Achievement Watcher Next

Goldberg Uplay setup (R1 and R2)

AW Next has a separate repair for compatible Ubisoft games using the Goldberg Uplay emulator. Official Ubisoft Connect games are never selected from a DLL name alone.

Ubisoft games call one of two generations of the Uplay API, and a game only ever loads the one its executable was linked against: roughly 2019 onward is R2 (upc_r2_loader64.dll), everything before that is R1 (uplay_r1_loader64.dll). Installing the wrong generation drops a DLL the game never opens, which is why AW Next reads the executable’s imports and repairs the generation the game actually uses. Both are the same emulator with the same achievement contract; the differences are the loader and config filenames, the [Uplay] section R1 uses instead of [Settings], and the %APPDATA%\R1 UplayEmu Saves root it writes to.

[!WARNING] The repair changes game files. Use it only with games you own.

What is required

AW Next must be able to:

1. identify the Ubisoft game and its installation;
2. match it to a Steam release, either from app/assets/uplay-steam.json or from a choice you confirm;
3. map the Steam achievement names to Ubisoft objective IDs;
4. prove the exact loader name and x86/x64 architecture used by the game.

If any proof is missing, the repair stops without guessing. This also prevents an official Ubisoft loader with a similar filename from being replaced.

Settings

Open Settings → Emulators → Ubisoft / Uplay R2. The main controls are:

_{The integrated repair package is verified before any game is touched}

• Automatically fix newly detected games;
• Repair detected Uplay R2 games, for one confirmed batch;
• Import or replace DLLs, for a newer local loader;
• Restore integrated DLLs, to return to the version shipped with AW Next.

Loader configuration stays automatic. AW Next selects the proven architecture and writes the required schema and configuration during repair; loader and INI options are not exposed in the app.

The four integrated DLLs are visible in app/resources/uplayR2/. A recovery archive is kept beside them in case antivirus software removes a loose DLL. When both are gone, or the archive cannot be read because it was quarantined mid-way, AW Next says so as an antivirus problem and offers to allow the folder and put the files back, rather than asking you to find a package on your disk. A manually selected DLL does not need a known SHA-256 fingerprint, but it must still be a valid achievement-capable Uplay R2 PE with a coherent name and architecture. The integrated x64 aliases use the July 2026 loader build; the x86 aliases remain on the June 2026 build.

The bundled files are checked by their hashes, PE architecture and achievement capability before they can be used by a repair.

Repair one game

1. Add the game library in Settings → Folders and scan it.
2. Open the game’s Game Health page.
3. Review Diagnose Uplay R2 setup.
4. Run Apply the Ubisoft achievement fix and launch the game once.

Game Health displays the resolved Steam AppID alongside loader, schema, configuration and save problems. If no automatic identity exists, its Uplay R2 repair button opens the same validated manual fallback as the context menu; after a successful repair the panel rebuilds its diagnosis.

The same transaction is used by the context menu, Game Health, automatic repair, Fix All, and the Uplay batch button.

Games missing from the built-in map

If the game is not in uplay-steam.json, AW Next first reuses the Ubisoft→Steam identity resolver already used for Steam artwork and global achievement percentages. A successful high-confidence catalog match promotes the Uplay R2 game into the normal Steam schema pipeline, so its achievement names, descriptions, icons and percentages all use the same resolved AppID.

Only when that automatic identity is unavailable does an interactive repair offer ranked Steam catalog matches. A steam_appid.txt found under the game folder is shown first as a hint, but is never trusted without your confirmation. AW Next fetches the selected Steam schema and verifies that every achievement name can be converted safely to a Ubisoft objective ID.

The loader rebuilds each key as AchKeyPrefix followed by the objective ID as a plain number, so the generated schema drops any leading zeros a Steam name carries: 001 is written as 1. A game whose names would then collide, two achievements sharing one objective ID, is reported unsupported rather than configured with an achievement silently missing.

When a Steam name carries no objective number at all, AW Next falls back to Ubisoft’s own data: Ubisoft Connect caches the achievement definitions of every product whose achievements page it has displayed, and those carry the real objective IDs. The two lists are joined on the achievement title, in any language the archive ships. This is what makes titles such as Brawlhalla or The Crew 2 configurable; without a cached archive they stay unsupported, because nothing on disk identifies their objectives. Opening the game’s achievements page in Ubisoft Connect once populates that cache.

Where the built-in map stops

The built-in map is a snapshot, so AW Next also reads two live sources and caches them: Ubisoft’s own public product catalogue (no account needed, and it carries the official name and boxart per product ID) and the community UPLAY_GAME_ID list. Together they name a product the shipped file has never heard of.

