Latest version update yap
Over 4 years of work.
With all the newly preserved GamePro CD portraits who knows what percent my work is at now. ~35 portraits to go. Perhaps 1.9 will be the final? 
1.7 has been updated with a ton of newly cleaned up portraits and newer versions of the Deathblow icons as well as menu marbles and the red selection “arrow”. 1.7 is also the first version to be made specifically for Xenogears’ native resolution (NOT 4:3), so they are not stretched in any way to compensate like they had to be in 4:3.
Some portraits aren’t completely finished. Until I say it’s complete, the mod is a work in progress and I haven’t abandoned it.
Unless I’ve keeled over. In which case, I nominate Siris to continue my work.
You’ll know I’ve died if I stop Xenogears yapping on Bluesky.
Feel free to DM me anywhere if you have any issues setting up the mod. AFTER reading the instructions, please. I’ve spent a lot of time on them, they answer a lot of the most basic setup questions.
This is a portrait/UI texture mod for Xenogears using Retroarch’s Beetle PSX HW core real-time texture replacement option.
There are separate versions of the mod for both the English and Japanese versions of the game.
これはRetroarchの「Beetle PSX HW」テクスチャ置換オプションを使用した、ゼノギアス向けテクスチャMODです。
英語版と日本語版のMODがある。
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It requires the Vulkan driver, so make sure your graphics card supports it. -
Duckstation does not have a * reliably working * equivalent to Retroarch’s texture replacement; please let me know if their texture dumping and replacement ever improves. [1] Overall, at the moment, it’s very messy. -
If you use this alongside a “Perfect Works Build” patched rom, do not select the “Face fixes (resize)”, “Face fixes (normal)”, or “PW Roni” patches. All of these things are fixed/changeable with texture replacement, but will break texture replacement if selected and then will require extra work in manually renaming every single portrait file to get them working again. Don’t waste your time, just uncheck those options if you’re using both mods simultaneously. -
It works on Steam Deck, but don’t ask me for details in setting that up, I don’t own one 
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Being a real-time texture replacer, it should work with any English version of XG, both base-game and modded/patched. Any fan-translated patch using the US version as a base should also display correctly, so long as it does not alter the portraits.
There’s a separate version for the Japanese version of the game. It may need some editing still with other characters’ UI (“Ether”/“Spells”/“Arcane”/etc) but for the most part its good to go in terms of battle UI. Let me know if you find any errors. -
I recommend reading the instructions txt files I included in the ZIP file.[2] -
Spoiler-free screenshots are at the bottom of this post, any potentially spoilery screenshots will be blurred. In the next post of this thread here under an expandable arrow I’ll go over the portraits in more detail; those will of course be spoiler-heavy.
This mod replaces every single character dialogue portrait, menu portrait, & every [3] battle portrait with their artwork equivalents. Each are cleaned up by hand or recreated by hand from scratch when there is no artwork equivalent.
There are what I refer to as “default” & “alt” (alternate) versions of portraits and UI elements.[4]
There are also non-canon alt portraits for various characters, just for fun.
Details on how to go about changing between default and alt textures can be found in one of the instruction files included in the ZIP.
It also replaces certain UI elements while keeping it true to the original look of the game; primarily to make it look cleaner and be easier on the eyes when playing on modern screens.
If there is anything you don’t like about it, like certain aspects of the UI, you can locate & remove/delete that file from the folder. Everything is optional.
If you’re using this for your first time playing through the game and don’t want to be spoiled be aware that a single glance through the folder or alternate portraits folders can quickly spoil you. There is one portrait in particular that will stand out, whether or not you’re familiar with the characters. It just so happens to also be one of the biggest spoilers in the game.
