[Special K] Performance fix

[Kaldaien]

Important Re: 10/4/24 Patch

Atlus has fixed the performance problems that this special version of Special K originally fixed. Special K is no longer essential, though may offer other improvements, such as removing the game's exit confirmation, flip model (for Windows 10 users), etc.

I suggest following this project instead:

https://github.com/lyall/metaphorfix

Made by a friend, it includes a lot more game-specific QoL fixes than Special K will.

Tl;Dr: This fix is no longer needed, the below text is just for archival.

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This game has absolutely insane timing code under the hood that's causing some of the worst performance I have ever seen in a game. I threw together a patch to remove the bulk of the offending threading code and replace it with more efficient scheduling.

None of the problems are graphics API related, they should be so lucky :)

Extract either of these to your game's directory and it will apply the fixes automatically:

Special K

https://sk-data.special-k.info/misc/SK_MetaphorFix.7z

Standalone Fix

https://sk-data.special-k.info/misc/SK_MetaphorFixLite.7z

The standalone fix can be loaded either as XInput1_4.dll or using an asi loader and renaming it; it has not been tested as well and may cause hitching

Please see the Special K Discord for more info.

https://discord.gg/SpecialK

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I have bundled a version with the latest version of DXVK for testing

https://sk-data.special-k.info/misc/MetaphorFixDXVK.7z

In my testing, a few scenes benefit from DXVK, but many are 30%+ slower than NVIDIA's actual D3D11 driver. It's likely only AMD GPU users who will benefit from DXVK.

If you want to test this, please be aware that you must delete d3d11.dll and dxgi.ini to revert back to a working setup. The included INI points to DXVK's DXGI DLL and the game will not start until you remove it and DXVK's D3D11 DLL.

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For those who find DXVK is smoother out-of-the-box, you can achieve the same result in SK by adjusting backbuffer and maximum latency.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3339757586

Smoothest operation is always Backbuffers=n, Maximum Latency=n+1.

If you have an NVIDIA GPUs, you can use the Reflex graph to see the effect this has on latency.

It may be a good compromise if you can't get the stutter from the game's crappy culling in cities to go away.

This is basically the only advantage that DXVK has, it's extremely high latency because it's not framerate limited. But you can easily do the same thing in Special K, and can tweak this stuff to find a good compromise a hell of a lot quicker.

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Press Alt+Enter twice after changing the number of backbuffers to get that setting to take affect.

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Re: 9/28 Patch -- Conflicting reports about performance

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3339374363
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3339374699

There is still a CPU bottleneck here that prevents breaking 240 FPS in this scene uncapped even after the patch. That is the same bottleneck I have been removing from the game's code since day one.

They did optimize some other parts of the game's code, but you are not going to realize those optimizations until the giant honking CPU bottleneck is addressed.

They still do not know how to implement efficient timing code and it is utterly destroying performance (!!)

[REBirthTheEdge]

Originally posted by Stoibs:

Originally posted by REBirthTheEdge:

Hi, it seems I can no longer take screenshot of the game while playing with SpecialK, do anyone encounter something similar?

Just checked then and mine is still working.

Hmmm, weird. I will try to run the game without Special K and test it out.

[Kaldaien]

Originally posted by sm1e:

Originally posted by sm1e:

The full game runs much worse than the demo version on my PC. I can run the demo version at 150% render scale at 4k and get 90+ fps with a 10700k and an RTX 4090. The demo drops it down to 55-60 fps, plus I need to set the render scale to 100%. Tried using Special K with the fix and it didn’t change much.

Btw I’m still having these issues, even after installing the MetaphorFix alongside SK. Demo runs fine (90+ FPS) at 150% res at 4k, full game can barely get 60 FPS at 100% res at 4k. SK menu shows that the full game is GPU bound for some reason, while in the demo it shows as CPU bound.

Interesting, I had assumed the retail release would include the fixes from the demo.

The game's release was terrible timing for me because of Hurricane Milton. I'll hopefully have my PC fixed tomorrow and can see if I need to re-enable parts of SK's plug-in for this game

[REBirthTheEdge]

Originally posted by Kaldaien:

Originally posted by sm1e:

Btw I’m still having these issues, even after installing the MetaphorFix alongside SK. Demo runs fine (90+ FPS) at 150% res at 4k, full game can barely get 60 FPS at 100% res at 4k. SK menu shows that the full game is GPU bound for some reason, while in the demo it shows as CPU bound.

Interesting, I had assumed the retail release would include the fixes from the demo.

The game's release was terrible timing for me because of Hurricane Milton. I'll hopefully have my PC fixed tomorrow and can see if I need to re-enable parts of SK's plug-in for this game

Good luck, m8.

[REBirthTheEdge]

Originally posted by REBirthTheEdge:

Hi, it seems I can no longer take screenshot of the game while playing with SpecialK, do anyone encounter something similar?

I manage to fix this by myself by deleting everything of the game, uninstall SpecialK and then install the game + SpecialK again, it works.

[Kaldaien]

So, uh... this is embarrassing :)

Seems there was a performance regression between the final demo patch and retail.

I need to revive this thread.

https://imgur.com/a/wmA2NX4

I can massively boost performance in CPU-bound scenarios, and will be re-enabling SK's original performance mods and cleaning up this thread with better instructions, etc. as I don't think ATLUS is going to be making any first-party improvements.

