Making DOA6 play and look better

Special K, ReShade, mods and tweaks

Framepacing (Special K)

This section is aimed at users of adaptive sync monitors, it'll also work on normal fixed refresh rate (to a lesser extent) so everyone should benefit from it.

What is framepacing?[ps4linux.com]
TL:DR
Under perfect conditions the game should display 60 frames per second and the time between each frame should be exactly 16.66 ms. In practice this is never the case and you may experience microstutter even at rock solid 60 fps (this is most noticeable when rotating the camera).

Special K[discord.gg] can be used to greatly improve the framepacing and make the game literally play smoother.

Here's a comparison between vanilla game framepacing and SK:

As you can see, we went from variation of 3.72ms to a buttery smooth 0.03 ms!

How to use:
1. Install SK - get the newest installer from the "installers" tab on Discord
2. Run it (and enable the service) before launching the game (you may need to add "doa6.exe" to the whitelist found in the settings tab)
3. Launch the game (be sure to first set it to the borderless mode in the in-game settings), open the OSD by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Backspace, check the box under the framerate limit and set it to 60
4. You can automatically hide the Windows cursor by checking "hide when not moved" under input management/mouse cursor

SK stores preferences for each individual game under

Program Files\Special K\Profiles\[gamename]\SpecialK.ini

If you have any problems with compatibility, open SpecialK.ini and set:

[API.Hook]
LastKnown=64
d3d9=false
d3d9ex=false
d3d11=true
OpenGL=false
d3d12=false
Vulkan=false

[Steam.Log]
Silent=true

Anisotropic filtering

Since Team Ninja has no idea what AF is, you need to manually force it in each of their games.
This is pretty straightforward, just set it to x16 in your GPU control panel and you're done. It doesn't have any noticeable impact on performance and will greatly improve the quality of ground textures.

Quick comparison of what to expect (200% zoom):

Antialiasing (ReShade SMAA)

The in-game antialiasing sucks and omits a lot of jaggies. The only sensible solution (apart from downsampling) is injecting SMAA via ReShade.
Getting it to work with DOA6 can be tricky but it can be loaded by Special K.

We're going to use v4.9.1 which is the last version before ReShade 5. You can try something newer but it will probably crash the game. You can find it in the repository[reshade.me].

1. Put "ReShade_Setup_4.9.1.exe" in "Program Files\Special K\PlugIns\ThirdParty\ReShade"
2. Run it, hold CTRL and click on "Click here to select a game and manage its ReShade installation" to unpack the dlls
3. Run it again and select "ReShade_Setup_4.9.1.exe" as the target application
4. Select "Direct3D 10/11/12" as the rendering API
5. Open "ReShade.ini" and add the following lines at the end:

[APP]
ForceVSync=0
ForceWindowed=0
ForceFullscreen=0
ForceResolution=0,0
Force10BitFormat=0

6. Run the game, open SK control panel, enable Reshade under the "Plug-Ins/Third-Party" tab, set it to "Early" load order and quit the game
7. It should load along SK when you relaunch the game, if it doesn't make sure "GlobalInjectDelay" is set to 0 in SpecialK.ini

For the purpose of this guide the only shader we're going to use is SMAA. Enable it, leave everything at default values except for corner rounding which should be set to 0. When you're done remember to enable the performance mode in the bottom right corner.

Note: You may be tempted to force FXAA via NVIDIA control panel but even though it will cover all the jaggies, it's extremely blurry and heavily affects the UI. Injecting SMAA, while not ideal, is the best solution (at least for now).

Graphics mods

Now for the juicy part :)

First, we need REDELBE, which enables mods in the first place.

REDELBE thread[www.loverslab.com]
You need to register to see the attachements, when you're done, download v3.0 from the first post.


To install, simply copy "REDEBLE" folder and "dinput8.dll" into the main game folder and you're done. You may also want to set "uncensor_loli_blow = true" in "REDELBE.ini".

Next comes the Enhanced Body Shader.

1. Download v1.12 from this post[www.loverslab.com]
2. Unpack all the files into "Dead or Alive 6\REDELBE\MaterialEditor" folder

Comparison:



Last but not least comes IFFY, which provides multiple graphical enhancements and fixes (check the original thread[www.loverslab.com] for pics).
Direct download[mega.nz]

1. Copy "REDEBLE" folder into the main game folder and overwrite all files
2. Copy all files from the "AO_MAP" folder into "Dead or Alive 6\REDELBE\MaterialEditor" and overwrite all files

Enjoy ♡

[Ahriman]

after enabling the reshade plugin in the Special K menu as described in the guide the game won't launch anymore.

[Arthandas]

@Paromc
You must be doing something wrong, I clearly displayed it works in DOA6 just fine.

[Paromc]

SpecialK makes games to crash, in my case about 8 different games start to crashing because of this magical software