https://github.com/SpecialKO/SpecialK

Lovingly referred to as the Swiss Army Knife of PC gaming, Special K does a bit of everything.
https://github.com/SpecialKO/SpecialK

framerate-fixer gaming hdr latency-analysis modding-games reverse-engineering

Last synced: about 2 months ago
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Lovingly referred to as the Swiss Army Knife of PC gaming, Special K does a bit of everything.

• Host: GitHub
• URL: https://github.com/SpecialKO/SpecialK
• Owner: SpecialKO
• License: gpl-3.0
• Created: 2022-01-23T03:42:47.000Z (almost 3 years ago)
• Default Branch: main
• Last Pushed: 2024-11-24T04:06:48.000Z (about 2 months ago)
• Last Synced: 2024-11-24T04:24:35.191Z (about 2 months ago)
• Topics: framerate-fixer, gaming, hdr, latency-analysis, modding-games, reverse-engineering
• Language: C++
• Homepage: https://www.special-k.info/
• Size: 269 MB
• Stars: 936
• Watchers: 12
• Forks: 54
• Open Issues: 71
• Metadata Files:
  • Readme: README.md
  • Changelog: CHANGELOG.txt
  • License: LICENSE

Awesome Lists containing this project

• awesome-modding - SpecialK - Swiss Army Knife of PC gaming with features such as HDR injection, textures modding, DLL loading such as ReShade and more. (Modding Utilities / Mod Organizer 2 Plugins & Tools)

README

        


 





Special K  *"Lovingly referred to as the Swiss Army Knife of PC gaming, Special K does a bit of everything. It is best known for fixing and enhancing graphics, its many detailed performance analysis and correction mods, and a constantly growing palette of tools that solve a wide variety of issues affecting PC games."*



 




>**Contents of Repository**

>

>This repository contains source code for Special K's code injection payload (`SpecialK(32|64).dll`).

>>Supporting utilities such as SKIF (**S**pecial **K** **I**njection **F**rontend) and the now deprecated SKIM (**S**pecial **K** **I**nstall **M**anger) are maintained as separate projects. Additionally, some older mods built using Special K exist as standalone plug-in DLLs; plug-ins and SKIM are no longer actively maintained, but are accessible via Kaldaien's GitHub profile.

>

>
**Build Dependencies**

>

> All of Special K's build dependencies are included when you clone the repo beginning with 23.5.7. Older versions have an additional dependency on the June 2010 DirectX SDK.

> 

>> Special K requires Visual C++ 2022 or newer to compile due to language features not present in older compilers.

>

>
**Platform Dependencies**

>

> Special K is not supported on anything older than Windows 8.1, though (as of 23.5.7) still builds and runs (massively feature-reduced) on Windows 7 (Platform Update).

> > It does run in WINE and is compatible with DXVK, but must be configured with `UsingWINE=true` in its per-game INI file to work on Linux.


>

>
**Miscellaneous**

>

>There is a good chance the project will not compile correctly if you use the Debug build configuration, Special K is designed to produce debuggable Release builds.



### High-Level Overview of Special K Code Injection

Special K's DLLs are capable of injecting their code in one of two ways:

**Local Injection**   Proxy / Wrapper DLL

1. Rename `SpecialK(32|64).dll` to `(dxgi|d3d11|d3d9|d3d8|ddraw|dinput8|OpenGL32).dll` and catch a ride via Static Imports or calls to **`LoadLibrary (...)`**.

**Global Injection**   Win32 Global Hookchain

2. Globally Inject using CBT / Shell hooks

	>This is the preferred technique, and the DLL is capable of bootstrapping the hook without any outside assistance via **`RunDLL_InjectionManager (...)`** (**rundll32.exe** will host the DLL as a normal Win32 UI process).

	




There are many more possible ways to inject the DLLs, the two outlined above are useable without any additional tools.

Special K will happily inject into a game that is already running if you want to build your own tool using something like **`CreateRemoteThread (...)`**, but keep in mind that late injection will prevent some of Special K's features (particularly those related to D3D overrides and shader/texture mods) from working.

> CBT Hooks were chosen due to hookchain order. Since most graphics APIs on Windows need a window before they can do non-trivial initialization, a CBT hook reliably gets us into the application ***before*** D3D9/11/12 swapchain creation.