Xenosaga Pied Piper fan recreation (announcement and demo release)

CycloneFox

Member
Sep 23, 2022
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Hi!

I am currently working on a recreation of Pied Piper using the RPG Maker. Progress is relatively slow because I'm working on it alone in my freetime and also have a fulltime job, but I have already finished about one third of the whole game.

A lot of the backgrounds and sprites look a bit shabby because I'm using a lot of the filmed footage I can find online and you can imagine how that works. But I'm also progressively getting better at recreating my own graphics. But for now my main aim is to recreate a playable version with the story events as accurate as possible. (More about this in the Link below)

Link to the project page: Pied Piper on Itch.io


Here is the biggest stuff:
  • I'll release a demo of the game here right now. It features the first sequence of the game (of six)
  • The game is finally in English. But I also implemented a way to add localisations easily which the player can switch between on the fly inside the game. The demo has text in Japanese, English and German.
  • English.jpg
    Japanese.jpg
    German.jpg
  • I got the wonderful support of (フォレスト) Forest, who is known for his Pied Piper web manga and he made some really awesome art for me.
    sharon_watermark.jpg
  • The game is playable on PC, Mac and in your webbrowser with either a keyboard, a controller or touch controls. But I recommend playing the downloaded version with a controller.
  • You will be able to load the savegame of the demo into the finished game when that eventually releases. But I can't make any promises at this point.
If you are interested in helping me with this project, I have my work organized on a story board on codecks where I will be adding public spaces in the next few days where you can report bugs, leave suggestions or eventually even work on story cards with me.

I am mostly looking for:
  • Test players
  • Someone who can make music (currently I use the music coming with RPG Maker, which is alright but not very accurate to the original feel)
  • Someone who can help me with sprites and tilesets (or even improve my ugly ones)

Edit: Anyone can now participate and report bugs or make suggestions which will automatically move to my development board by entering bot commands (/bug or /suggestion) in the #suggestions-and-findings channel on Watte's discord: https://discord.gg/NGfPUyFSUf
 
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Awesome work! I hope it's okay, but I shared info for this on XenoChat 's social media accounts. This is really cool!
 
Wow, that's fantastic! Which version of RPG maker are you using? I'd potentially be interested in helping out with sprites/tile graphics if there's anything I can do to contribute.
 
Thank you all for all the positive feedback! It means a lot to me. To be honest I wasn’t expecting everyone to be so supportive and even offer help. I was fearing a lot of criticism. (which is alright too, of course if it’s constructive)

@wowbobwow This is actually still a very big problem I have with the problem. The RPG Maker music is alright, but having arrangements closer to the original would be ideal. This would be awesome. However please take into consideration that I will not make any money of this. If people actually want to donate, I would share that with every contributor. But for now, I can’t promise anything.

@Aidan Uzuki Thank you for sharing! :3

@Jintoki Wow! I sometimes listen to your podcast! :D Thank you for sharing. I feel honored.

@whyfish I’m using RPG Maker MZ. Mostly because of the ability to deploy a web-version. I can really use more people to work on sprites and tilesets. I will come back to you soon. But it takes a little more time to organize this properly. (same things that go for wowbobwow go for you too here) I have been using a codecks board to organize and document all my tasks and will soon invite people to help there.
 
Sharing content like this is why this website exists. So awesome, thanks so much for posting. It's also pretty technically impressive.

How'd you get it in browser? I haven't looked into it in forever, but is that capability built into recent versions of RPG maker now?
 
@jessiray Thank you for the kind words. It means a lot to me!

Getting it to run in the browser wasn't my merit. As you already guessed RPG Maker MZ is based on HTML 5 and Java Script and you are able to deploy projects to Windows, MacOS and Web. This was also the reason why I picked MZ to begin with. I thought this ability really helps with the accassibility. :D
 
@wowbobwow This is actually still a very big problem I have with the problem. The RPG Maker music is alright, but having arrangements closer to the original would be ideal. This would be awesome. However please take into consideration that I will not make any money of this. If people actually want to donate, I would share that with every contributor. But for now, I can’t promise anything.
I'm just interested in being a part of this! I'm not worried about money so that's not a factor for me.
 
omg I was totally gonna do this, too! I downloaded the youtube vids of the playthrough, and then got sidetracked on other xeo-projects. xD

LMK if you want any help!

ETA just saw the discord link but it's expired
 
omg I was totally gonna do this, too! I downloaded the youtube vids of the playthrough, and then got sidetracked on other xeo-projects. xD

LMK if you want any help!

ETA just saw the discord link but it's expired
Sorry for the broken Link! I edited it and it should work now.

Sounds great! I'll PM you my discord name and we can talk. :D Thank you for the offer.
 
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Can't wait, this is the only Xenosaga-related media I haven't played yet. Hopefully it will be completed and enjoy Jan Sauer's story.
 
I have a small update!
I updated the demo version of the game to better reflect the current state of the game in development. This is not a content update. It will still only comprise section 1 of chapter 1. But this version has updated sprites, various bug fixes and even a new music track composed by wowbobwow, which is also a recomposition of an original Pied Piper track. It will play two times near the end of the demo where a sad moment happens.

The update is on every version, Windows, Mac and Web and available under the same adress: https://cyclonefox.itch.io/pied-piper
You can also still use your old save-data.

And if you are wondering how far the project has gone by now, I'm almost at 50% of the full content. It's still a far way ahead, but doesn't seem so unreachable anymore!

Edit: The 50% mark is reached. The game is now half finished. :D
 
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Hey, thank you for this fantastic project !

I'm currently deep into the Xenosaga universe, and even though I've read the script for Pied Piper, I dreamed of finding a playable version... and I stumbled upon your project !
I can't wait to see the full version of the game, it's an invaluable contribution to the Xeno community :O

Wishing you all the best with the development !

Oh, and by the way, the demo is playable on Android via Joiplay, so we can play it on phone, as intended 😁
Screenshot_2024-10-10-13-01-43-364_cyou.joiplay.joiplay.jpg
 
Thank you!

I can't wait to share what has happened in the meantime. There are some exciting developments and the project is getting closer and closer to completion. But I want to keep some secrets for the release.
There is still a ton of work to do, but I can promise you that it will get finished soon.