Aubépine is an experimental Nintendo Switch 2 emulator, tuned on an AMD Radeon: a fork of Lichii, itself a fork of Eglantine (based on Eden, Yuzu and Sudachi), with a few fixes of its own for the games we play on AMD.
What it adds | Games tested | Building | Patches | Credits | License | Français
Since 2026-11-08 Aubépine builds on Lichii nx2 (build 117 and later), which brings the
community's work on The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (vegetation, fog, white flashes, the
upscaler, performance, matrix programs on VK_KHR_cooperative_matrix for RDNA4) and had caught up
with most of this fork's earlier additions (Star Fox's audio, the Switch 2 mouse, Mario Kart World and
DK Bananza frame modes, FSR 3, loose dumps). On top of it:
- Lichii PR #573, AMD and split GPU thread fixes for Ocarina of Time measured on a Radeon RX 9070 XT: 28-31 FPS at full resolution here, 23-24 before.
- Compiled shaders are saved between sessions (
VK_KHR_pipeline_binary, from CheezerWheezer's "AMD Superior" build): AMD's Windows driver doesn't keep them, so every game compiled its shaders again at each boot. - Yoshi and the Mysterious Book, docked: its shader code, which the game moves with the GPU's DMA engine over scattered memory pages, is copied page by page (found by SkiierCo's Satsuma, as in Nemyu), so its programs no longer read as zeros; with texture synchronization from MythosOfs' Orchid, a recheck of rejected programs from a Lichii branch and our own shader forms and memory fixes, the first mission is no longer black.
And our own commits:
- Made on an AMD Radeon. Developed and tested on a Radeon RX 9070 XT (AMD driver, Windows); not tested on NVIDIA or Intel GPUs.
- Ocarina of Time on AMD: the Kokiri Forest shadow map (24576x24576) gets its memory, so shadows and the lighting that depends on them work.
- Kirby Air Riders on AMD: native storage buffers keep the size packed after their pointer when there is one; with the upstream sizing the game lost the GPU about 90 s in.
- Star Fox, Yoshi and the Mysterious Book and Kirby Air Riders: shader forms that were still rejected.
- The emulator shows as Aubépine, with its own icon (hawthorn berries); the executable is still
eglantine.exe. Mario Kart World's recommended-settings question can be answered once, andEDEN_NX2_TAS_TRIGGERhelps scripted tests.
Details in pattex/README.md.
Tested on Windows 11, Ryzen 7 9800X3D and Radeon RX 9070 XT, in short sessions.
| Game | State |
|---|---|
| The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time | 5-minute runs from a save without a crash, no rejected shaders, no white flashes. Max Resolution and Dynamic FPS are built in and on by default: 28-31 FPS at full resolution here (turn Max Resolution off in Add-Ons for speed). |
| Kirby Air Riders | Menus and races with their scenery, no rejected shaders; the first session stutters while shaders compile, later ones reload them. |
| Donkey Kong Bananza | Saves load and play, no rejected shaders. |
| Mario Kart World | Title and races, 31-54 FPS, no rejected shaders. |
| Star Fox | Intro and training mission, no rejected shaders (needs the window patch in pattex/star-fox). |
| Yoshi and the Mysterious Book | Docked, played by hand: intro, chapter page, the first mission and a second level render (about 10 minutes); one title-screen program still reads as zeros, with nothing visible missing. Closing during the game can hang. |
| Metroid Prime 4 | Ran at 60 FPS on our previous base; not run on this one yet. |
Only play games you own and dumped yourself. No keys, firmware or game files are provided here.
Follow the General Build Guide; the default branch of this repository is pattex.
Prebuilt Windows x64 builds are in Releases (no keys,
firmware or games included).
pattex/patches/ holds the commits we add on top of Lichii as git format-patch
files (how to apply them is in pattex/README.md);
pattex/patches-pokedinner/ keeps the 40 patches of the previous
PokeDinner-based version for reference.
Aubépine stands on the work of the Eden, Yuzu and Sudachi developers, Eglantine (Djihads80 and its contributors), Lichii (zortos293 and its many contributors), PokeDinner (Franseven), Nemyu (Uesleizito Zin), Selevet Eglantine (sylvieistaken), MythosOfs (Orchid), SkiierCo (Satsuma), CheezerWheezer, monkeefunnee and Purebuilt (AMDEGL). The fork's own changes were made with an AI assistant (Claude Opus 5.5).
Aubépine is licensed under the GPLv3 (or any later version), like Eglantine and Lichii. Refer to the LICENSE.txt file.
Aubépine est un émulateur expérimental de la Nintendo Switch 2, réglé sur une Radeon RX 9070 XT
(pilote AMD ; pas testé sur NVIDIA ni Intel). Depuis le 8 novembre 2026 il repose sur Lichii
(fork d'Eglantine), qui apporte tout le travail de la communauté sur Zelda: Ocarina of Time
(végétation, brouillard, flashs, performances, calcul matriciel RDNA4) et avait déjà repris l'essentiel
de nos anciens ajouts. S'y ajoutent la PR Lichii #573 (Zelda à 28-31 FPS en pleine résolution sur une
RX 9070 XT, 23-24 avant), la sauvegarde des shaders compilés entre deux sessions (le pilote AMD ne
les garde pas) et nos correctifs : la carte d'ombres de la forêt Kokiri sur AMD, la taille des buffers
qui évite à Kirby de perdre le GPU, des instructions de shader pour Star Fox, Yoshi et
Kirby, le nom et l'icône Aubépine (des baies d'aubépine), la question de Mario Kart World
mémorisée et un outil de test. Yoshi et le Livre mystérieux passe en mode TV : son code de shader,
que le jeu déplace avec le moteur de copie du GPU sur des pages mémoire dispersées, est copié page par
page (trouvé par Satsuma, repris par Nemyu), et avec les correctifs d'Orchid, de Lichii et les nôtres
la première mission n'est plus noire. Les six jeux testés (Zelda, Kirby, DK Bananza, Mario Kart World,
Star Fox, Yoshi) tournent sans shader de calcul refusé dans nos essais courts ; Zelda tourne en pleine résolution
(patch « Max Resolution » intégré, à désactiver dans les Add-Ons pour gagner des FPS). Une version compilée pour Windows est dans
les Releases ; pour compiler soi-même, suivre
docs/Build.md sur la branche pattex. Ne jouez qu'à des jeux que vous possédez et
avez extraits vous-même : aucun fichier de jeu, clé ou firmware n'est fourni.