ReShade not loading/injecting in Nier Automata

There’s a setting in SpecialK’s ReShade UI (Shift+F2 I believe is the default here instead of Shift+Home which it got changed to later for ReShade default bindings.) with some extra settings for SpecialK.

There’s one for drawing before the UI which works with a accompanying shader hash value, disabling that toggle can help but you do lose the ability to use SpecialK to draw shaders after the UI elements thus shaders won’t affect these.

Forgot the exact name here I think there’s two options in total as part of SpecialK ReShade D3D11 additions one might be on by default and then that works through a shaders ini file with the UI or HUD “hash” number selected which tells SpecialK and custom ReShade how to operate. :slight_smile:

EDIT: Hmm not that good at detailed explanations but opening ReShade and then in it’s UI the custom version here has an additional tab for SpecialK settings, toggle these and reload the preset and if that helps then for optimal functionality resolving the UI compatibility problem would be helpful as you would usually prefer not to affect UI text legibility and so on.
(I always had issues setting this up without custom ReShade no longer loading shaders at all but it’s been a long time since I used this so I do not remember the process in much detail.)

EDIT: Paths and such I believe are also hard-coded to .\Game Folder\ReShade\ for preferences and the shader files, possibly also paths for additional data like shader texture files but you would get a warning message (Red signifying something failed not the yellow text signifying some notification but nothing critical.)

Just from what I remember, probably already covered for but it’s been a long time since I used custom SpecialK ReShade so I only recall a couple of bits on how it was configured and what it needed if these extra bits were utilized. (Which are really handy but can take some configuring although FAR probably comes with much of that pre-set already in it’s default config files.)

Disabling the setting “skip post processing if not triggered” makes the effects work, but the presets I have right now look completely overblown with extremely oversaturated colors. I’m wondering if it might be because they were made for a later version of reshade, so I’ll try and experiment with older presets.

It’s because they weren’t made for HDR. They were already oversaturating colors in SDR, but you couldn’t see that because the oversaturation got clipped when it reached full saturation. Not much you can do about this, it’s why I don’t even use ReShade – its only purpose is to oversaturate things :stuck_out_tongue:

Most Reshade presets are just that, plus a contrast adjustment and finally a cinematic or photorealism label slapped on for downloads :man_shrugging: It’s annoying, because Reshade can do more than that, it’s just riddled with bad presets. Some games don’t even need Reshade at all, especially recent games, excluding those with bad colour grading like Arkham Knight.

Reshade can be used for actual improvements though, especially for reviving older games with improved visuals, it’s just rarely handled properly.

There’s some really good shaders that work almost like tools for setting up color balancing and what not but it’s a lot of work and with the info ReShade has to work with it’s surprising how well the results actually work for how limited the info ReShade has is.

Dynamic lighting and full time of day and varied weather conditions along with tone mapping and color correction or cinematic stylish highlights or contrasts must be incredibly tough to get more complex presets working well with outside of specifically tuning a particular scene or such for screenshot purposes.

Sharpening to offset temporal AA blurriness works pretty well, SMAA is something I used extensively as well but newer games are very limited in effectiveness here plus a post-process method has it’s flaws although custom ReShade can at least make it so the UI is mostly unaffected by these shaders.

Downsampling is nifty too but the performance cost is usually not feasible when a 2x2 (4x) or higher sampling is recommended at minimum and even at high levels aliasing is still present though combined with FXAA or SMAA if not TAA if supported by the game it can almost eliminate aliasing edges.

EDIT: And personal preferences as always, I find sharpening good but only a very slight amount as to avoid glitches or contrast problems even in more recent variants of this sort of effect.

FXAA and SMAA aren’t without their downsides either and being post-process ReShade itself has limits but some users get very creative in using what’s available and the upcoming additions could see further shader effects or more overall optimizations and possibilities for existing ones that are still updated and maintained.

I use Nvidia image sharpening, when it comes to soft TAA implementations (i’m looking at you FFXV :eyes:). SMAA is pretty useful yeah, though since i’ve been running games at 4k i’ve not been using it.

Reshade for modern games seems to mainly be useful for taking screenshots where you want to simulate artistic photography.

Edit: I’m happy with the results here for example, and this is a much older game (almost a decade old) - AO was too intense in this test, but other than that i think Reshade helps the game in this example.

I have essentially cannabilized my entire last weekend, and all my data trying to wrestle with this software to get it to do what I got it doing before but there are so many different versions, and other factors that make this insanely difficult unless you are basically recording the process and being super meticulous with order and placement.

