So maybe I’m…well stupid here, but I’m curious. Did some searching and couldn’t see much about it, so I figured I’d ask. Can someone explain to me specifically how to whitelist/blacklist using SKIF 0.6.9 ?
I play Escape from Tarkov, which runs Battleye anti-cheat. I get a window when the game runs about blocking the injection of the SpecialK DLLs, and while I’m sure it’d be fine, I’d really rather block injection to that one specific game to avoid any potential problems or bans, while not having to disable/re-enable global injection every time I run the game. Nothing I throw into the blacklist field seems to actually do anything though.
Thanks for anyone’s time, I’m pretty sure this is 110% user error anyways
Ah, yeah, sorry about that. The misunderstanding comes from how injection actually works, and what the whitelist/blacklist actually controls.
I have a more detailed section about how it works and why over on the PCGamingWiki article, but in a gist the whitelist/blacklist only controls whether Special K will be initialized in a process or not. The method that global injection makes use of does not allow it to actually control whether its injected or not in a process – Windows injects it into all processes that have a window.
Special K’s whitelist/blacklist gets involved after the DLL files are injected into a process, and determines whether Special K should actually be initialized, or if it should remain idle.
This is why BattlEye throws that window about blocking it, because it prevented Windows from injecting Special K into the game process.
I highly recommend reading the “Global (system-wide)” section over on the PCGamingWiki article as it goes through it in more details and the reasoning behind it.
Technically, there is one way to block injection without starting/stopping SK.
If you run SK as a normal user, but the game as admin, SK won’t have the necessary permissions to inject the DLL and Windows won’t bother trying. It’s inadvisable to run games as admin, but doable.
Okay thank you very much. I looked all over and figured I’d just ask!
That’s a good idea too, thanks. Nah I’m sure it’s fine I just don’t wanna risk anything deciding SpecialK might be a cheat or something, lot of these anti-cheats are getting REALLY picky about stuff. Had one flag Skype the other day. Really? lol
Any idea how to inject Special K in non-steam games that is installed in Program Files (x86)? I can do that to games installed in just Program Files, but not with (x86).
I’m not whitelisting every game in Program Files.
But I can only whitelist folders in Program Files and not Program Files (x86).
So I can set up a whitelist for example (Program Files\Ubisoft\Splinter Cell Blacklist\), but it does not work if I have (Program Files (x86)\Ubisoft\Splinter Cell Blacklist).
Ah I see. Good to know. A bit late in my case though since I decided to just move every non-steam game I have over to Program Files. Thanks for the answer though, this will certainly help in the future.
Protip: Add the executable name to the whitelist instead.
Using folder names are only really necessary if you want to mass-whitelist a bunch of games stored under a single unified folder.
For executable names, you can either just add the name itself without its extension quake2, or add the extension as well just for the sake of it quake2.exe.
Also, per regexp, a dot/period . technically means a single wildcard character, so quake2.exe in the whitelist would technically match “quake2aexe”, “quake20exe”, etc as well. But since it also matches “quake2.exe”, and the chance of a mismatch is extremely low, it’s barely worth noting.
Edit: Here’s how my personal whitelist looks like. It whitelists all games below Epic Games’ as well as all applicable Win32 games on the Microsoft Store (aka Xbox Game Pass) through the WindowsApp line:
oriandthewillofthewisps
MoonMan
dungeons.exe
quake2.exe
Epic Games
srttr.exe
WindowsApps
7554
carrion
I’m beginning to regret using regex It seemed like a good idea at the time, but in hindsight pattern matching for things you want to block or allow doesn’t need all this sophistication – as long as devs refrain from calling every single game game.exe
To be fair I’ve yet to run into a situation where a simple *[searchterm]* string comparison wouldn’t have applied all of my whitelist patterns defined so far.
But then who knows, maybe someone will use RegExp to come up with ridiculous patterns just because they can, lol.
At a first glance support for RegExp makes more sense on the blacklist side of things than the whitelist side, but that could introduce confusion on its own if the whitelist was operating through separate rules than the blacklist.
I have no problem with RegExp for white and blacklisting. I just lacked the general knowledge and know-how in order to use it properly.
Both of your inside knowledge and tips is definitely helping me setting it up properly on my side.
I have already successfully injected SpecialK in Splinter Cell Blacklist and enabled and configured HDR calibration on that game. And it looks a thousand times better than regular SDR or the tonemapped SDR to HDR that Windows does.
It seemed like a good idea at the time, but in hindsight pattern matching for things you want to block or allow doesn’t need all this sophistication – as long as devs refrain from calling every single game game.exe 
