[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 (!!)

[Gwynbleidd]

Dystopia Now님이 먼저 게시:

Is this all you need, or do you also need the D3D11 to go with it?

just this one.

[RyuHazuki]

Perforamnce is betrter for sure but comes too dark and controller doesnt work. But great to see master is working on this and i know we are gonna have working game when release.

[bullet in ur f. face]

please op, could you fix the atrocious draw distance this game has ? like in cities, wagon, npcs goes grey at like 20 meters, ugly af, would be nice to have them draw like much further away, like all the way.

[bullet in ur f. face]

can i use your fix along with reshade dll renamed d3d12.Dll ? i'm using it for superdepthVR shader to play the game sbs depth.

[RyuHazuki]

Dystopia Now님이 먼저 게시:

RyuHazuki님이 먼저 게시:

Perforamnce is betrter for sure but comes too dark and controller doesnt work. But great to see master is working on this and i know we are gonna have working game when release.

Turn off your controller and then turn it back on; it stopped spinning when I was in the desert.

Have try this when im home. Sadly had to leave to work now.

[happyfaceman]

I haven't gotten around to trying the Demo yet as I have a backlog to get through before I even touch Metaphor. But how rough was the demo for it to be patched? Are we talking Dark Souls bad? Or even Deadly Premonition bad?

[Le Rat]

happyfaceman님이 먼저 게시:

I haven't gotten around to trying the Demo yet as I have a backlog to get through before I even touch Metaphor. But how rough was the demo for it to be patched? Are we talking Dark Souls bad? Or even Deadly Premonition bad?

at this point it's Ys 8 levels of bad

[bullet in ur f. face]

draw distance in cities is atrociously bad, we need it to be fixed either by mod, by hex editing, or by devs. or by dll overwriting draw ditances values.

[Gwynbleidd]

RyuHazuki님이 먼저 게시:

Perforamnce is betrter for sure but comes too dark and controller doesnt work. But great to see master is working on this and i know we are gonna have working game when release.

if your screen too dark, turn off the flip model in the specialk settings. Ctrl + shift + backspace > Swapchain > turn off flip model.

[chiccy]

Crashes immediately for me with this fix.

[Markus]

The aliasing is also horrible in this game. An art style like this needs good aliasing. I don't know why Atlus didn't focus on that during development.

[ArCrhim]

Rock solid

[ShockedHearts]

its a solid shame that an unpaid team or individual person (idk if you have a team) can manage to make these fixes/changes RAPIDLY. but paid developers who have MONTHS BEFORE AND AFTER a games release simply cannot bother.

actually baffling.

[SpiralJacobs]

Seems to work on deck if you set to proton ge. Not sure how much it helps, tho.

[Stoibs]

chiccy님이 먼저 게시:

Crashes immediately for me with this fix.

Same, game starts to launch but then never opens with this =(

Never heard of special K before though so I'm a newbie.
Is it literally just a case of putting the .dll in the folder and that's it or are we missing a step?