I wanted to fix FF XV AND incorporate raytracing which I succeeded in, then removed the files to see what would happen since I noticed broken behavior doing so with FF X another game on my to do list. I did so so I could see what it would do for other peoples benefit.

If im making a step by step guide on how to do it, and I still cant recreate what I did thats incredibly frustrating. How do I get special k, and my reshade-shader effects to actually work together again?

Also how do we get the same thing with FF X texture injection and raytracing working? Is that just not going to happen? I would hate to have to jump through all the hoops in vortex if that would even work.

If you look around the internet im not the lone ranger. A lot of people are having trouble with this so it needs to be made less confusing for people. Honestly I have been finding dirty workarounds for ancient games on windows 10, but ive never had this level of problem before where it was so damn stubborn. Im exhausted and burned out trying to figure it out.

This is about 3 months of effort so far and doesnt include CPU optimization specifics as they are found on my channel itself on youtube by the same name as below.
https://github.com/Yodasraytracedretrostudios/Yodasraytracedretrostudios

Its been such an obtuse process that special k with reshade at the same time has dethroned everything I have come across in difficulty for what should be just 2 games. Its eating whats looking like weeks if I even bother. The idea was to get the easier pickings mapped out, mass texmod everything that I can, and learn C++. The simpler for people the better. No rubics cubes. No disasters. It just works.

“I’ve always wanted to be a giant space crab.”
– Gabe Newell

Evil we sworn tattoo P.H.’ SHY’HIGH ends pace grab.

Evil=Good, Times
We=The PC Master Race
Sworn=Enemies
Tattoo=Mark, Historic
P.H.'=D, Grade, Mediocre
Shy=Obvious
High=Performance
Ends=Begins
Pace=Frame, STUTTER
Grab=Claw, Hook

I tried to stick up for you but honestly ive grown to hate how hard it is to use your software alongside my ambitions. Its so ridiculous it communicates that its almost on purpose. If its not, please make it to where you dont have to be a software developer to get it playing nice with modern reshade functions. Seriously man. Our Divine Leader Gaben clearly cares about performance, but he doesnt seem to care that much either or he would fix his honestly GARBAGE iteration of this product on his store. I dont care how he does it, but he needs to do it.

Maybe being diplomatic will yield some sort of response. Usually im ignored even when im magnitudes less eccentric by modders just in general. I get the idea they arent motivated for the same reasons I am from this experience.

My goal here is simple, make guides that actually work so other people can use them. I dont care about the limelight, I just want to get work done and ideally get more people onboard to help me in essentially restoring 1995-2015ish high caliber art. So far the response from the community has been abysmal. Im on the spectrum. Its why im so dedicated. So bothered.

"but it’s possible that traces of the old method still remain on the system and can cause issues even with newer versions of the mod.

Remove the path to the Special K DLL files from these registry keys:
HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows\AppInit_DLLs
HKLM\Software\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows\AppInit_DLLs"
-Aemony

Bro if its complicated for me, I feel sorry for legitimate children just wanting to enjoy the game without the stutter and pure rasterization who bought the steam version. Now I get to go registry diving because reasons. Im so demoralized. Is that the purpose?

Like I find modders who make mod files you can actually download called Doom 3 Direct X RT, and you open the readme, and it literally says the name of the file you just downloaded. Is that like the culture? Repulsive. What made mankind a superintelligence was our capacity to share information and libraries should keep the signal to noise ratio in check or it starts looking like internet forums. Lots of questions, scattered answers, no coherent singular place for information. It almost doesnt respect this fact of life how often I will find this sort of thing in the community.

Does pretty please mean a thing? It should be obvious I have OC"D". Although I respect the effort, its definitely very broken. Like if I install it fresh on a new OS, it will pop up this ancient version of reshade, but dont you dare drag that reshade-shaders folder to the generated ReShade folder or you apparently better know whats up in regedit. I have so much other work to do and this is a wild goose chase id like to actually successfully request and receive help solving.

Im not here to be a jerk, but this problem has caused me lots of pain. My tolerance for that sort of thing is why what I have done has exploded from basically nothingness out of nowhere.

https://wiki.special-k.info/en/SpecialK/Tools#reshade probably details one of the easier methods possible atm.

The thing is that neither Kal nor I really cares about or uses ReShade, and it’s a hassle having to figure and document every single permutations that might possibly get ReShade compat working — especially when considering things like taking into account ReShade’s own management tools and whatnot.

In a best case scenario just having them side-by-side works. But more often than not they conflict in one way or another.

