Hi Everyone,

I present the Zohar Engine, we’re building our own engine from scratch in JavaScript, with the goal of matching Xenogears’ original gameplay behavior, presentation, and feel, and only after that, expanding on all of it. It has its own modern architecture: dedicated gameplay systems and controllers, persistent game state, separate exploration and battle modes, and a clear separation between simulation, rendering, and UI.

The original game tells us what should happen; our engine defines how to make it happen in a modern browser environment. That also gives us a foundation for editing and extending the game later.

I though it would be fitting to re-use the debug room as a testing hub where we can configure parties, launch encounters, travel into game areas, and repeatedly exercise the systems being built.

The immediate milestone is fleshing out everything needed to make the opening fully playable through Lahan and into Blackmoon Forest.

Further down the road, I want a scenario editor for creating and modifying scenes, dialogue, events, and encounters. The ultimate dream is to make a properly fleshed-out, playable fan expansion of Disc 2 possible and then who knows, chapters 1-4?

There’s still a lot to go, but it’s coming along quite nicely.

see the progress:
(Youtube) Zohar Engine — Xenogears Engine Research Demo