ok seen as a few people have been asking about this an I seem to be one of the rare few to get this game backed up and working. I have put together a step by step guide of what i did to get it working. my guide draws on the existing tutorials thats available and hopefully simplifies it. and if anybody needs a copy of the guide or the ripkit go to www.streamload.com/raiden300
I only just completed the game last week and advise any rpg fans to persevere with this as its well worth it. ok here it is

Xenosaga episode 1 3 disc rebuild tutorial

First of all, don’t take this tutorial as the be-all and end-all. This is what worked for me but it may not for you. In my situation the problem with the rebuild sorely lied with the disc1 ISO. The ISO’s made from the kit for disc2 and 3 worked fine first time for me.

What you need.

1. Very good quality media. I can’t stress enough how important good media is with this game. I used Verbatim dvd+r 4.7gb.

2. The ripkit. Just to clear up. The ripkit contains the following
The KIT folder. Which should contain the following files

X1.ims
X2.ims
X3.ims
X1.iml
X2.iml
X3.iml
Splitoff.exe
Makeppf3.exe
Iml2iso.exe
Go.bat (the most important file in the kit)
Gd3-iml2iso.exe
Dvd3t.ppf
Dvd2t.ppf
Dvd1t.ppf
Dummy
Check.ppf
Applyppf3.exe

The kit also contains two text files for the original tutorial. Handy to have for reference.

3. Apache 2
4. CD/DVD ROM Generator.
5. An awful lot of hard drive space. Anything less than 18-20 GB is a bad idea.
6. A hell of a lot of patience.

THE PROCESS

1. First thing to do is to extract the KIT folder and to keep things simple place it in the root of the c: drive.
2. Create an empty folder called XENO also in the root of the c: drive.
3. Open up apache 2. Open the xenosaga.iso file (or whatever you have it called)
On the left menu the CD icon will prob say no_label. Right click on that and select extract all. (NB: Isobuster is no good for this step, as it can’t see both layers.) you can extract to any folder you wish but ultimately the extracted files will need to be put in the XENO folder in the root of the c drive. This will take a while even with powerful machines but once the first lot of files are extracted, right click on the no_label icon and select switch layers. Right click on no_label again and select extract all and extract these files to same location.
4. Ok so once all the files have been extracted from the ISO. You need to place the extracted files in the XENO folder. Now if you extracted the files directly to this folder then when you open the folder you will see a sub-folder called No_Label with the files contained within. This is wrong. THERE CAN BE NO SUB-FODLER within XENO. Basically when you open XENO you only want to see all the extracted files Xenosaga1, Xenosaga2, etc.
5. Ok so the situation now should be in the root of the c: drive you have the KIT folder and the XENO folder with all the extracted files. Now open the KIT folder and double click the go.bat file. When the doss prompt appears just press any key. After a few minutes the iml2iso program pops up. Click on the button beside the IML file field, which currently says Test.IML. Browse to the KIT folder and select the x1.iml file. Then click start. Sit back while the program builds the disc 1 ISO.
6. Once the ISO has been built, click exit. The go.bat file will continue with the process. Pretty soon the iml2iso pops up again. Time to build the disc2 ISO. Like before select the iml file, which this time is x2.iml, and click start.
7. Once the disc 2 ISO is done click exit and the go.bat will do its thing and iml2iso pops up one last time. This bit is quicker as disc3 is only 2 gigs. Like before pick x3.iml and click start.
8. Once the disc3 ISO is complete click exit and go.bat finishes. What you should have now is the XENO folder will be exactly the same. The last steps in go.bat put all the files back as they were. In the KIT folder you should have 3 ISO files. X1.iso, x2.iso and x3.iso. X1 and x2 should be around 4.5 gigs and x3 around 2 gigs.
9. For me this is where the trouble began. The x1.iso, no matter how I burned it would not boot, but that’s not to say it won’t work for others. I am using swap magic 3.6, but people with HD advance and mod chips might have better luck. I never had trouble with x2.iso and x3.iso so I’m going to assume they work fine for others as well. And burning the ISO’s must be done with NERO and burned at 4x. And yes I tried other burners but NERO was the only thing that gave me something that would boot.
10. My advice to people is to start off and burn x1.iso using NERO and try and boot, even if you are using swap magic, different media and different ps2 versions will prob yield different results. If however you run in to the same trouble I did and the burned disc 1 only gives a black screen or boots to the main menu and when you try and start a game the game freezes, try the following.
11. Ok now like I said this is not guaranteed to work, its just what worked for me so I’m hoping it works for others. You should still have the XENO and KIT folders as they were. Start the process again by double clicking go.bat.
12. The important thing this time is when iml2iso pops up. Is to straight away close the go.bat do window and then close the iml2.iso window. The situation now is that the files in XENO are prepped for the disc1 build but you need to now use CD/dvd generator to do so.
13. Open CD/dvd gen., and create a new project. The difference with this build is we are going to use a different file tree to the one the kit provides. If you don’t know how to build an ISO with this prog refer to other guides, I’m not going to go into it. The files in the XENO folder need to be added to the project in the following order