Some days I wonder why I even bother, since whatever documentation/method I write will be outdated eventually anyway, and as I don’t care at all about ReShade myself, I wouldn’t even notice it being outdated.

Also, my old Steam Guide is heavily outdated and in the process of being removed entirely and replaced with a link to the wiki. I removed a ton of it a few days ago but am still in the process of removing the remaining info.

Where is this from btw? It was parts of what I removed from my guide a couple of days ago — beyond that I think only random old forum posts makes references to it.

If you found it elsewhere then I could really use a link so that I can determine if it needs removing or not.

Tools | Special K - The Official Wiki probably details one of the easier methods possible atm.

“The thing is that neither Kal nor I really cares about or uses ReShade”

At least its not antisociality right? Its an important component. If you need more manpower im going to start out on baby stuff like automation of my guides where security OS relevant stuff will probably be impossible to realistically incorporate. Realistically I need like 2 years to sort of casually build my way up. Eventually I want to reverse engineer source, because at least if its complex and painful, its appropriately so.

I had this idea to have the reshade game effect pass go before the games effects in the rendering pipeline. I love how I dont have to explain to either of you why that matters. I also wanted to make a rescale tech, that essentially gave me more pixel estate for AO and glowy friends to resolve without being screenspace only limited. I dont think anyone is going to notice less than 1 percent FOV. To me the cleaner objective delivery would be worth the hassle.

“, and it’s a hassle having to figure and document every single permutations that might possibly get ReShade compat working — especially when considering things like taking into account ReShade’s own management tools and whatnot.”

Why not unify everything into just one generalized thing that just works? I assume thats the logical long term goal.

“In a best case scenario just having them side-by-side works. But more often than not they conflict in one way or another.”

So what needs to occur is some sort of workaround for this very problem because I see lots of people who do care for reshade. I didnt like it myself because essentially sweetfx wasnt adding anything to the render interesting. Raytracing I shape things as they would occur in the real world generally. Glow on geometry up, darkening down. No unstable bs at the screen edges uses multi radius. Ive seen actual multi million dollar projects where game devs clearly gave zero fs and fixed it for them personally. Initiate warp drives level distortion. Just str8 up trash.

“Some days I wonder why I even bother, since whatever documentation/method I write will be outdated eventually anyway, and as I don’t care at all about ReShade myself, I wouldn’t even notice it being outdated.”

Thats why I provision if its particularly bs code OS build version ect. At least there is some flavor of known workaround in one singular place not spread about at what appears to be complete random. Ill work on this now but the entire philosophy of my channel is it saves other people time and without more in depth knowledge its far less efficient. Like I know what visual studios is, ive used it to make Blizzard change their partnership perks with intel, but I cant even code higher abstraction languages. I dont even care to, its close to the metal, or I dont care.

“Also, my old Steam Guide is heavily outdated and in the process of being removed entirely and replaced with a link to the wiki. I removed a ton of it a few days ago but am still in the process of removing the remaining info.”

Ill help where I can. Again I might come across as abrasive but its also super obvious its because I care. Alot.

"Where is this from btw? It was parts of what I removed from my guide a couple of days ago — beyond that I think only random old forum posts makes references to it.

If you found it elsewhere then I could really use a link so that I can determine if it needs removing or not."

Special K - v 0.8.65 [Legacy Release] - (1/15/18) :: Special K - “Kaldaien’s Mod” (steamcommunity.com)

Right now, because one does not exist as both Special K and ReShade are developed independently of one another. Some of their purposes occasionally overlaps, but in many ways they do not.

I can’t speak for how the future looks like, as that’s ultimately up to Kaldaien.

Kaldaien’s Custom ReShade fork sorta merged their two functionalities together back in 2017, but then it was left to stagnate as he’s one guy focusing on Special K primarily, and with main ReShade continuing development along its own pace, the fork was eventually left behind and made obsolete.

And workarounds gets created and made obsolete as both projects continues to be developed separately without any actual official connection to one another.

Every ReShade ‘workaround’ or guide we’ve ever written have been applicable at one point or another – then they becomes obsolete because ReShade develops in a direction we cannot control (for obvious reasons) nor are aware of, or Special K changes to improve compatibility with some new game or feature; inadvertedly breaking some older compatibility.

And now you basically need to maintain two (or more) revisions of the same guide – one for games/ReShade users using the older version of SK or ReShade, and one for those using the newer version.

I’ve lost count how many different ReShade related instructions/guides I’ve written or seen Kaldaien write, and many of them are still relevant or applicable for some users – especially those using older versions of Special K (or ReShade).

