*OLD GUIDE* Ultimate Performance Guide (by Saftle)

[Daeoc]

Go here for a more updated guide:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1133760/discussions/0/3269059787433476025/






CC Modding Discord (discord.gg/bSnpVBV)

This guide combines Isa's Hex Edit, SpecialK, DXVK, and the 4GB patch.

Ultimate Performance Guide - SpecialK Local Mode
Get rid of all previous tweaks, get rid of Nvidia Control Panel overrides, restore the exe to an unmodified exe, etc. 4GB Patch is not needed anymore
Download and extract the SpecialK Chrono Cross fix into the game's directory: https://sk-data.special-k.info/misc/SK_ChronoCross_FontFix.7z from (Source: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1133760/discussions/0/5154941593362702298/)
Download the new SpecialK32.dll ( https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/941109140917481493/965020659409379338/SpecialK32.dll ) and rename it to dxgi.dll replacing the one in the game's folder.
Open the game through Steam, and set the game to Borderless Windowed in the launcher.
When starting the game, open the SpecialK Overlay with Ctrl+Shift+Backspace
Make sure the Frame Pacing is set to Unlocked with 0 in the first field, 7 in the second field, and 26 in the third field.
Enable Frame Limiter and double click in the space and enter 59.94. Close the game and the launcher.
Download DXVK-Async: https://github.com/Sporif/dxvk-async and extract the dxgi.dll and rename as dxvk_dxgi.dll (in order to not overwrite the existing dxgi.dll) and d3d11.dll from the x32 subfolder into the game's directory.
Create a dxvk.conf file in the game directory with the following settings:

dxgi.syncInterval = 1
dxvk.enableAsync = true
dxgi.tearFree = Auto

Open the dxgi.ini file that SpecialK created when you opened the game and add the following to the bottom of the file:

[Import.DXVK]
Filename=dxvk_dxgi.dll
Role=dxgi
When=Proxy
Architecture=Win32

Done, now you have DXVK, 4GB patch which is included in SpecialK, Isa's Frame Pacing fix, and SpecialK's frame limiter/HDR fix/Font Fix.

Ultimate Performance Guide - SpecialK Install/Service Mode (SKIF)
Get rid of all previous tweaks, get rid of Nvidia Control Panel overrides, restore the exe to an unmodified exe, etc. 4GB Patch is not needed anymore
Download DXVK-Async: https://github.com/Sporif/dxvk-async and extract the dxgi.dll and d3d11.dll from the x32 subfolder into the game's directory
Create a dxvk.conf file in the game directory with the following settings:

dxgi.syncInterval = 1
dxvk.enableAsync = true
dxgi.tearFree = Auto

Set the game to Borderless Windowed and close the launcher.
Download and install Special K (global injector mode is required in order to work with dxvk): https://sk-data.special-k.info/repository/SpecialK_22.4.15.1.exe
Right click the game in Steam and go to properties and add SKIF %COMMAND% to the Launch Commands (this allows you to never need to open SKIF and instead have it only open when the game is opened through steam, and it'll auto-close too.
Open the game once through Steam now so that SpecialK can create a profile folder. Close the game afterwards.
Download and extract the SpecialK Chrono Cross fix to a temporary folder https://sk-data.special-k.info/misc/SK_ChronoCross_FontFix.7z from (Source: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1133760/discussions/0/5154941593362702298/)
Navigate to C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\My Mods\SpecialK\Profiles\CHRONO CROSS THE RADICAL DREAMERS EDITION and copy and paste the SK_Res that you extracted earlier from the SpecialK Chrono Cross fix. Do not copy the dll.
Download the new SpecialK32.dll ( https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/941109140917481493/965020659409379338/SpecialK32.dll ) and extract and replace the one in C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\My Mods\SpecialK\
Open the game through Steam and open the SpecialK Overlay with Ctrl+Shift+Backspace
Make sure the Frame Pacing is set to Unlocked with 0 in the first field, 7 in the second field, and 26 in the third field.
Enable Frame Limiter and double click in the space and enter 59.94.
Done, now you have DXVK, 4GB patch which is included in SpecialK, Isa's Frame Pacing fix, and SpecialK's frame limiter/HDR fix/Font Fix.

