Achievement do not unlock

Achievement do not unlock / Achievement file is empty or doesn't exist

Probably one of the most common issue you will encounter.

The problem

This application is not some sort of magical 'achievement enabler'. It just reads data from files in your system !
If there is none or it's empty even after unlocking an achievement then there isn't much AW can do about it ...
So you should ask yourself "why is it failing to dump achievement into a file" and "which emulator game x is using" instead of complaining that "game x isn't working".

💡 You will often have this issue (empty file) with the codex Steam emulator.

⚠️ Note that some emu do not work out of the box by themselves :
Goldberg Steam Emu and EMPRESS's Goldberg Steam Emu for example need to be fed with the achievements metadata (description, name, icons, etc) in the steam_settings folder in order to work more info.

Solution / Workaround

When this situation arises your best bet is to replace the current emulator by another one.
The ones commonly used in this case for games using the Steam SDK are :

• Goldberg Steam Emulator

  Open source / Recent and up to date / cumbersome configuration

  Nowadays this is the one I'd recommend.

• ALI213

  Scene emu / Versatile / Easiest to configure granted you know the Steam API/version number.

• SmartSteamEmu

  A classic

  Unfortunately it hasn't been updated in years so it has its fair share of problems with newest games so because of that I wouldn't recommended it. Use it as a last chance kinda deal.

Obviously this is not an exhaustive list and you can try your chance with the other supported emulators as well.

Don't ask me where to find these emulators :
Software provided here is purely for informational purposes and does not provide nor encourage illegal access to copyrighted material.

I will not explain to you how to use / configure them. I invite you to read their respective 'readme' and documentation.
😇 That said here are the main things to do with some of them :

Goldberg Steam Emulator

• Use 'latest git version'
  💡 If you want to use it with a CPY's denuvo release use the 'experimental' variant instead of the 'regular' and follow the instruction in the readme

• You have to 'feed' this emulator with the achievements metadata (description, name, icons, etc)

  To help you in this task I've added a context menu entry :

  

  Just right click on a game and select Generate achievements.json for Goldberg Emu.

  Place the generated files in the steam_settings folder which should be located next to the goldberg's steam_api(64).dll.
  💡 NB: EMPRESS's Goldberg emu this folder is located at:

  • %AppData%\EMPRESS\[appID]\steam_settings or
  • %Public%\EMPRESS\[appID]\steam_settings

  If you don't see the game and thus don't have the context menu. Just create an empty dir in %AppData%\Goldberg SteamEmu Saves with the appID of the game and it will appear in Achievement Watcher as a '0% game'.

• Lastly the bare minimum configuration requires that you create a steam_appid.txt in steam_settings with the game's appID in it.

ALI213 Emu

• The most important setting is the original dll API/version number.

[Settings]
;source steam_api.dll version
API = 4.28.51.7

Where do you find such a thing you might ask.
Right click on the original Steam dll of the game then go to properties > details > file version.

• Change the SaveType to either 0 (game dir) or 1 ('My documents' folder)

⚠️ Please note that when using the ALI213 emulator with AW you need to manually add it via Settings > Folders.
You need to select the dir where the emu's configuration file is located (SteamConfig.ini, valve.ini, ali213.ini).
AW will find where your achievements are supposed to be located but with games using a complicated nested folders structure it might fail so I'd recommend using SaveType = 1 to save you some trouble.