The wait is over. After months of work the next major evolution of Winlator Cmod has arrived. I teased that a controller revolution was coming, but the reality is so much bigger. This isn't just an update; it's a top-to-bottom overhaul focused on bringing a native, seamless gaming experience to your device.
This release is the culmination of a journey, and I'm proud to share it with you.
✨ What's New in Cmod v13 ✨
🎮 The Controller Revolution: Native Gamepad Support is Here!
The old input methods are gone (sorta), replaced by a completely new, from-the-ground-up controller implementation built on a native SDL2 backend.
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Native XInput & DInput Support: No more switching settings per game! Controllers are now treated like real controllers. If it works on a PC, it should just work here.
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Multiplayer (Up to 4 Players!): You heard that right. Connect up to four controllers and they will be properly recognized as Player 1, 2, 3, and 4.
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Vibration / Rumble: Feel the action with full haptic feedback support. It can be toggled on or off.
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Advanced Motion Controls (Gyro): A completely revamped and customizable gyroscope implementation. Map it to the left or right stick, fine-tune sensitivity, deadzone, and smoothing, and set an activation button.
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Turbo & Macros: Set up autofire for any button (including triggers!) for each of your controllers.
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Virtual Gamepad Enhancements: The on-screen controls are now more responsive than ever, with reactive visual feedback to show when a button is pressed.
🔊 ALSA-Reflector: The Unbreakable Audio Engine
So- you're in a game, you connect your Bluetooth headphones or a phone call comes in, and the audio dies, forcing a restart. Those days are over.
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Introducing "ALSA-Reflector": A new, optional audio driver that creates a virtual, unbreakable audio sink. It provides stable back-pressure to Wine, completely immune to Android's device changes.
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Seamless Recovery: Real audio is mirrored to your hardware. If the connection breaks, the playback stream is automatically rebuilt in the background without interrupting the game's audio flow. The music never stops. (Well... it might, it's a work in progress!)
🚀 Core System & Proton Enhancements
- Bionic Native Libs: Thanks to @Pipetto-crypto, Winlator Cmod now uses native Bionic libraries.
🎨 UI & Quality-of-Life Tsunami
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Favorite Shortcut Launcher: See that new star icon in the toolbar? Set your favorite game shortcut and launch it with a single tap from the main screen.
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"Disable Touchscreen Mouse" Option: You can now completely disable the touchscreen as a mouse input device when using a virtual gamepad.
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Countless Fixes: From custom shortcut icons and
.lnkfile parsing to a smarter app shutdown process and dozens of UI polish updates, nearly every corner of the app has been refined.
The Journey & Thank You
This release absolutely would not have been possible alone.
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A massive thank you to @Pipetto-crypto for his phenomenal work on the graphics wrappers, Bionic native libraries, for taking the time to teach me the intricacies of compiling bionic native libraries, and for keeping the Cmod torch lit while I was on break.
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To @K11MCH1 for pushing me to learn how to compile Bionic libs in the first place and his excellent videos, and the entire EmuGear Discord community: Your endless testing, feedback, bug reports, and encouragement were the fuel for this entire project. You guys make this all worth it.
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And finally, a shout-out to my digital homies Gemini and GPT. For the countless late-night debugging sessions, untangling the multithreaded madness of the ALSA-Reflector, and providing the sanity checks I needed that kept this project on the rails---I genuinely couldn't have done it without you.
This release is for all of you. Now, go play some games!
Alex
ps: I'll write some helpful release notes tomorrow... time to rest haha...
ALSO - IMPORTANT: CONTROLLERS REQUIRE NORMAL OR ESSENTIAL START-UP FOR SERVICES! And box64 MUST be 3.7- it's a special patched version. Working on that next!