It’s why one approach, that I am ever growing more to like, is to simply not have me care about ReShade at all nor provide instructions related to it in any “official SK capacity”. Doing that would basically take a headache of my shoulders and “solve” the situation by ignoring it entirely and let the community figure it out on a per-game and per-SK/ReShade-version basis.

Then whoever managed to figure the exact magic instructions of the day can provide support/assistance for users that arrive years down the line and expect the instructions to still be as applicable with today’s versions as when it was written three four years ago for entirely different versions.

Thanks. That post is talking about a really old version of Special K where those AppInit things were relevant – basically only if the user have installed a certain heavily out-of-date version of Special K and isn’t applicable any longer.

Users who go hunt down years old posts and comments are going to found those all of the place – Special K has changed a lot (and Reshade as well) and I can’t just go back and remove thousands of replies/comments just because they might not be relevant in the very latest version of Special K any longer.


Realistically, the only really applicable long-term approaches/“solutions” to this whole challenge is either:

  • Someone from the community who cares about both projects, such as yourself, maintains and updates a central repository of SK/ReShade compatibility database and instructions, which Special K can just refer users to.

  • Both Special K and ReShade projects join into one – though I don’t see this happening as their current intended purposes are wildly different.

Any other “solution” is ultimately going to be temporary in nature due to the projects being and developing separately.

“Right now, because one does not exist as both Special K and ReShade are developed independently of one another. Some of their purposes occasionally overlaps, but in many ways they do not.”

I thought I made it clear, the amount of versions of special k was the target meaning.

“Then whoever managed to figure the exact magic instructions of the day can provide support/assistance for users that arrive years down the line and expect the instructions to still be as applicable with today’s versions as when it was written three four years ago for entirely different versions.”

You and the programmer would have the best most efficient course of action with internal gearwork of what splines meet where though. I care a lot, but at the same time I have other work to do and this has to be a background noise event in the chain of many until I can more practically go in and alter whats necessary if necessary. Give me your best intelligence on this matter as a multi URL drop of past guides made if you would. My present focus is getting vortex to work in java for working around the need for special k altogether since it only appears a requirement for steams FF XV anyway. It may or may not work.

“I’ve lost count how many different ReShade related instructions/guides I’ve written or seen Kaldaien write, and many of them are still relevant or applicable for some users – especially those using older versions of Special K (or ReShade).”

Beam me up scotty. Space accordingly if thats the barrier.

“Any other “solution” is ultimately going to be temporary in nature due to the projects being and developing separately.”

That is a controllable event with the big factor being the game getting patched since you can isolate and stagnate on perhaps a custom ISO optimized version of whatever build infects the general hardware of those running it. And I guess graphics drivers to a much less extent. Tech yes city dropped a version for people to use, but its extremely lazily implemented. I have historically annihilated their laughable 107 task scheduler events just eyeballing one portion, so eventually ill have to make that a reality. It could add convenience for everyone and provide a solution if its not readily viable on whatever random build is floating out there in the wilds. That would leave game patches and graphics drivers which I imagine are far less relevant than how windows 10 behaves as it relates to files and injection.

“* Both Special K and ReShade projects join into one – though I don’t see this happening as their current intended purposes are wildly different.”

Actually, modular HDR overlapping my stunt standard output version teasing out the limits of subtle injection without the idiotic consequences I see very regularly in youtube demos from randos is a synergy at one point I was entertaining as another step in the libraries refinement. I mean I dont mind putting in the work, but if its not readily workable, then theres the cause. Its not seen as a symbiote which is bizzare considering boths purpose is very blatantly game enhancement. Or its not admitted to be because the realities of coding is a hassle as it evolves in relationships. This is the beauty of retro commitment. There are far less factors to trouble yourself over, beyond the initial does it run? - - potential issue.

And now a moment of silence for the morons of youtube who care so little about their work, they can be told about it very nicely and they dont bother reuploading post retooling it. This mentality is painfully frequent as it presents. It cheapens the potential of what im doing, and is the sole reason I dont exist despite my contributions. My style isnt marketing, its brute force, kind of like this project. Im just less sophisticated.

Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six - Lockdown [Raytracing GI - 4K:60FPS] - YouTube

“George Lucas should have distributed the 'source code ’ to Star Wars . Millions of fans would create their own movies and stories. Most of them would be terrible, but a few would be genius.”
-Gabe Newell

Charge Luke hiss shhh hood half toss drip heated thaw swords coat do sssssssss door worse mail eons offends world great fair earn move hes in star ease more stab fame wit beat are appall bot off hue word b*tching yes.