IOP\ATAD.IRX
IOP\DEV9.IRX
IOP\HDD.IRX
IOP\IOPRP24D.IMG
IOP\LIBSD.IRX
IOP\MCMAN.IRX
IOP\MCSERV.IRX
IOP\PADMAN.IRX
IOP\PFS.IRX
IOP\RSSD.IRX
IOP\SIO2MAN.IRX
IOP\SSD.IRX
OV01.OVL
OV02.OVL
OV10.OVL
OV11.OVL
OV12.OVL
SLUS_204.69
SYSTEM.CNF
XENOSAGA.00
XENOSAGA.01
XENOSAGA.02
XENOSAGA.10
XENOSAGA.11
XENOSAGA.12
XENOSAGA.20
XENOSAGA.21
XENOSAGA.22
XENOSAGA.23
XENOSAGA.24

The critical things to note here is first the order SLUS_204.69 and SYSTEM.CNF
Some guides like the one on swapmagicfix.com have these the other way round with SYSTEM.CNF first but this does not work. Doing it with SLUS_204.69 is what got mine working so I suggest you keep it this way? Also make sure that files XENOSAGA.22, XENOSAGA.23, and XENOSAGA.24 are all dummy files meaning they are no more than 1kb in size. If one of them are not then something has gone wrong and you need to delete the contents of the XENO folder and extract the files from the ISO and start again. Under the volume tab in CD/dvd gen. put SLUS 20469 as the disc name. Producer should be PLAYSTATION and
License area America. Do the usual with CD/dvd gen. so it outputs the .001, .002 files etc. and like normal use dos to merge these to a single ISO (or use another program to build the ISO from the outputted .iml file). Burn the ISO with NERO and 4x and hopefully like me you now have a playable game.



NOTES.

1. First of all do not waste your time applying the patch on swapmagicfix.com for this game. It is not needed to boot and actually ruins a perfectly good ISO. My first bootable disc 1 had issues with sound and I applied this patch and it would no longer boot.
2. If you are running short on HD space then you can do this but it will take longer as you will need to do one ISO at a time, delete all the files and start again.
3. I know this is common sense but this process can get tricky so make sure to keep a backup of the original ISO file.
4. This Tutorial is written by me but without the makers of the ripkit and accompanying text files I never would have figured this out and so they deserve most of the credit.
5. If after following the above you are getting nowhere, in that not even the disc2 and disc3 ISO’s will boot I’m afraid I cant help you. I got mine to work simply through trial and error. Ill help if I can but if none of the discs boot you are prob out of luck.
6. If However you can get disc2 and disc3 to boot but no luck with disc1 then follow my example and keep trying different things. My working disc1 was burned 3 times with the same ISO and only the third one worked. I would suggest if your disc1 build gets as far as the menu at least, to try rebuilding the disc1 ISO using slight variations of the file tree and hope for the best. That’s what I did.
7. If you are one of the lucky ones to get the game working then the discs need to be swapped at the following points. Now I don’t mean literally swap, when you reach the following areas make sure to save and shut down the ps2 and boot the game with the next disc and continue.

Disc1 – Disc2. When you arrive at the dock colony for the first time. Save the game after the cutscenes take place and you are just about to leave the colony. Start playing off of disc 2 at this point. If you leave the dock colony while still using disc 1 the game will freeze as it cant find the next cutscene, as its on disc 2.

Disc2 – Disc 3. When you enter the Song of Nephilim, after an initial cutscene you reach a room with an elevator with explodable boxes, this is the point to change to disc 3.

8. The clever thing about the kit is it doesn’t split the whole the whole game into three parts, it just splits up the cutscenes. So there is a chance the swap points may vary slightly. Basically crashing or freezing before or during cutscenes is a sign to move on to the next disc.

9. Because this game was never designed to be played this way crashes are a possibility so I urge you to save often.

Would that KIT work with Xenosaga Reloaded or the original JAP version of Xenosaga? I presume not.
I'm having trouble trying to play the Import Version of Xenosaga with my USA PS2.
Any help/advise will be appreciated.

