Uplay R1/R2 reference

How AW Next identifies, repairs and reads Ubisoft games running the Goldberg Uplay emulator. For contributors and for anyone debugging a setup. The user guide is Uplay setup.

On this page

• The two generations
• What a repair must prove
• Identity resolution
• Achievement keys
• What a repair writes
• The loader log
• Offline achievements (the Ticket key)

The two generations

A game loads only the Uplay API generation its executable was linked against. AW Next reads the executable’s imports and repairs that generation, never the other one.

	R2 (roughly 2019 onward)	R1 (older titles)
Loader	upc_r2_loader64.dll / upc_r2_loader.dll	uplay_r1_loader64.dll / uplay_r1_loader.dll
Config files	upc_r2.ini and uplay_r2.ini	upc_r1.ini and uplay_r1.ini
Config section	[Settings]	[Uplay]
Own save root	%APPDATA%\Goldberg UplayEmu Saves\<uplayId>	%APPDATA%\R1 UplayEmu Saves\<uplayId>
Loader log	upc_r2.log	upc_r1.log

Modern loaders redirect achievement data to %APPDATA%\GSE Saves\<steamAppid>; older builds keep their own root. AW Next reads and watches all three.

What a repair must prove

The repair stops without guessing unless it can:

1. identify the Ubisoft game and its installation;
2. match it to a Steam release, from app/assets/uplay-steam.json or from a choice the user confirms;
3. map every Steam achievement name to a Ubisoft objective ID;
4. prove the exact loader name and x86/x64 architecture the game uses.

This is also what keeps an official Ubisoft loader with a similar filename from being replaced. Official Ubisoft Connect installs are never selected from a DLL name alone.

Identity resolution

In order:

1. cfg/uplay-r2-mappings.json - pairings resolved or confirmed earlier, read first.
2. app/assets/uplay-steam.json - the shipped snapshot.
3. The Ubisoft to Steam resolver shared with artwork and rarity. It reads Ubisoft’s public product catalogue (no account; official name and boxart per product ID) and the community UPLAY_GAME_ID list, then pairs by title under a strict rule: a single Steam game with the same title. Spelling slips and edition or storefront suffixes are tolerated; an older game is never taken for a newer one whose name contains it, and an edition Steam sells as its own AppID is never folded into the base game.
4. An interactive choice among ranked Steam catalogue matches. A steam_appid.txt in the game folder is shown first as a hint, never trusted without confirmation.

The Ubisoft product ID never depends on the map: the game states it to the loader at startup, so AW Next reads it back from the loader log, falling back to a GameUplayId a repack wrote into the INI. Every save folder is named after that ID.

A manual mapping is saved only after its Steam schema passes validation (and, during a repair, after the transaction succeeds). It is scoped to that installation folder. Conflicting choices for one product fail closed unless the folder decides. Identify the game (Steam AppID) in the right-click menu replaces a saved choice.

Achievement keys

The loader rebuilds each key as AchKeyPrefix followed by the objective ID as a plain number, so the generated schema drops leading zeros: Steam’s 001 becomes 1. A game whose names would then collide (two achievements on one objective ID) is reported unsupported instead of configured with an achievement missing.

When a Steam name carries no objective number, AW Next falls back to the achievement definitions Ubisoft Connect caches for any product whose achievements page it has shown, joined on the title in any language the archive ships. That is what makes titles such as Brawlhalla or The Crew 2 configurable; without the cached archive they stay unsupported. Opening the game’s achievements page in Ubisoft Connect once fills that cache.

What a repair writes

• The loader proved by the game, from the four integrated DLLs in app/resources/uplayR2/ (checked by hash, PE architecture and achievement capability) or a DLL the user imported (no known hash needed, but it must be a valid, achievement-capable loader with a coherent name and architecture).
• achievements_schema.json.
• Both config files of that generation.

Every changed DLL, schema and INI is snapshotted under <game>\.aw-backups\<timestamp>\. Validation runs after the write and restores the snapshot if anything fails. An identical repair is a no-op. The same transaction backs the context menu, Game Health, automatic repair, Fix All and the batch button.

A recovery archive sits beside the integrated DLLs in case an antivirus removes one. When both are gone or the archive is quarantined mid-read, the app reports an antivirus problem and offers to allow the folder and restore the files.

The loader log

Game Health reads upc_r1.log / upc_r2.log beside the loader to tell apart the two reasons nothing unlocks: the game never asked for an achievement, or it asked for an objective number the schema does not carry. Diagnostic logging is therefore on by default. The loader appends forever, so AW Next deletes the log past 25 MB.

Offline achievements (the Ticket key)

Some titles ask for the Ubisoft session first; the loader answers from a [Settings] Ticket key it leaves empty, the game reads that as signed out and never calls the achievement API (Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora does this). Only when the log proves it does Game Health offer Enable achievements offline, which writes a placeholder shaped like a session token into that key and nothing else. No account is involved and nothing is sent. It is never automatic, since the emulator’s authors warn a non-legitimate token breaks some games. R1 builds do not read the key (their TickedId is unrelated), so it is never offered there, and a Ticket line an older AW Next wrote into an R1 folder is removed.

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