Sonic Frontiers Wont Load Mods or Codes At All While Sonic Unleashed Recompiled Does

[xxdylan02xx]

For about a year now, the Hedge Mod Loader has not been able to load anything for Sonic Frontiers. Now, since I wasn't interested in frontiers when it started, I never bothered to make an issue, thinking it was just a temporary problem that would get fixed. Well, a year later, and it's still a problem, and I don't know what causes it at all. I tried deleting the mods folder and cpkredir.ini file in the game directory which didn't work. I also tried deleting and renaming the "HedgeModManager" folder in the "NeverFinishAnything" folder, also didn't work.

My Frontiers mod/code list is Remodelled Sonic (https://gamebanana.com/mods/500166) and Boot Directly to Title

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/1bba332b-4cfc-4ca2-93e1-6ac9e6e2bd6c
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/5dac085b-197d-42c3-bf94-6e7bd7d18a2b

HMM_Snapshot_00092025112956.txt

I recorded the opening for both frontiers and unleashed to show that only frontiers don't work (I don't have any other sonic games installed to test).

And here's a snapshot file just in case its needed.

Note: both old version of the hedgemodmanager and the rewrite version fail to load mods and is exactly the same as in the videos

(copied over from thesupersonic16/HedgeModManager#1098 due to no responses)

[thesupersonic16]

This looks like it could be an issue with HE2ML as it is seen in the second video the mod loader isn't initialising. Can you try renaming the dinput8.dll file to d3d11.dll then start the game using Steam not HMM. Launching using HMM will drop the dinput8.dll again which will cause conflicts with this test.
Also you should not be running the game as administrator if you are doing that.

Can you also send a screenshot of the SonicFrontiers folder aswell?

[xxdylan02xx]

the dinput8.dll file was already named to d3d11.dll, launching via steam dosent change anything, mods and codes still dont load and the debug window looks the exact same

edit: forgot to mention im not running the game as administrator

[thesupersonic16]

Do you have Epic Games installed?

[xxdylan02xx]

i do but i dont have sonic frontiers on it

[thesupersonic16]

It is recently discovered that having a system-wide EOS API install causes the ML's detection to think it's a EOS game when it is actually Steam.

Can you check if this build works correctly? Extract the dll next to the game exe and rename it to d3d11.dll

HE2ModLoader-eos.zip

[xxdylan02xx]

IT WORKS, THANK YOU.

2025-09-16.10-06-36.mp4

Here's the video proof for confirmation.

Edit: works when launching via modloader too.

[xxdylan02xx]

Hey uh it seems this issue has been effecting more than frontiers because even shadow gens dosent load mods. I tried using the file you gave me and it works but it causes it to crash after loading mods.

This appears to be a bigger issue than it seemed hopefully this can get fixed for all steam sonic games via a mod loader update because it most likely affects them all.

[thesupersonic16]

What mods are you trying to load? Can you also send me a screenshot of the game folder?

[xxdylan02xx]

My apologies for getting back so late. I had no mods in the mods folder, actually, but I did some experimenting and found out that the smooth camera code causes the crash.

it might need to be removed.

[xxdylan02xx]

I have sonic forces and lost world in my steam library if you want I can install them both and make sure the mod loader works for them too.

if not I guess we can close the post.

[thesupersonic16]

actually, but I did some experimenting and found out that the smooth camera code causes the crash.

Issues with codes need to be reported on the HMMCodes repo. Double check that the issue is really that one code by isolating it, then create an issue there about the code crashing if an issue does not already exist.

I have sonic forces and lost world in my steam library if you want I can install them both and make sure the mod loader works for them too.

Sonic Lost World uses HEML1 which is unrelated to this issue, however Sonic Forces uses HE2ML which is likely affected by this issue. Let me know if you are going to test that, if not, we can close this issue as the ML update has been pushed a long while ago