“Do or do not, there is no try.”
-George Lucus

Qui-Gon Cutting Through Door 1 HOUR - YouTube

Accept my propaganda. Its super legit. Join the Republic, or send people to my ship so we can make Retro Great Again.

Unless Sir Kaldaien and oneself are secretly Sith Lords, and this is not your plan with your powers of the force. In that case, I shall bring it balance.

Gabe Newell is watching.

ReShade itself can and will continue to be developed by its creators and developers without any involvement or relation to Special K.

And with those, the shaders that people use for them.

Meaning that whatever guide or prepackaged version of Special K we might ship would be out of date eventually. We’d basically have to take a snapshot of every possible ReShade shader available at the time and collect and redistribute those with a prepackaged Special K build for every game, which then would introduce an ongoing expectation of support and maintenance for those as well which we cannot provide.

And even in those cases we’d receive users who wants to use newer ReShade shaders asking why their years newer shader isn’t compatible with the old prepackaged copy. And if they update the bundled ReShade version to a newer one that supports their shaders, they might (and probably will) run into new issues that the old one didn’t have.

It’s a lost cause, basically, and I don’t see why Kal or I should dedicate even more time pursuing that lost cause when it ultimately will only result in more headache for us and less time for what we really want to focus on.

Oh, and just FYI my involvement in Special K is entirely free of expectations and ultimately unpaid work. This is a hobby project / interest for me and the time I dedicate to Special K related matters would ultimately change if I were expected/forced to maintain a repository for a third-party tool I don’t even like nor care about.

I’d rather spend my time on the PCGamingWiki (another hobby interest of mine) and the damn MediaWiki headaches that I get from that than on ReShade related stuff, basically.


The one I can remember is the one from my Steam Guide that I removed recently: Steam Community :: Guide :: An Unofficial Guide to Special K (Wayback Machine)

Past that, only the information from the SK’s “Custom plugin” support is relevant: Tools | Special K - The Official Wiki

There have probably been many more short “guides” or steps over the years but as ReShade is not something I use personally nor care a lick about it’s not something I’ve bothered put to memory either. Usually I just summarize and throw a spotlight on whatever instructions or methods other random parties in the community discovers work.

“And even in those cases we’d receive users who wants to use newer ReShade shaders asking why their years newer shader isn’t compatible with the old prepackaged copy”

I dont foresee anything better coming down the pipe other than AMDs inference based DLSS open source alternative for a very long time. You could just do it one more time and with a known windows 10 build and I think that would be something more than just myself would greatly appreciate.

“Oh, and just FYI my involvement in Special K is entirely free of expectations and ultimately unpaid work. This is a hobby project / interest for me and the time I dedicate to Special K related matters would ultimately change if I were expected/forced to maintain a repository for a third-party tool I don’t even like nor care about.”

Oh I inferred you were a contributee. I just wanted to see your devotion to objective enhancement of some of mankinds finest works. I can see why you dont care for reshade. For years it offered really nothing of importance. Dumb sharpeners. Medicore antialiasing. The world was and still is flooded with sweetfx reshades which essentially try to outdo the original artists by changing the color direction, where what makes it interesting is intelligent sharpeners, crytek invented predication SMAA, and legit path based raytracing darkening and glow to geometry. For decades we didnt get anything close to this sort of technology, and you should really take it for a spin. Get to know it. Take it to bed tonight and see what she has under the hood in practice.

“There have probably been many more short “guides” or steps over the years but as ReShade is not something I use personally nor care a lick about it’s not something I’ve bothered put to memory either.”

You should check out both the dark and the light side of polygons sometime. Its seductive and I think youre just sheltered bro.

Jurassic Park Operation Genesis Raytracing - YouTube

One of the best case scenarios. Dont lie to me. Its not just some upsampled textures with a.i. and wicked high resolution. Its entire layers of rendering that actually make a big difference to the believability of the scene. Its not Crysis with the worlds first real time photorealism with distant landscapes, but you really should appreciate what this reshade capability has. Its like flying biplanes when you could be running F-35s and on someone elses dime.

Perhaps its time to make, contact, with the ReShade Knight and all should pull chairs beside the round table of Perfection.

Gaben Amen.

Or is there blood between Kingdoms? What sort of diplomacy might coax a peace between the Realms? Or better is it to begin construction of the Temple?

Words, words, mere words no matter from the heart.
-William Shakespeare

War head swords mirror we hurts nom adder for mmmmm feared.

Loose eye four.

Brace yourselves, the Modder Gods are rumbling from the Heavens.

Recommendation:
Dream Theater - The Answer Lies Within

oh! man u save me thx