Optional: Install Reshade (https://reshade.me/) for the game using Vulkan since you are using DXVK (it now works in Borderless Windowed)

Note: if the Steam overlay doesn't work for whatever reason and in turn your controller also doesn't work, then just press start and select with your controller and it'll open the SpecialK overlay, close it again and now the controller will work in-game. This however doesn't affect everyone.

You can also disable Steam Input if you don't need it.

[Roland]

I love excuses to whip out HxD but I wanna know what these addresses actually do.

[Roland]

Holy Shnikes changing it to 00 KILLED my performance immediately after the title screen!
(i used HxD instead of cheat engine and used the search function to find the string)

[Daeoc]

Originally posted by Roland:

Holy Shnikes changing it to 00 KILLED my performance immediately after the title screen!
(i used HxD instead of cheat engine and used the search function to find the string)

I changed the first string to 01 and the second to 00, it is running really well so far.

[Roland]

Originally posted by Daeoc:

Originally posted by Roland:

Holy Shnikes changing it to 00 KILLED my performance immediately after the title screen!
(i used HxD instead of cheat engine and used the search function to find the string)

I changed the first string to 01 and the second to 00, it is running really well so far.

I just tried both on 01 and it seems slightly better though I still see mild stutter at battle start and end. It does strangely seem to have fixed screen tearing for me though.....

[Roland]

Okay, first sorry for the double post but I want to make sure notifications are sent out.
Setting the second value to 00 or 01 seems to net the same result for me with MAYBE slightly less stutter on 00 than 01 at the start of battles but it is definitely still there.
I'm gonna do some experimenting with the LAA patch and follow up on someone else's theory real quick while combining it with this edit

[Random]

The current discovery with the hex edit fix is a day and night difference between day 1 release and hex edit fix. As isa has stated we still don't know if there are any issues with this method but from my current testing so far there still isn't issues and this fix is what should have been the actual day 1 release instead of the horrible frame pacing during battles.

[Daeoc]

Originally posted by Roland:

Okay, first sorry for the double post but I want to make sure notifications are sent out.
Setting the second value to 00 or 01 seems to net the same result for me with MAYBE slightly less stutter on 00 than 01 at the start of battles but it is definitely still there.
I'm gonna do some experimenting with the LAA patch and follow up on someone else's theory real quick while combining it with this edit

I am also using the LAA patch, not sure if it helps with performance.

[Roland]

Originally posted by Daeoc:

Originally posted by Roland:

Okay, first sorry for the double post but I want to make sure notifications are sent out.
Setting the second value to 00 or 01 seems to net the same result for me with MAYBE slightly less stutter on 00 than 01 at the start of battles but it is definitely still there.
I'm gonna do some experimenting with the LAA patch and follow up on someone else's theory real quick while combining it with this edit

I am also using the LAA patch.

Yea the LAA patch is BS. The game doesn't even try to use half a gig let alone 2 gigs of ram. I knew this before applying it but some guy said it runs better if it can load all the ISOs into the RAM, which is total BS and didn't change at all how much RAM the game was tryin to use.

Originally posted by 󠀡󠀡.:

The current discovery with the hex edit fix is a day and night difference between day 1 release and hex edit fix. As isa has stated we still don't know if there are any issues with this method but from my current testing so far there still isn't issues and this fix is what should have been the actual day 1 release instead of the horrible frame pacing during battles.

it's still pretty much the same for me; maybe slightly improved.
We really need to find out what these addresses do...

[the_atolm]

I saw this over on Discord and thought I'd give it a try, but I have no experience with Hex editing; I used HxD and searched for the value strings and changed them per the recommendation, but the game won't launch. I clearly have done it wrong. Does anyone have any advice or guidance for a complete ignoramus?

Edit: I figured it out. And it works! Or at least seems to, in the very first area. No longer running at 20 fps in the first hallway after the elevator.

