Modular! Documentation! Tasks!

We're heading into an interesting direction, although I hardly look forward to the multitude of issues we're bound to hit on the way.

Remember to change your Special K install branch back to Testing or Latest (Main). The alpha/beta branch is dead now and will be removed in a few months.

Documentation will be great. I sometimes forget some commands or settings and it takes time to find them again. Subscribing to the thread, and congratulations on the new version :).

Yeah, documentation is going to be a big undertaking, but needed.

I wish I were joking when I said I suspect 80% of the people using this software don't know more than 20% of its features :)

Documentation will extend way beyond what you probably think of with this mod. It will cover the systems I use for auto-update, DLC management, multi-part .7z patching, etc. I want to open all of that up, and let users distribute their own mods using SKIM64.exe.

So, stuff's going to slow down, yes, but a lot of features that only I could use in older versions of the software will become open for everyone to use.

Good news for the next version of my FFXII fix (do you mind if I talk about this stuff, Kal? Well, if you like the game I assume that you're interested):

http://u.cubeupload.com/masterotaku/FFXIITZA016.jpg

No more black bars in cutscenes! And that screenshot shows that it disables all letterboxing even in ultrawide monitors (I assume the same could be true for triple monitors, but I can't test that). Edit: the only drawback is that some faint shadows are enlongated to the bottom, in the zone where the black box was supposed to be. I suppose the game didn't care about rendering things correctly in that part of the screen.

There were two responsible pixel shaders. One that is usually for the minimap elements, and another dedicated black bars shader (that's why I didn't detect that it was fixable until now).

The condition for black bars disabling (after pressing the hotkey) is that color must be pure black for all three components. That way I can avoid disabling other things. The translucent black text box when speaking with NPCs disappears too.

I'll upload this tomorrow, presumably. I'm finishing some touches for 3D, which is almost perfect now.

Edit 2: ugh, I have way too many hotkeys. I have to clean up that mess and organize it better.

Also, I've just modified the F5 hotkey to toggle tone mapping correctly. So it won't break other effects anymore. I'm not sure if I'll include it in my "h" preset. Tone mapping gives a more contrasty feel in general, but it can make character models and some textures more... dull. Or maybe it's just darker.

I offered to make a floating widget full of key combos a while back, nobody seemed interested :)

On a more serious note, there are things I plan to do in Special K to ease this kind of stuff. Triggering and visually displaying key combo states for third-party software would be pretty simple.

If you're going to use a zillion button combos rather than some kind of UI, you probably are going to want 3DMIgoto to add hotkey banks or something like that :P

I don't anticipate ever needing this in Special K, because I have a UI with buttons and sliders and tigers oh my.

Originally posted by Kaldaien:

Triggering and visually displaying key combo states for third-party software would be pretty simple.

That's something I've been requesting for 3Dmigoto for some time (maybe it'll come soon enough. There is more text now when reloading or dumping shaders). Like being able to show on-screen the state of hotkeys when you press them, because currently I have to count number of presses on my head, or reset everything to make sure I have the correct state in some hotkey.

That's no good. 3DMigoto is really advanced software, I can't understand why it can't visually display the state of certain things? :-\

I know I have it easy with ImGui, but if I needed to, I could add a little status line like you'd see in vi or emacs with the most important state listed in simple text :)

Whose genius idea was it at Square Enix to store 2.5 GiB crash dumps in FFXII?!

No, I'm not sending you those logs

For filling up my entire disk with crash logs, I intend never to send you one again.

Originally posted by Kaldaien:

Whose genius idea was it at Square Enix to store 2.5 GiB crash dumps in FFXII?!

No, I'm not sending you those logs

For filling up my entire disk with crash logs, I intend never to send you one again.

If anyone has as shitty of internet as I do it would be nigh impossible to even submit those.

Originally posted by Kaldaien:

Whose genius idea was it at Square Enix to store 2.5 GiB crash dumps in FFXII?!

No, I'm not sending you those logs

For filling up my entire disk with crash logs, I intend never to send you one again.

I had 2 of those. You just realized about those crash logs? Its all over the discussion thread in FFXII Zodiac Age section :D

Good news is my game stopped crashing in a way that it no longer triggers those crash dumps XD

What the hell is going on with window mode gaming in Windows 10? I've heard recently of worse performance while playing in window mode since Fall Creators Update, but have been unable to experience something similar since I practically never play at window mode.

However today I played Dragon Ball FighterZ in window 1920x1080 on my 1080 Ti, and at times the game starts stuttering along at 45-50 FPS for no apparent reason at all, with low CPU and GPU usages across the board.

This with a card that is capable of playing it at 8K 60 FPS while in exclusive fullscreen mode... >_<

Originally posted by Aemony:

What the hell is going on with window mode gaming in Windows 10? I've heard recently of worse performance while playing in window mode since Fall Creators Update, but have been unable to experience something similar since I practically never play at window mode.

However today I played Dragon Ball FighterZ in window 1920x1080 on my 1080 Ti, and at times the game starts stuttering along at 45-50 FPS for no apparent reason at all, with low CPU and GPU usages across the board.

This with a card that is capable of playing it at 8K 60 FPS while in exclusive fullscreen mode... >_<

LOL my 970 at 1533Mhz plays Dragon ballz at 1080p solid 60 fps with no stutters. Do you have the settings set correctly for it?

Originally posted by Kaldaien:

Yeah, documentation is going to be a big undertaking, but needed.

I wish I were joking when I said I suspect 80% of the people using this software don't know more than 20% of its features :)

Documentation will extend way beyond what you probably think of with this mod. It will cover the systems I use for auto-update, DLC management, multi-part .7z patching, etc. I want to open all of that up and let users distribute their own mods using SKIM64.exe.

So, stuff's going to slow down, yes, but a lot of features that only I could use in older versions of the software will become open for everyone to use.

I think you might be right here, but at the same time, I do not think everybody NEEDS the other 80%. I am perfectly fine with just FPS limiting, more control regarding fullscreen mode, seeing my FPS and your achievement notification. Everything else is rarely touched or was never touched and I think I do not need to ;)

But it is great that you will make it easier for people who want to use other features to use them. Just saying that not everyone will need to know the 80% ;)