Suppose a graphics stack restart also doesn't clear up any glitches or display corruption, Ctrl, Shift, Win and B I believe although AMD's drivers occasionally treats it as a display driver crash and would in that case reset Wattman configurations so you might have to double check.

Although I wouldn't trust overall GPU reliability or stability after any error that persists on exiting the application, only a full cycle meaning a reboot and ensuring it's back to it's regular state.

Something in the drivers went very wrong if it persists like that.
(Kinda reminds me of the early Vega display corruption issues in a way but it's not that.)

Memory corruption of some sort perhaps, might tie into the glitched texture display although on it's own it seems to be not severe enough where it persists and causes problems needing a system reboot to clear.


EDIT: Potentially there's some issue again with older texture formats or types but that's not something I'm very knowledgeable about and it gets more complicated by older surface formats.
(Possibly also AMD trying to optimize these to a faster mode if you keep surface format optimization on although it should only apply to D3D9 possibly earlier but not later D3D API's.)

Yeah you have the whole shader toolset and then the texture system in addition to the settings for D3D11 and DXGI plus however SpecialK hooks into DXGI, D3D11 and potentially how things then interact with the DGVoodoo wrapper and whatever the display driver is trying to do.

Display driver is probably pretty complicated since it might be trying to apply a compatibility profile or specific workarounds based on the name or Steam ID but now the API is different and I have no idea how AMD's D3D7 or D3D8 support is particularly in the newer drivers.


Any existing issues whether from the drivers or the program itself or these third party tools like SpecialK or DGVoodoo could work reasonable but added together there's just this chance it all sort of blows up.

Kaldaien would probably have to replicate the issue on his end for any in-depth information and if there's something SpecialK is doing but if there's a existing driver issue either with some newer version of dgvoodoo2 and what that changed or with the older D3D API's themselves that might be trickier to resolve.


Sounds like some of the usual suggestions for dgvoodoo2 also don't fix a few of these issues like incorrect texture rendering or the black screen start up problem.

Sometimes the OS itself also changes things but the current insider update to 19041 or 19042 if opted into that and build .421 for the cumulative updates only has a newer D3D9 .dll file so nothing for the older ones or for D3D11 or DXGI which goes back to the release build for these versions of the OS or one of the earliest cumulative updates before it hit general release status.

Looks like the website itself is improving and becoming a bit more responsive, suppose there's still a bit of a delay issue though.

Also I suppose the current the current Steam version and build are frozen now and can't be updated due to that Steam blocker and Kaldaien probably shifting from Steam due to this situation as well, guessing it's something I can thus just uninstall once things stabilize and development is back to Gitlab/Github or similar plus this other website for news and support now.


Weird situation but hopefully things can continue even if it'll be a bit different after this.

Seems Google has a blocker currently on the website ("Harmful content." Right.) but I can see the forums at least and there are some AMD issues with 2.55+ (WIP60 something currently.) although it seems 2.54 should work.

https://www.vogons.org/viewforum.php?f=59

Not much but it does confirm some display driver issue or vendor specific issues at least.


EDIT: There's also a debug version but whether it'll log anything useful or if it's primarily a display driver side problem or not might change how useful the resulting logs would be.

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=56583

A lot of "Warning" or the full "Error" entries would point to something going wrong though.



EDIT: Oh wrapping to D3D12 now even, I'm quite behind on the progress of this program then.
https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=74667

Well I can't see the changelog due to Google placing a warning malicious content stopper on the website either but that's interesting to see.

But for now that's primarily updates for the older Voodoo Glide API not D3D8

Or 8.1 little as I can actually find on it but I suppose it's similar to D3D9L/D3D9E/D3D9Ex info also being more limited or what to compare with.



EDIT: Ah and from that topic more confirmed AMD issues plus confirmation for existing ongoing ones outside of this development build or D3D12 wrapping.

AMD GPU? 😁 Will test again!

EDIT: I can confirm the (totally) black screen after the logo image (game is running, audio is perfect).

Weird. I hope it's not AMD again because then we have the same problem as with DX11...

I'd probably use the latest version of DGVoodoo2, wrap to DX11 and use SpecialK as D3D11.dll possibly also utilize DGVCP or what it's called err the DG Voodoo control panel for setting up configuration options.

Wrapping to DirectX 11 should be better and for SpecialK it's about injecting it later in the process thus it gets to be D3D11 not DXGI and not any D3D8 or D3D9 files it might also work via SKIM/SKIF but if it injects early it loads before or mid dgVoodoo doing it's wrapping and that's what this tries to avoid.


Testing wise I'd have little to no overrides available to begin with for SpecialK and leaving the OS to manage the window so borderless or window over exclusive full-screen display first.