[poperboy]

Out of curiosity, can something be done about the horrible mouse camera controls through SpecialK?
(I doubt it but doesn't hurt to ask)

Regardless, thank you for all you do!

[Adelfuns]

Originally posted by Kaldaien:

So, uh... this is embarrassing :)

Seems there was a performance regression between the final demo patch and retail.

I need to revive this thread.

https://imgur.com/a/wmA2NX4

I can massively boost performance in CPU-bound scenarios, and will be re-enabling SK's original performance mods and cleaning up this thread with better instructions, etc. as I don't think ATLUS is going to be making any first-party improvements.

So did you find out that Special K does wonders even with the retail version, right? I think retail version is awfully unoptimised if we compare it with the demo :)

[Drogean]

Originally posted by Kaldaien:

Important Re: 10/4/24 Patch

Atlus has fixed the performance problems that this special version of Special K originally fixed. Special K is no longer essential, though may offer other improvements, such as removing the game's exit confirmation, flip model (for Windows 10 users), etc.

They still do not know how to implement efficient timing code and it is utterly destroying performance (!!)[/spoiler]

hey Kal! any way to use special K with Reloaded II as an ASI or something? the community seems to be using it for all mod loading and not sure how to implement both with each trying to controll dll inection

thanks in in davance

[REBirthTheEdge]

Unironically have to disable SpecialK now because for some reasons the game is crashing with it on when the Guptauros is doing the Heavy Slam attack :(

[Websteroni]

Originally posted by Drogean:

Originally posted by Kaldaien:

Important Re: 10/4/24 Patch

Atlus has fixed the performance problems that this special version of Special K originally fixed. Special K is no longer essential, though may offer other improvements, such as removing the game's exit confirmation, flip model (for Windows 10 users), etc.

They still do not know how to implement efficient timing code and it is utterly destroying performance (!!)[/spoiler]

hey Kal! any way to use special K with metaphor fix? im ready to go balls to the wall on texture mods but the modding community is gate keeping (typical for the jrpg fans) all the tools so i figure why not do them all on top of special K

give me texture injection that works with metaphor fix and i can bypass this lame community of weebs

maybe as an asi loader for reloaded II or something like methapor has done, but i can go ahead and give 100 different textures for hair and eyes and outfits for each character if somebody gives me the dang tools

thanks in in davance

Hey, no offense, but I think they might be gate keeping you since that information is freely available on the Metaphor Fix Github page. Unless I'm misunderstanding your comment.

In case you didn't know, scroll down to the Special K section: https://github.com/Lyall/MetaphorFix

[Drogean]

Originally posted by TheWebDoctor:

Originally posted by Drogean:

hey Kal! any way to use special K with metaphor fix? im ready to go balls to the wall on texture mods but the modding community is gate keeping (typical for the jrpg fans) all the tools so i figure why not do them all on top of special K

give me texture injection that works with metaphor fix and i can bypass this lame community of weebs

maybe as an asi loader for reloaded II or something like methapor has done, but i can go ahead and give 100 different textures for hair and eyes and outfits for each character if somebody gives me the dang tools

thanks in in davance

Hey, no offense, but I think they might be gate keeping you since that information is freely available on the Metaphor Fix Github page. Unless I'm misunderstanding your comment.

In case you didn't know, scroll down to the Special K section: https://github.com/Lyall/MetaphorFix

thanks i saw that, now it just seems that special K needs to be able to run with reloaded II mod loader since reloaded seems to take over all dll injecting

[REBirthTheEdge]

For some reasons playing Metaphor with SpecialK is giving me constant crash, now I have to play without it.

Luckily, performance is still fine without SpecialK.

[Kaldaien]

Originally posted by Dystopia Now:

Originally posted by Argon:

If your game appears darker than normal:

Disable flip model

Special K Control panel -> Direct3D 11 Settings -> Swap chain management -> use flip model presentation

Nonsense, the modder implies there's nothing darkening period.

Or just set the sRGB Bypass mode to Apply.

It does this automatically, so if you have to turn off Flip Model, then you've set something wrong. Reset your INI and the problem will go away.

[sivis]

Originally posted by Argon:

If your game appears darker than normal:

Disable flip model

Special K Control panel -> Direct3D 11 Settings -> Swap chain management -> use flip model presentation

Thank you so much! Unrelated to the topic at hand, I used specialK on my pillars of eternity 2 deadfire to combat the horrible performance and every time I pressed F5 to quicksave in the game my screen became very dark and with weird colors, like I enabled HDR on SDR screen. Disabling flip model fixed this, so thanks a ton!

[Kaldaien]

Originally posted by sivis:

Originally posted by Argon:

If your game appears darker than normal:

Disable flip model

Special K Control panel -> Direct3D 11 Settings -> Swap chain management -> use flip model presentation

Thank you so much! Unrelated to the topic at hand, I used specialK on my pillars of eternity 2 deadfire to combat the horrible performance and every time I pressed F5 to quicksave in the game my screen became very dark and with weird colors, like I enabled HDR on SDR screen. Disabling flip model fixed this, so thanks a ton! :heart_eyes_yeti:

Set sRGB behavior to Strip or Apply instead of doing that.

Unless you're running Windows 11 and have Windowed Mode Optimization enabled, disabling SK's Flip Model functionality will perform worse. That's Microsoft's official feature to do the same thing SK's done for the past 10 years.