkdir(filename);        }        // file        if (start_sector != 0 && file_size < 0xff000000 && file_size > 0)        {            printf("file number %d, size: 0x%x byte - ", i, file_size);            parse_file(start_sector, file_size, i, filename);        }    }}

I hope it helps.

Micky · Nov 12, 2005

Thanks. It looks like I wasn't skipping the 8 byte for the CD-XA header correctly, which messed up my whole image file ....

Did you notice, if you interpret the directory size as a negative number it sometimes matches the number of files in it?

Akari · Nov 12, 2005

Thanks. It looks like I wasn't skipping the 8 byte for the CD-XA header correctly, which messed up my whole image file ....

Did you notice, if you interpret the directory size as a negative number it sometimes matches the number of files in it?

I read disk with winhex, it has option row disk access or not, so for the first time I access files by saving them from this utilite =)
It's much easier.

I check first five directory... so its
from_file/real number of file
16/20
5/6
5/12
48/49
6/7

Well even if it is number of files its very strange number of files =)
But it always less than real number of files... hmmm

Micky · Nov 12, 2005

Did you use ~filesize or -filesize? I used -filesize, and this is the table I get for disk 2 (size/count):
Code: [Select]

Code:

12/156/66/1249/497/7146/14611/112/233/3391/917/71460/1460145/145121/12188/1074/4152/1532/2150/15062/222231/231534/54016/1617/172/23/310/10...several 10/10...10/10

Akari · Nov 19, 2005

2Micky: Sorry, I didn't has time this week as I got new job =) I'm game beta-tester right now.Maybe next year I could get job of a game programmer in the same company 8)

Well anyway. Xenogears was added with some new info about 2d sprites and 3d backgrounds. Now almost all of them displayed correctly. The only thing I need to find now Its where semi-transparency are set. The two hardest background are now all clear. Some time soon I'll write a viewer with usual GUI (I think I use QT for that) and switch to the 3d enemies that share the same 3d format. Although a background image and skies that almost all the background has are not understanded yet =) It seems that they are in the second file. (textures for them are in the first file)

tho hardest battle backgrounds are

Cyberman · Nov 20, 2005

Woo Akari that is quite a bit of work..
I suppose this means I should begin adding the 3d code to my Viewer software soonish. I'll have to add software to work with ISO images (Raw mode reading of a CD is too much of a hassle at the moment).
I guess Xeno stuff will following FF7

It's odd that Xenogears world is 3d and characters are 2d where as FF7's world is 2d in the scenes but the characters are 3d. Kind of funny that

Cyb

Micky · Nov 20, 2005

I'll have to add software to work with ISO images (Raw mode reading of a CD is too much of a hassle at the moment).

I just wrote code that splits the image into files and directories, so I don't have to worry about the iso at all.

It's odd that Xenogears world is 3d and characters are 2d where as FF7's world is 2d in the scenes but the characters are 3d.

But if you think about it, at the size the characters are drawn and with the playstation's resolution a textured character with the same detail as the 2d sprites would've probably glitched a lot.
Xenogears feels in many ways ahead of Final Fantasy. For example you see all characters of your active party following you and you can rotate the viewpoint (something you can't do even in Final Fantasy 10). Xenosaga looks almost like a step back from Xenogears...

Skillster/RedSarg99 · Nov 20, 2005

actually not having to render 3d environments and then actually have to make them into 2d backgrounds reduces production time and cost, which is what xenogears didnt have enough of (time and budget).
So FF7 looks far more detailed on a PSX as opposed to Xenogears.
but the 2d sprites make for a messy feel

Cyberman · Nov 20, 2005

actually not having to render 3d environments and then actually have to make them into 2d backgrounds reduces production time and cost, which is what xenogears didnt have enough of (time and budget).
So FF7 looks far more detailed on a PSX as opposed to Xenogears.
but the 2d sprites make for a messy feel

Considering Xenogears is missing 45% of itself.. not surprising that.
They estimate the cost of game production is going to go up from 3.3 -5 toward 6 - 10 million US because of the amount of artwork now needed in games.

The odd thing is FF7 DOES have 3d scenes just 2d rendering. The walk mesh doesn't require art work but it is 3d

Cyb

Micky · Nov 20, 2005

They estimate the cost of game production is going to go up from 3.3 -5 toward 6 - 10 million US because of the amount of artwork now needed in games.

Well, that is a bullsh*t argument, mostly from publishers who want to raise the software prices.
If a 30,000 polygon background costs $X, then a 300,000 polygon background doesn't cost $X * 10, because the artists don't put the polygons down one by one. In the end it evens itself mostly out, because time spent on making a good looking low-poly background just gets used to put down the required number of polygons for a high-poly background.
The biggest money-sink I experienced is marketing, where one bit of the campaign can cost as much as a whole team gets paid in salary.

Considering Xenogears is missing 45% of itself.. not surprising that.

I don't know the details of what went wrong in Xenogears. But everyone who played it definitely notices the holes, where they just explain the story in front of a slideshow. So some of the artwork must have been already modelled. My guess is what was missing wasn't artwork, but scripting the game (like "speak with person X to get information Y to progress") and programming bosses.
You could argue if the backgrounds in FF7 were easier or more difficult to make than in Xenogears. On one hand not many people had experience modelling 3D environments or how to organise the required workload. Work could've been wasted on both projects modelling stuff that wasn't useable. The FF7 team didn't have to worry about runtime performance, as it just needed to render once. On the other hand some of the dungeons in Xenogears are very simple, just the edges of the floor lofted up and textured. In the end, we'll never know until we do similar work ourselves.

Cyberman · Nov 21, 2005

They estimate the cost of game production is going to go up from 3.3 -5 toward 6 - 10 million US because of the amount of artwork now needed in games.

Click to expand...

Well, that is a bullsh*t argument, mostly from publishers who want to raise the software prices.
If a 30,000 polygon background costs $X, then a 300,000 polygon background doesn't cost $X * 10, because the artists don't put the polygons down one by one. In the end it evens itself mostly out, because time spent on making a good looking low-poly background just gets used to put down the required number of polygons for a high-poly background.
The biggest money-sink I experienced is marketing, where one bit of the campaign can cost as much as a whole team gets paid in salary.

I agree it's partial fluff. It seems many people are more interested in making money than making games. So if you can't make a good game you make up for it in marketing. That's the idea at least. However you need both production and marketing.

So it's six of this half dozen of the other. The most obvious cost barrier with games these days is unrealistic expectations of how long something will take. In essence it's a management problem.

Back to the subject, I have been using GLScene objects and these have a huge learning curve if you don't program in Delphi.. Dang

Cyb

Skillster/RedSarg99 · Nov 21, 2005

Correct me if I am wrong, but what I meant to say was this:
FF7/FF8:
1. Super powerfull 3d Computer is programmed to make nice 3d environment.
2. This is then captured into a 2d image for use on PSX

Xenogears:
1. Make a simply Polygonal backdrop and some simple textures to map it with.

There is a massive difference in the costing for both.
Xenogears was overbudget and out of time, so they chopped scenes and made it into a story telling session most of Disc 2.
Enough said.
Lets get back to the point of this thread.
How about a Xeno-Remake

Xeno-gears

Akari

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mirex

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Cyberman

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Micky

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Akari

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Cyberman

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Threesixty

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Micky

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Akari

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Akari

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Cyberman

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Micky

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Skillster/RedSarg99

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Cyberman

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