Pairing that product with a Steam release is then done by title, under a rule that refuses far more often than it answers, because a wrong pairing is not a cosmetic error: it would generate another game’s achievement list into this game’s folder, and the setup would validate while recording nonsense. The rule is that a single Steam game must carry the same title. A spelling slip resolves (“Frontier of Pandora” finds Frontiers of Pandora), an edition or a storefront suffix is ignored, but an older game is never taken for the newer one whose name contains it, and an edition Steam publishes as its own AppID is never folded into the base game. Anything it cannot settle is left to the built-in map or to Identify the game (Steam AppID).

The Ubisoft product ID itself never depends on the built-in map. The game states it to the loader on startup, so AW Next reads it back out of upc_r1.log / upc_r2.log, and falls back to a GameUplayId a repack put in the INI. That ID is what every save folder is named after, so a title released after the shipped table was written is still watched in the right place. Whatever pairing is resolved that way is remembered in cfg/uplay-r2-mappings.json, which every later lookup reads first

• the built-in map is a fast start, not the mechanism.

A manual mapping is written to cfg/uplay-r2-mappings.json only after its Steam schema passes validation; when it is chosen during a repair, the transaction must also succeed first. It is scoped to that exact installation folder. Use Identify the game (Steam AppID) in the game’s right-click menu to replace a saved choice. Conflicting choices for the same Ubisoft product fail closed unless the exact installation folder identifies which one applies.

What changes

The repair installs only the loader proved by the game, generates achievements_schema.json, and updates both config names of that generation (upc_r2.ini and uplay_r2.ini, or upc_r1.ini and uplay_r1.ini). Modern loaders redirect achievement data into %APPDATA%\GSE Saves\<steamAppid>; older compatible loaders keep their own save folder (%APPDATA%\Goldberg UplayEmu Saves\<uplayId> for R2, %APPDATA%\R1 UplayEmu Saves\<uplayId> for R1) and AW Next reads and watches all three.

Every changed DLL, schema, and INI is snapshotted under <game>\.aw-backups\<timestamp>\. Validation runs after the write and restores that snapshot automatically if anything fails. Repeating an identical repair is a no-op.

Achievements remain at 0%

• Run Diagnose Uplay R2 setup again and check the reported runtime folder.
• Reapply the repair after a game update; updates often remove the schema or reset Achievements = 0.
• Run Diagnose again: when nothing has unlocked yet it reads the loader’s own log and says which of the two possible causes applies, either that the game never asked the emulator for an achievement, or that it asked using an objective number the schema does not carry.
• That log is what Game Health reads to tell those two apart, so Diagnostic logging in Settings → Emulators → Ubisoft / Uplay R2 is on by default. You can also read upc_r2.log (or upc_r1.log) beside the loader DLL yourself: every objective number the game asks for is recorded there. The loader appends to it forever, so AW Next deletes it once it passes 25 MB.
• When the log shows the game asked for nothing at all, Game Health offers Enable achievements offline - see below.
• Check %APPDATA%\Achievement Watcher Next\logs\parser.log.

A game that never asks for an achievement

Some Ubisoft titles ask the loader for the Ubisoft session first, and the loader answers from a [Settings] Ticket key it leaves empty. Those games read that emptiness as signed out and never call the achievement API at all: the setup validates, the log records no achievement call, and nothing is ever recorded. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora behaves this way.

When the log proves that, and only then, Game Health offers Enable achievements offline. It adds that one key to the INI beside the game and changes nothing else. The value is a placeholder shaped like a session token, not a real Ubisoft session: no account is involved, nothing is signed and nothing is sent anywhere. It only gets a game that checks whether a token exists past that check.

It is never written automatically, because the emulator’s authors warn that a token which is not legitimate breaks some games, and breaking a game that works would be worse.

Launch the game once after switching it on. Until you have, the row reads Offline achievements on, launch the game once and nothing is judged: the loader’s log still holds the run from before. The button beside it then reads Turn offline achievements off, which takes the key back out and leaves the game believing it is signed out again.

Only loaders that actually read the key are offered this. R1 builds do not have it - their INI carries an unrelated TickedId instead - and a Ticket line an older AW Next wrote into such a folder is removed on sight, since it never did anything there.

Games whose Steam achievements do not follow a safe Steam-to-Ubisoft objective-ID convention remain unsupported. See the Goldberg / GBE guide for the Steam equivalent.

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