[Roland]

Originally posted by the_atolm:

I saw this over on Discord and thought I'd give it a try, but I have no experience with Hex editing; I used HxD and searched for the value strings and changed them per the recommendation, but the game won't launch. I clearly have done it wrong. Does anyone have any advice or guidance for a complete ignoramus?

You're in luck, because I have a stupid amount of experience with HxD (though it's been like 10 years)
For starters start with a clean exe file. (also make sure you are editing CHRONOCROSS.EXE and not the Launcher) HxD should have made a copy of it when you made your first edit and should be in the game folder with the extension .bak
Delete the existing exe and remove the .bak from the .bak file making it a .exe.
note: if you edited/saved multiple times in HxD your .bak file may have been overwritten and if that is the case delete both the .bak and .exe and Verify files through Steam to download a fresh exe

Next you can use the replace option but personally I prefer to do it by hand when it's only 1 or 2 entries so hit ctrl-F or go to search up top and select Find

Make sure the data type is set to Hex-values and type or paste in 83 46 14 02, also select All for Search direction

Clicking Ok should take you to the first value and it should be highlighted. Press right arrow, then left arrow twice. This should place the cursor right before 02. Type 01 and then press f3.

F3 should take you to the next entry, again just pres right arrow, left left and type 01.

Once done that hit ctrl+s to save or click save

Report back here if you have an issues (I've been using the same version of HxD for like 13 years but I don't think I configured anything special that would change this process, but please let us know if you run into issues)

[AlphaPHK]

Oh my God it works! How do you guys even figure this out?? XD
I tested fighting 2 Lagoonates, they used Just 4 Kicks, I used 24 Carrots and it was smooth as butter. I just hope this doesn't cause any crash during my playthrough, I'll report back if it happens!

[Random]

Originally posted by Roland:

Originally posted by the_atolm:

I saw this over on Discord and thought I'd give it a try, but I have no experience with Hex editing; I used HxD and searched for the value strings and changed them per the recommendation, but the game won't launch. I clearly have done it wrong. Does anyone have any advice or guidance for a complete ignoramus?

You're in luck, because I have a stupid amount of experience with HxD (though it's been like 10 years)
For starters start with a clean exe file. (also make sure you are editing CHRONOCROSS.EXE and not the Launcher) HxD should have made a copy of it when you made your first edit and should be in the game folder with the extension .bak
Delete the existing exe and remove the .bak from the .bak file making it a .exe.
note: if you edited/saved multiple times in HxD your .bak file may have been overwritten and if that is the case delete both the .bak and .exe and Verify files through Steam to download a fresh exe

Next you can use the replace option but personally I prefer to do it by hand when it's only 1 or 2 entries so hit ctrl-F or go to search up top and select Find

Make sure the data type is set to Hex-values and type or paste in 83 46 14 02, also select All for Search direction

Clicking Ok should take you to the first value and it should be highlighted. Press right arrow, then left arrow twice. This should place the cursor right before 02. Type 01 and then press f3.

F3 should take you to the next entry, again just pres right arrow, left left and type 01.

Once done that hit ctrl+s to save or click save

Report back here if you have an issues (I've been using the same version of HxD for like 13 years but I don't think I configured anything special that would change this process, but please let us know if you run into issues)

There's also a web patcher and the patch included in the discord if you still don't know how to hex edit after Roland has explained it clearly. You shouldn't need to use the web patcher method though as the Hex Editor method is really simple.

[the_atolm]

Originally posted by Roland:

Originally posted by the_atolm:

I saw this over on Discord and thought I'd give it a try, but I have no experience with Hex editing; I used HxD and searched for the value strings and changed them per the recommendation, but the game won't launch. I clearly have done it wrong. Does anyone have any advice or guidance for a complete ignoramus?

You're in luck, because I have a stupid amount of experience with HxD (though it's been like 10 years)
For starters start with a clean exe file. (also make sure you are editing CHRONOCROSS.EXE and not the Launcher) HxD should have made a copy of it when you made your first edit and should be in the game folder with the extension .bak
Delete the existing exe and remove the .bak from the .bak file making it a .exe.
note: if you edited/saved multiple times in HxD your .bak file may have been overwritten and if that is the case delete both the .bak and .exe and Verify files through Steam to download a fresh exe

Next you can use the replace option but personally I prefer to do it by hand when it's only 1 or 2 entries so hit ctrl-F or go to search up top and select Find

Make sure the data type is set to Hex-values and type or paste in 83 46 14 02, also select All for Search direction

Clicking Ok should take you to the first value and it should be highlighted. Press right arrow, then left arrow twice. This should place the cursor right before 02. Type 01 and then press f3.

