SpecialK and pcsx2 ?

[Plex]

I tried using SpecialK with pcsx2, injection won't work with neither DX9 or DX11, opengl only outputs an error message about missing texture format compatiblity.
Not even Global injection works.

Did anyone else have any luck?

I've been using the latest version, 0.8.24.

[Aemony]

http://i.imgur.com/ZeAbSIG.png :)

Gonna test some other stuff out first, to be sure I know what I did that made it work.

[Draken/Eitan]

I can't imagine it helping a huge amount with emulation, but I could be wrong

Things like timing and framerate are usually very very controlled as are all the functions of emulation and it requires optimization of the emulator to have speed improvements. OK some games being emulated could have timing issues etc but with emulation, you don't always directly interact with the game software. The emulation core does that work with interpreters or reinterpreters.

SK works great in native PC software but might not help much fit emulators without a great deal of work.

So it might not help much!

And I said emulation and emulators a lot just now. xD

[Draken/Eitan]

Originally posted by Aemony:

http://i.imgur.com/ZeAbSIG.png :)

Gonna test some other stuff out first, to be sure I know what I did that made it work.

And you are here to prove me wrong about my theories! I would not have guessed it works! Are all of the functions there?

[Plex]

I mainly want to use it for texture and shader debugging.
and see if texture injection is possible.

[Aemony]

Oh yeah, Special K will probably not help at all with anything in an emulator. If anything it would probably screw timing and stuff up.

Anyway, @Plex: I got it working by using the global injector with a SpecialK.dxgi file in the folder of PCXS2. This file tells the global injector to inject itself into executables running from the folder, using D3D11.

So PCXS2 using Direct3D 11 (Hardware) and the global injector with a SpecialK.dxgi file worked for me. Please be aware that Special K crashes by basically anything that changes the swapchain (pause/resume, changing games etc).

I wouldn't recommend playing with Special K.

[JBeckman]

Looks like they're running similar to Dolphin (Wii) with long periods of daily builds between stable releases so that's something to try for compatibility and stability, I haven't really poked around much in newer emulators with SpecialK though so I don't know what it could possibly bring.

Going by ReShade though it can hook into and influence the game although injecting shaders is different to what SpecialK is doing though perhaps shader and texture viewing could be possible, I don't really own all that many consoles or games myself so it's mainly been NES and SNES personally with a little bit of Wii but for Dolpin it's now running via Vulkan which SpecialK isn't fully supporting yet. (EDIT: Dolphin had D3D12 support too - in addition to OGL and DX11 - but it was removed due to lack of support so it was lagging behind.)


For progress I've mostly checked via http://www.emucr.com/ and then you can just go to a project. http://www.emucr.com/2017/07/pcsx2-git-20170713.html and it's source. https://github.com/PCSX2/pcsx2 which might then lead to the official website with additional info. https://pcsx2.net/download/development.html :)


EDIT: Oh yeah I kinda keep forgetting about that part, depending on various factors and local laws and whatnot emulators are a gray area, generally it's not a big concern and though legal action has been tried occasionally it generally doesn't go anywhere but it's seen as good practice to at least own the game you're emulating as far as I know, probably should own the actual console too. (Extra for doing the dumping I guess, especially when it comes to requirements like the actual bios for emulators using that data.)

EDIT: Well I wouldn't know I suppose but from what I've read projects like BLEEM got caught up in legal issues, they won, but the resulting fees kinda ended the project though if say Nintendo could be somewhat sure of a victory they probably would attempt some sort of action which is why emulators are careful and not using actual code and such straight from the console itself among other things.

EDIT: Not quite how I expected that tag to work, well it kinda hides the OT bla-bla ha ha.

[Aemony]

I've tried Special K and PCSX2 with two games and no textures are shown in SK's render toolbox at all, so I doubt you'll get very far with the dumping and injecting part :(

[Kaldaien]

Originally posted by Plex:

I mainly want to use it for texture and shader debugging.
and see if texture injection is possible.

For the most part, I cannot acquire shader or textures from emulators. They're not written in standard ways and more importantly, they use memory-mapped textures that are constantly recycled in order to behave like the console they are emulating.

The requisite feature: texture caching, generally won't work. But you're welcome to try You'll probably have to turn on staging texture cache support as well.

Likewise, I can't get shaders from the D3D8->D3D11 dgVoodoo wrapper because it doesn't use standard D3D11 :-\

[masterotaku]

I have used PCSX2 with an old version of SpecialK since almost a year ago, to force G-Sync. Newer versions of SpecialK (I didn't try it since a few months ago) didn't work for that.

Here's my long post about it, used alongside 3Dmigoto for 3D Vision rendering: https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/519160/3d-vision/pcsx2-in-3d-playstation-2-emulator/post/5109372/#5109372

I use it as "d3d9.dll" but use the DX11 GSdx renderer. The "ritual" is different in Windows 10. I have to boot a game, then press escape after the image loads, open the GSdx config dialog, close it and resume the game. Then alt+enter until G-Sync triggers (I know when it happens because I use it with ULMB at the same time). This also triggers 3D Vision if it's enabled in the drivers.

However, my 3D Vision part is broken on Windows 10 because 3Dmigoto isn't hooking for some reason, and I need it to convert PCSX2's SBS or TAB modes into 3D Vision using a custom shader. I tried a lot of stuff but I couldn't make it work. On Windows 7 everything was working fine.