Thanks

i can only comment about the us version. is it the reloaded or jap version you have. file trees would prob be different in the reloaded version , jap maybe the same. i would first of all suggest popping your xenosaga cd in your pc and use isobuster or apache to see what the file tree looks like. if the files are the same as i have listed give the tutorial a go.
what precisely is the problem, can you even get the game to boot

I have both the original JAP and Reloaded (yeah, i'm a big fan)

But I'm trying to make Reloaded work.
What I did is make an ISO of the game in my HD using DVD Decrypter, then transferred the ISO to my ps2 HD with hdl_dump. The game starts, I can see the menu, but whenever I choose New game, a black screen comes up and that's it. I can still soft-reset and try again, so the game doesn't crash, but what I believe happened is it's trying to read the 2nd layer.

Now, the ISO is 8.5 GB, but I'm not sure if it contains the second layer or not. I tried seeing the second layer with Apache 2.0, but it doesn't show any files. I think Apache 2.0 is not working. I tried looking for Apache v1.1 and couldn't find it.

The filenames are all the same, except for the ELF file (SLPS_290.05)
But I can only see up to XENOSAGA.13, I pressume the others are in the second layer.

yeah they are. the latest hd advance has dual layer support if you want to try that. other than that you have to find some way to extract both layers and follow the guide.

excuse me but once you used go.bat how should I burn it using Nero? and what options do I chose

ok put simply what the go.bat file does is split up the files that contain the cutscenes and then when the iml2iso screen pops up , that is used to build the iso files for the three individual discs. so when go.bat is finished( this means that on three occassions when go.bat was running iml2iso pops up and you select the relevant iml file and click start), look in the KIT folder. there should be three iso files. x1.iso ,x2.iso and x3.iso. these are the files that need to be burned by Nero for each disc. open up Nero burning rom , if the wizard pops up like normal cancel it. now click on the recorder tab and select burn image.



only option you need to change is speed to 4x.
do this for each individual iso

OK, I tried your method, and you're right.

I burned the x1 image of the first disc that was created after running the kit, and it didn't work.

Then I tried what you said, Adding all the files with DVD Generator and it worked. I mean, the game started, at least, but it crashed at the same place after I select new game (all the missing files were dummies).

I believe the image I created doesn't have the second layer, because I tried also with HDAdvance 3.0 and it crashed at the same place. Somehow my computer doesn't read the second layer. I tried with Apache 2.0 and Apache 1.0, neither of them worked.

If only I could read the second layer...

you guys should try apache3 it reads the second layer for sure i think.

xenoph that sounds about right. the second layer contains all the files xenosaga.20 to xenosaga.24, these are the files which go.bat splits up and rejoins so logically they contain the cutscenes, which is why when you start a new game it cant find the intro movie. how old is your dvd burner. if its pretty old a reinstall or driver update might allow it to read the second layer. obviously if your rebuilt game using this method boots to menu this is all thats preventing you from playing the game

what version is your Nero because my set out is different from yours.

version 6. if the set out is different just check each of the menus in your Nero. there is bound to be something similar to burn image. i do recall it was different in my older version. cant remember exactly what it said. i would suggest typing into google "burn iso with Nero Vxx" and put your version number instead of xx. should find the answer

Sorry but I have a question when you are suppose to change disks to disk 2 can I change it to the original disk to load instead.

what do you mean, original disc. the disc 1 rebuild. and the swap points for the game are in the notes at the bottom of the guide

This is starting to irratate me as I wasted 12 disks and all off them loads with swap magic but even the new game and load menu does not come up what am I doing wrong to burn this game.

As another question can I load up disk 1 and then swith it to the official disk as I have bought it but as I live in the UK I can't play it. Stupid PAL and NTSC :(

i know the feeling man. i went through 25 discs before i got a working disc 1. the original disc you imported is useless because swap magic has no support for dual layer discs. what version of swap magic are you using? how far does the game boot when you try it now

Sorry raiden I am not questioning your tutorial but I was wondering is your file tree correct and the exact as when your iso worked when it was burnt onto disk. As there are files on the extract of the iso not on the file tree like xenosaga.13 so it could just be you left it out or something.

Excuse me if Im wrong and that your file tree was correct so this means that when its burnt with Nero the chances of it working is not 100% but random as to when the burnt disk works.

Sorry raiden300 but what size was your working xenosaga disk 1?

ok first off. feel free to question my guide. like i said its just what worked for me its not written in stone. to answer the first question the file tree in the guide is exactly how it is in my working disc1. i even checked my disc1 with isobuster to confirm. but feel free to try things like switching the position of system.cnf and slus_204.69. you could even try omitting the dummy files from the end. if my guide does not work for but you get something thats half booting chances are using different file trees will give you a working game. thats what i did. the tutorial i was working off gave me squat so i changed it around.

and my disc1 iso is 4.16 gb

Well that weird my iso with the exact file tree as yours have a 4.33 gigs iso maybe I done something wrong. and also does it have to be burnt with Nero? does DVD Decrypter work just as good

Excuse me raiden300 I think I might know what im doing wrong can you tell me step by step on how to "do the usual with CD/dvd gen. so it outputs the .001, .002 files etc."