SpecialK's dgVoodoo integration was back when the program was doing D3D8 to D3D9 and SpecialK had limited D3D8 and DDraw I think support for hooking up specifically through dgVoodoo and D3D9 as the final process.



I only ever tried this in Trails in the Sky / ED6 after the first few patches added (And then improved and then stabilized) a D3D9 implementation as until after a few more updates D3D8 was still recommended for these games.

It didn't work at all, game crashed on start so I'd either have to use SpecialK and D3D9 with some graphical glitches (Which were fixed later on through later game patches.) or dgVoodoo2 and wrapping D3D8 to D3D9 without SK, later on I also tested D3D11 which worked fine but by then I didn't use SpecialK for these games so I didn't get to try that chain of software and API wrangling ha ha.

(I believe the simpler ReShade D3D8->D3D9 wrapper also worked but it's less configurable and it's to D3D9 only, not sure if it's even updated much at all lately either.)



EDIT: Hmm for the current GPU and drivers it'd probably be a double wrap at that, D3D8 to D3D11 and then D3D11 to Vulkan through DXVK as a extra element.

It just works better or at least in most cases that I've had the chance to try so far.
Newer Vulkan compatible driver code from 1.2.139 to 1.2.145 - .148 and the current compiled builds would be even better but so far it's not happening.

AMD's at 1.2.139 and NVIDIA is at 1.2.133 (.148 on the development Vulkan drivers but a older overall driver code branch pre 451.48 somewhere I think it was?)

Unreal Engine 4 as per the FAQ on the forums, might have enough to allow it even if unofficial. :)


EDIT: Might break a bit too though if it's just the generic UE4 data and shaders and lacking some of the game specifics for this, generally shader stuff but if it starts and there's no immediate visual glitches or lack of effects or other display element oddities then yeah it might just work.

Yeah it feels like there's a bit of a gap for whoever it is that reviews the product though I've mostly compared against the list of banned products and discussions on that and the earlier VN debate on adult content and various revisions but even there it was inconsistent which titles were rejected or had to alter their content and compared to existing store content that passed without needing to be modified whereas other titles had to make varying changes or were removed.


Guess Valve is moving to something a bit more automated with manual input as required but when that happens there's some variation in how the review is handled although some of the older submissions could probably be given a pass but that's by this point a couple of years since the end of the community assisted Greenlight program and popularity vote system.


EDIT: Might also be a bit different for a users first submission and once that's cleared subsequent submissions go a bit easier and I assume bigger publishers would fall under alternate negotiations and terms entirely although that doesn't apply here for what's the indie output. :)

Should have been handled during the submission process and yeah if other apps can get through using games to showcase it so can SpecialK or Valve needs to standardize the requirements and clarify plus possibly having existing apps revised to confirm to these changes.

I was expecting the achievement stuff to be a blocker and the friend stuff and the DRM/offline thing much as it can be a benefit I don't think Valve would agree with working around some of that or using the API for some things.


But again that'd be during the initial layout and submission for what the application is not when it's cleared for release just pending this trailer criteria.

Originally posted by Aemony:

The group is already transferred to me (although that was made automatically and not intended), what's another thing? :conwayshrug:

The ban is a bit weird though, as based on Kal's previous messages Steam's support (or whomever he was in contact with) was aware of it and fine with his use of his second account to provide support in the Special K forums as long as he kept away from the other public forums on said account.

It is a bit weird, I'll be honest, to see a ban stretch even within discussion boards that technically he is the moderator/owner off to begin with. From the looks of things, Valve needs to add a separate ban level that basically only affects public discussion boards not related to the discussion boards that the account is a moderator/officer of.

Wasn't that the problem due to how Kaldaien does switch between both of those accounts during discussions not just here or the SpecialK app forums but also the various community ones?

Actually considering the whole ordeal for logging in, app authentication via mobile and validation and signing in to me at least it's pretty surprising how we was able to do discussions through both accounts shifting back and forth like that.

EDIT:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1113000/discussions/0/2441461920666858712/?ctp=35
(And a page or two back to have a example of this.)



EDIT: Now that's a curious reject reason, guess you'd need some nondescript sample D3D app with no tie ins at all for video and screenshot materials unlike showcasing FF15 and what not from the various community screenshots and examples.

The API stuff is to me at least new though, some of it I assumed would have to be changed but during the phase where the application was submitted initially not now when it's release readied.

Originally posted by GPUnity:

In all honesty, it doesn't have to be a setback at all. It will take time to set up on a new platform, but it's not like he has to scrap his injector in any way. It can actually be considered relieving to not have to deal with Steam anymore. I don't know if he's reading any of my messages right now, but trying to explain this to him.

He was really into getting it on Steam though as a proper app and what it could be used for but we'll see I suppose, hope everything goes well both with the project itself but also for him personally and what he decides to do. :)