The unofficial PC port project of Xenogears Atlas, created by skilled fans, has released a new weekly progress update, highlighting the battle engine and high-definition asset processing solutions.
The developers stated that the foundation of the battle system has been established. The team studied the original mechanics and strives to keep the visual presentation close to the original version. The current showcase features on-foot combat; since the project still needs to address mech battles with different mechanics, there is still a significant amount of work remaining before completion.
All asset upscaling was performed locally on a single NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 16GB graphics card, without using any cloud services. Cutscenes were losslessly extracted from the original disc at 320×224 resolution and 15 FPS, then processed frame-by-frame with SeedVR2 to reduce flickering.
The developers previously tested Real-ESRGAN and Real-CUGAN but abandoned them due to distorted text, flickering, or unauthorized color changes in the visuals. The current approach first outputs to 1080p, and if text errors persist, the original text is blended back in.
Texture pages take approximately 6 to 14 seconds to process. Transparency information is preserved from the original assets, while colors are locked to the game's original palette to prevent seams between adjacent textures. Sprites and portraits are also upscaled by factors of two, four, or eight.
This project is not an official port by Square Enix, and the report's title may cause misunderstanding regarding its official status. Readers should view the current content as a technical progress update on a fan-made project, rather than an announcement of a commercial release.