F3 should take you to the next entry, again just pres right arrow, left left and type 01.

Once done that hit ctrl+s to save or click save

Report back here if you have an issues (I've been using the same version of HxD for like 13 years but I don't think I configured anything special that would change this process, but please let us know if you run into issues)

Thank you! Somehow I managed to figure things out (well, enough to get it to work) while you were so kindly writing your response -- It seems my problem caused by manually editing the one final value of the string (by which I mean backspacing and typing, as though working with a standard text document. I'm sure that's what mucked things up). When I used "find and replace" for the entire string, that worked like a charm. But thank you for the instruction on replacing values the way it's supposed to be done -- I will commit that to memory for use in the future.

I'm sorry that it doesn't seem to have made much of a difference for you -- I can testify that so far (beginning from a new game with in the HD mode, where slowdown has been most apparent), things are running much better -- still a lot of inconsistency in battle, just like on PSX, but the lower- and higher-bound limits are higher. Now the experience is more or less equivalent to playing the game on a modern emulator like Beetle or Duckstation.

[Roland]

Originally posted by the_atolm:

Originally posted by Roland:

You're in luck, because I have a stupid amount of experience with HxD (though it's been like 10 years)
For starters start with a clean exe file. (also make sure you are editing CHRONOCROSS.EXE and not the Launcher) HxD should have made a copy of it when you made your first edit and should be in the game folder with the extension .bak
Delete the existing exe and remove the .bak from the .bak file making it a .exe.
note: if you edited/saved multiple times in HxD your .bak file may have been overwritten and if that is the case delete both the .bak and .exe and Verify files through Steam to download a fresh exe

Next you can use the replace option but personally I prefer to do it by hand when it's only 1 or 2 entries so hit ctrl-F or go to search up top and select Find

Make sure the data type is set to Hex-values and type or paste in 83 46 14 02, also select All for Search direction

Clicking Ok should take you to the first value and it should be highlighted. Press right arrow, then left arrow twice. This should place the cursor right before 02. Type 01 and then press f3.

F3 should take you to the next entry, again just pres right arrow, left left and type 01.

Once done that hit ctrl+s to save or click save

Report back here if you have an issues (I've been using the same version of HxD for like 13 years but I don't think I configured anything special that would change this process, but please let us know if you run into issues)

Thank you! Somehow I managed to figure things out (well, enough to get it to work) while you were so kindly writing your response -- It seems my problem caused by manually editing the one final value of the string (by which I mean backspacing and typing, as though working with a standard text document. I'm sure that's what mucked things up). When I used "find and replace" for the entire string, that worked like a charm. But thank you for the instruction on replacing values the way it's supposed to be done -- I will commit that to memory for use in the future.

I'm sorry that it doesn't seem to have made much of a difference for you -- I can testify that so far (beginning from a new game with in the HD mode, where slowdown has been most apparent), things are running much better -- still a lot of inconsistency in battle, just like on PSX, but the lower- and higher-bound limits are higher. Now the experience is more or less equivalent to playing the game on a modern emulator like Beetle or Duckstation.

LMMFAO Ah Backspace!
I genuinely forgot about that because I haven't done it since my old Pokemon mods. There's a setting somewhere in there to stop it from effing you like that but I find it's easier to just never touch Backspace when HxD is open lmfao (good times)

[Roland]

OP, I hope you dont' mind I copied your original post to the Steam Modding community:
https://steamcommunity.com/groups/RadicalDreamersModding/discussions/3/3282569951984573274/

I'm trying to aggregate mod info here because us non-Discord users just have a hot mess of topics in front of us with no good way to parse info

Edit:
I listed it under mods in progress for now because we don't know what those values do exactly