Hi,

So this is sort of a late "announcement"... Sorta missed doing one many many months ago, but better late than never, I guess? Most of our users are probably aware of this already, but this is more for those who are not or those passing through from parts unknown.

In August of 2020 development and communication for Special K and its game mods such as FAR moved over to using external services. As a result this Steam Group is not really active that much any longer, and I would recommend users interested in the latest versions to join us in one of Special K's new homes:

• Discord[discord.gg] - Where active development and the very latest versions are.
  
• Forum[discourse.differentk.fyi] - Carries a more stable release dated by a few months.
  
• Wiki[wiki.special-k.info] - Extensive knowledge base about the project.

The Discord server is where active development happens and the latest test versions can be found, while the forum contains the latest "stable" version (usually a few months out of date).

I also recommend checking the wiki out! A lot of work have gone into documenting the most frequently asked topics, and clarifying confusion or questions users might have about Special K.

For users wanting to support the project, we now also have a Patreon![www.patreon.com]

Over the last year the project have seen major improvements, new features, and changes:

• Special K have received DirectX 12 (Direct3D 12) support, including for HDR retrofitting, as well as multi-monitor management and an in-game HDR toggle of its own.
  
  
• Updated plugins for NieR: Automata (FAR) and NieR: Replicant (Radiant Replicant) are embedded in the latest versions of Special K on the Discord server. These plugins can bring major performance or frame pacing improvements for players of those games, and are highly recommended.
  
  
• For Nvidia hardware users, Special K can now also enable Nvidia Reflex in DirectX 11-12 games! Reflex is Nvidia's feature for optimizing and measuring latency[www.nvidia.com] in competitive games, but it can also help reduce input latency in many singleplayer titles!
  
  
• The core feature of Intel's PresentMon[github.com] is now integrated as well, and Special K can monitor and display presentation mode changes for a game as they occur in real-time.
  
  
  What this means is that users do not need to be uncertain whether exclusive fullscreen mode has engaged properly, or if the fullscreen optimziations of Win10 overrides that mode. The presentation model also makes it easy to separate games running in the most performant mode (bypassing the DWM of Windows) from those using suboptimal or obsolete presentation modes where additional render latencies is incurred.
  
  
• We are testing an installer over in the Discord server! This installer is expected to become the main method of installing and eventually updating Special K.
  
  
• SKIF have received major updates, new features, as well as a UI refresh and a ton of fixes, including support for Steam's new library manifest format.
  
  
• The On-Screen Display (OSD) text (the yellow text in the top left corner) have been updated to rely on the same ImGui library that powers the widgets and control panel of Special K. This is an ongoing project to phase out CEGUI which it was previously based on, as that library is not compatible with DirectX 12.

We have also received a cool trailer curtesy of GPUnity, please check it out, or one of their other videos where they showcased their texture mods for various games, such as NieR: Automata and Batman: Arkham Asylum.

Cheers!
Aemony on behalf of the Special K Team

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLCDYuql7Sg

I have decided to release the core system used by all of my mods as a standalone product for the PC gaming community to use in all games.

Generally, features in this project are developed and tested in other projects first. If they are general purpose and I believe they will be useful (and not impossible for me to debug and support), they eventually wind up in Special K for you to use in all of your games.

Those custom one-off fixes that do amazing things in Tales of Symphonia and Tales of Zestiria .. will probably stay there as they are tailored specifically to those games graphics engines.

But the texture streaming system developed to load 4K textures in real-time in Tales of Symphonia without any added load-time, is eventually going to be moved into Special K for use in all D3D 9 / 11 / (12?) and GL games. I want to make as many features like that cross-API as I can to make this a truly unique tool.


Please see the project's development thread for more details.