Emulator ‐ Common Issues - BrianAllred/Unofficial-HDR-Troubleshooting-Wiki GitHub Wiki

Common Issues on Emulator

Citrusy emulators

The game hitches / stutters badly for a while, then it's fine

Solution

Play the game more to build the shader cache. Only 1-4 player modes.

Explanation

Animation shaders are built while the emulator plays the game. It has to do this because all the differences in players' hardware configurations means it needs to account for different GPUs and drivers, and the easiest way to do this is to build the shaders when needed. The shaders are cached, though, so once they're built, they won't need to build again (for that specific animation + GPU + driver combo).

1-4 player modes are specified because 5+ player modes use different, lower quality shaders.

The game doesn't load / the emulator immediately crashes

Solutions

  1. Make sure you have Ultimate updated to version 13.0.4, or
  2. Make sure all of your non-HDR plugins are updated for 13.0.4, or
  3. Make sure the emulator is using the correct GPU in graphics settings
    • You may need to deselect your GPU, save, and then reselect it
    • Or switch to OpenGL, save, and then switch back to Vulkan
  4. If it's still an issue, right click Smash -> remove -> remove all transferable pipeline caches

Explanations

  1. HDR requires 13.0.4
  2. 13.0.4 requires updated plugins
  3. Sometimes the emulator gets confused about what GPU it's supposed to use, especially in multi-GPU systems or in cases when you copy an install/config to another machine
  4. Sometimes when HDR updates or you install a new GPU driver, the old shader cache becomes corrupted

I switched emulator forks and now my game won't load

Solutions

  1. Reinstall the update (and DLC, if any) files, or
  2. Delete the shader cache

Explanations

  1. I don't really have one for this. Sometimes it's just a problem. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
  2. Rarely, shaders can be incompatible between emulator forks.

I get blinded by bright light effects on certain stages

Solutions

  1. Switch to a modern fork, or
  2. Switch to Linux, or
  3. Switch to Nvidia

Explanation

This is an issue that only exists on old emulators when using AMD GPUs on Windows. It doesn't exist on Linux, and it doesn't exist on old emulators on Windows when using Nvidia GPUs.

I enabled/disabled SDMC and now the emulator won't launch

Solution

Clear your shader cache: right click Smash -> remove -> remove all transferable pipeline caches.

Explanation

Switching between vanilla Ult, HDR, and/or other conversion mods can sometimes corrupt shaders depending on animation and graphics differences.

Arcadia doesn't load / work properly

Solution

There isn't one, unfortunately.

Explanation

Arcadia just doesn't function well or at all in the emulator. Mod management should be done manually.

I can't select my GPU when Vulkan backend is selected

Solution

  1. Update / reinstall your GPU drivers
  2. Your GPU is too old / underpowered

Explanation

  1. Pretty straightforward - broken and/or old drivers
  2. Integrated GPUs and GPUs older than Nvidia GTX 1xxx series or AMD RX Vega series are not good devices for the emulator

It's always loading vanilla Ult

Solutions

  1. Right click Smash -> Properties -> make sure SDMC is checked, or
  2. Download this file and place it in the sdmc/ultimate/arcropolis/config/<random numbers>/<random numbers>/ folders, or
  3. Try a fresh emulator install

Explanations

  1. The SDMC check box allows the game to see what's in the sdmc folder, where the mods are, so it needs to be checked
  2. On certain systems, usually any Linux and non-US English Windows systems, the legacy_discovery file is required
  3. I have no idea about this one, sometimes stuff just gets messed up

Dragony emulator issues

The emulator crashes immediately when launching the game

Solutions

  1. Make sure Ultimate is on update 13.0.4 (remove and re-add the update, sometimes helps), or
  2. Make sure you don't have any unsupported mods (moveset mods, for example)

Explanations

  1. Sometimes the emulator gets confused and loses the update data, for some reason
  2. The emulator doesn't support many of the applets that Arcropolis and skyline use to report issues and crashes, so if there's an issue, it just won't load

I get kicked out of the stage select or character select screens and can't proceed into a game / The game just randomly crashes

Solution

  1. In the emulator, right click Smash
  2. Click Create/Edit custom configuration (if you don't see this option, you should update your emulator)
  3. Click CPU
  4. Uncheck PPTC
  5. Click Save
  6. Right click Smash
  7. Click Cache Management
  8. Click Purge PPTC cache

Explanation

PPTC is a feature that caches certain emulator instructions for faster execution. However, it's currently incompatible with HDR for unknown reasons.

Shared issues

I get an error telling me to turn off Airplane Mode

Solution

Make sure you have a network device selected in your emulator's settings.

Explanation

If no network device is selected, then the game thinks Airplane Mode is activated.

Moves and characters don't have any effects

See here.

I get a mod conflict when launching the game

See here.

I get a skyline panic with error: Result code 514

See here.

Reinstallation page for emulators here.

My game crashes when I start a match

See here.

I can't jump / characters have no gravity

See here.

My game behaves oddly, and I just updated HDR and/or added and/or removed non-HDR mods

See here.

I need to reset the HDR launcher's configuration

Solution

On Windows

  1. Copy the following path: %appdata%\..\local\programs\hdr-launcher
  2. On your keyboard, WinKey+R
  3. Paste the previous path into the box and hit Enter
  4. Delete the launcher-config.json file
  5. Reopen the launcher

On Linux (make sure you're using launcher version 0.7.1 or newer)

  1. Open a terminal
  2. Enter the command rm -f ~/.config/hdr-launcher/launcher-config.json
  3. Reopen the launcher

I'm getting desyncs even though the launcher says that I'm on the right HDR version and all the files verified correctly

Solution

Your launcher is probably misconfigured. This is unfortunately very common.

On Windows

  1. Copy the following path: %appdata%\..\local\programs\hdr-launcher
  2. On your keyboard, WinKey+R
  3. Paste the previous path into the box and hit Enter
  4. In this folder, right click launcher-config (or launcher-config.json, if you have file extensions enabled) and edit in Notepad (or any other text editor)
  5. Ensure the sdcardPath value ends in sdmc or sdcard (depending on your emulator)

On Linux (make sure you're using launcher version 0.7.1 or newer)

  1. Open a terminal
    1. If you're on Steam Deck or using KDE/Plasma, type kate ~/.config/hdr-launcher/launcher-config.json and hit Enter
    2. If you're using Gnome, type gedit ~/.config/hdr-launcher/launcher-config.json and hit Enter
  2. Ensure the sdcardPath value ends in sdmc or sdcard (depending on your emulator)

Explanation

It's actually really easy to misconfigure the launcher because the initial set-up steps aren't terribly intuitive. And the launcher isn't smart enough to know you didn't select the right folder.