(〜￣▽￣)〜
Changes made:
General battle UI and on-foot-specific battle UI:
- Battle portraits [6]
- Circular battle palette, battle palette text, tags behind said text
- Purple/white misc text: “Combo”, “Return”, “Enter”, “Miss”, “EP”
- HP/DMG/heal/AP numbers
- HP/AP bars
- “Time”, “fuel”, “total damage”, AP numbers, “1(/2/3) point(s)”, “cancel end”
- ▲ ■ ● X button DeathBlow icons (includes an alt texture for a Nintendo ABXY button layout and one for an XBOX BAYX button layout)
- Bottom screen mid-DeathBlow ▲ ■ X icons [7]
- Combo 1-7 & Accept icons
Gear battle UI:
- “fuel” & fuel numbers
- “Fuel” popup (when using boost)
- Fuel bars (top and left)
- All green text/numbers
- Attack level numbers & ∞
- “power shut down”, “camera damaged”, “out of fuel”, etc, statuses
- Background UI elements: Black Gear menu backgrounds, top & bottom borders and their runes, triple red triangles, Gear “lock-on” UI [8]
All other changes:
- All dialogue portraits
- All menu portraits
- Red menu selection triangle
- All instances of red/purple selection diamonds, both horizontal & vertical
- Red/grey spheres (in the menu/loading screen)
- ▲ ■ ● X button DeathBlow menu icons (includes an alt texture for a Nintendo ABXY button layout and one for an XBOX BAYX button layout)
- Walk/Gear icons
- Load/save screen: “CARD 1”/“2” text, memory card icon, load/save bar/text
- Disc 1 & 2 maps (with alt colored versions; makes the area indicators harder to see though)
- NESW compass letters [9]
Portraits:
One note about settings:
I primarily play with Internal GPU Resolution set at 4x, but 8x makes the portraits as clear as they can be, seen in these screenshots.
The difference in clarity between 4x and 8x is pretty imperceptible overall, but will be noticeably clearer in 8x for those with a keen eye for clarity and bigger screens, I suppose. Both look great though.
Alternate beta-style battle/save-load/party select portraits:
Save/Load screen:
On-foot & Gear combat UI, unmodded vs modded:
Combo menu:
Menu & combat buttons:
Maps: [10]
Compass letters, menu portraits & R1/L1/Walk/Gear icons:[11], and an alternate menu selection arrow.
As it is now, every character portrait needs like 10+ duplicates and its spotty in terms of whether it’ll actually work or not when loading into a 3D map. Seems like it fails to work initially until you leave the area and re-enter, I hear? (someone’s been testing it and telling me how it’s been looking recently.) ↩︎
This includes information such as how to set up .cue and .m3u files, swapping discs, renaming the texture folder, Retroarch settings and Beetle PSX HW Core settings to get the mod working, settings suggestions for making a cleaner looking and faster playing XG (YMMV), and settings to fix certain emulation issues Ive come across (freezing on fast-forward, crackling audio during 3D/effects-heavy cutscenes/gameplay, blank screen during Rico flashback, etc). ↩︎
(almost
looking at you, Bart’s men) ↩︎Some characters have portraits edited from their original artwork to match their in-game sprite versions (i.e. unsmiling Citan dialogue). All portraits that this applies to are referred to as the mod’s “defaults”.
Some characters also have Perfect Works versions of their art portrait (i.e. light skinned Roni) that are referred to as the mod’s “PW alts”. ↩︎With any new updates, delete your old “-texture-replacements” folder and replace with the new. ↩︎
Except the one used for Bart’s men in a couple Gear fights; there is no artwork equivalent and its much smaller than dialogue portraits that also have no artwork equivalent, like Stein. A lot of liberties would have to be made to attempt to draw that accurately. I would need some other reference to go off of. ↩︎
Unfortunately, there’s no way to change the other mid-DB quadruple-button icons that I’m aware of. The texture doesn’t dump. ↩︎
Unfortunately, there’s no way to change the circular target part of this UI that I’m aware of. There’s also absolutely no way of replacing the triple red triangles’ black “backgrounds” due to its very nature- they aren’t textures, per se. The shape is dictated by the code, not by the image. It’s grabbing that black from a small area in the middle of the Gear status box texture, then tiles that area in that pixelated sideways arrow shape. ↩︎
Unfortunately, there’s no way to change the circular compass texture that I’m aware of. The texture doesn’t dump cleanly. ↩︎
Both disc 1 and disc 2 maps. Disc 1 featured here. ↩︎
Compass circle cannot be changed as it does not dump correctly. ↩︎
. Its PWB 0.4.6, the latest version. Under their version notes there’s “Rogue pixels on facesets have been fixed outside of the portrait mod.”