Sleeping Dogs - Original Steam Edition crashing on startup

Support Game Compatibility
1

Using Special K v 21.07.22 as it had a working installer, I noticed (and successfully tested) Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition working on my PC with Special K.

I can’t say the same of the original Sleeping Dogs release (where all my data is). When the game opens you have to press a button to confirm that you recognize the saving symbol. You press that button and the game crashes, the screen turns white and an error rectangle window pops up saying “Your game appears to be corrupted. Please contact Square Enix technical support…” yada yada.

I don’t use RTSS or anything like that, and if there’s a log I could provide to help with this I can do so. But I recognize this version of the game isn’t being actively sold anymore. Any ideas?

edit: Just to clarify, when I disable Special K it runs fine. The game doesn’t like playing nicely with it I guess.

2

See if applying the “sledgehammer config” solves the issue:

https://wiki.special-k.info/en/Compatibility/Issues#apply-the-sledgehammer-config

3

Appreciate it!

Replaced the SpecialK.ini and tried running the game, could tell it was in effect because my controller couldn’t bring up the Special K menu, unfortunately it led to the same crash.

4

I tested the game out on my end and from the looks of things what triggers the game is SK hooking the window process.

Open the SK config file, locate DontHookWndProc=false and change it to DontHookWndProc=true.

That seems to solve it in my testing.

5

That seems to have fixed it on my end, thank you!

6

Apologies, last question, I’m trying to add this to the compatibility list on the wiki and I’m having trouble figuring out where to get the version of the relevant dll. I’m not sure what the filename is, and it doesn’t seem like any of the dlls in the SleepingDogs folder have similar version numbers to others I’m seeing on the wiki. Closest relevant info I’m seeing is that Special K calls it D3D11.4.

What should I be looking for?

edit: Found a page indicating it should be either dxgi.dll or d3d11.dll, but my dlls in system folders seem to have radically different version numbers from what the wiki would lead me to expect.

7

All relevant information should be shown in SKIF.

Here’s an example from my install:

image

SpecialK32.dll indicates Special K is injected using the global method (no local DLL files), while 21.12.23 is the version of Special K I used with it.

If I were to perform a local install of Special K, I would’ve in some way installed that SpecialK32.dll file in the game folder but renamed as something appropriate based on the API the game uses.

Here’s an example where I used Special K’s File -> Install Wrapper DLLs option to automatically perform a local install of Special K:

image

8

Got it, thanks again!