Also when you said "like normal use dos to merge these to a single ISO (or use another program to build the ISO from the outputted .iml file)." Is iml2iso good for doing this step

ok first off like i said try different things but dvd decryptor never once gave me anything that would boot to even the main menu. i want to help you cos i know how frustrated i got. so lets compare both situations.

first off what version of swap magic do you have
and what media are you using.

these are more critical factors than you think.secondly about cd/dvd gen and building the iso. there are other ways how to do it but to eliminate as many factors as possible with your situation this is exactly how i did it.

open cd/dvd gen. (i have ver 1.50. i suggest you have the same)
select create new project
select middle option dvd-rom master disc.
this gives you the screen where you drag and drop the files from the XENO folder in the order they are listed in the file tree. make sure in the case of the IOP folder that all its files are present and in the correct order
ok so once you dragged and dropped the files in the order, you need to then click on the Volume tab.
three pieces of info need to be entered. under disc name the first box should be SLUS and the second 20469.
under License Area select America. and in Producer name type
PLAYSTATION.
now click the record button (top right)
you will get two error msgs. ignore them and just ok them.
you will be asked to save the .iml file. call it something like xeno.iml and save to root of c:drive.
the recording window pops up now
click on file and click on export image
you now have to save the .lst file . save to root of c: and call it xeno.lst.
now cd/dvd will go through the process of exporting the files xeno.001, xeno.002 etc to the root of the c: drive.
1 thing to note here. if this process does take a very long time, 30 min at least, something is wrong.
ok once finished check the root of c:
if there are not 4 files here ,xeno.000 xeno.001 xeno.002 xeno.003
something has gone wrong. if the 4 are there make sure the first 3 are all the same size of just over a gig and xeno.003 is a few hundred megs.
ok if all is correct so far, cd/dvd gen has done its job.now open dos
in dos change the directory to c:\
we now use a dos command to join the 4 files together to form the iso, the command is
copy /b xeno.000 + xeno.001 + xeno.002 + xeno.003 xeno.iso
this should also take the bones of 40 minutes to do. the end result should be a 4.33gb iso called xeno.iso in the root of the c:drive.
now burn this iso with Nero at 4x.
i say Nero but depending on your type of media dvd decryptor may be worth a shot. different media will always give different results.

if you use Nero and you get nothing then use dvd decryptor, at least then we can compare the 2 resulting discs.

if you are still having trouble then i need to know how far the iso you just burned boots. does it even get to the main menu. if so does it allow you to select load game and bring you to the memory card screen. if it does and the game still crashes when you select new game this is actually a good sign, its something we can work on.

one last thing if the above does not even give you something that boots to the main menu, then i need you to try burning the disc2 or disc3 iso the kit outputs, and see if you can get those to boot to main menu and browse your mem card. disc3 is smaller so i suggest trying that one.

i know there is a lot in this post, but the more info i can gather on your situation the better i can advise

When I press record the message execute error: cd/dvd recorder unit controller come up so I think there is something wrong. So can you please inform me where you got yours please.

Don't worry got it to work and the the weird thing was that there was 4 xenosaga files after that xenosaga.000,xenosaga.001, xenosaga.002, xenosaga.003 and xenosaga.004.

I joined as you say of only 000, 001, 002 and 003 but the result was only a 3.99 gig file so then I tried all five files which resulted in a 4.33 gig iso so I take it it was all five files and that you had a typo error.

I then tried burning Nero and DVD Decrypter both with 4x speed and both booted then a immediate black screen. So that the main menu didn't even come up. Can you please help me as I tried repeating burning the same iso and I did completely follow your instructions.

I have another question I have a PAL swap magic disk of version 3.6 and the media I use is Maxell DVD-R. I want to know when it worked for you how did you load it. Did you use normal boot or special boot and did you have to change the video mode to PAL or NTSC

Raiden300 I finally had some results I am now able to boot up the the game and the main menu comes up and the load game memory card screen come up but once I pressed new game a black screen came up and I can pause and go to the menu but the game freezes there.

I did the same precedure you did but with a experimental file tree it was:

Xenosaga 02
ovo2.ovl
ovo10.ovl
ovo11.ovl
ovo12.ovl
slus-204.69
system.cnf
xenosaga 00
xenosaga 01
ovo1.ovl
xenosaga 10
xenosaga 11
xenosaga 12
xenosaga 20
xenosaga 21
xenosaga 22
xenosaga 23
xenosaga 24
IOP folder in your order

Can you please help me?