Modder Kaldaien has released a new version of his Special K mod for Final Fantasy XV. According to the modder, this mod removes the anti-debug from Square Enix’s RPG, something that could result in better performance. However, and after numerous tests we can say, with 100% certainty, that this mod does not fix the performance degradation issues we’ve reported in our previous article.
These performance degradation issues ARE re-producible as we were able to replicate them numerous times. Here is what we’ve done in order to bring the game’s performance from this to this. And yes, we’re talking about a 15fps performance degradation, which is huge. Also notice that the CPU usage in the second image – in which the performance has gone downhill – is lower than the CPU usage in the first image.
We loaded the game from a save file we had after resting in the first Inn. We then explored the environment and fought some monsters. We then went back to the parking station, let Ignis drive us back to Cindy, explored Cindy’s parking station, engaged in three-four fights and boom. Again, this is re-producible and if you follow this guide, you’ll immediately notice lower framerates. These performance issues will disappear once you save the game and immediately reload it.
For what it’s worth, we did not experience any such issues while playing the pirated version (the one that uses the demo file). We haven’t gotten our hands on a Summon yet to use it, so we don’t know whether the pirated version is also plagued by the Summon bug that affected the Steam version (which is now fixed).
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email
It would be great if you do video capture to really see the drop on performance; from the screenshots I see that there is missing foliage on the second one, and lower cpu utilization, is this across the same system or was it replicated on another computer as well?
As far as I know the pirate version is from the Origin which seems to have less files than the Steam version from what I read on reddit a while ago (don’t quote me on that).
It would be great to do an Origin version of retail to see if they are having the same issues.
it’s just a few feet from the same place for goodness sake, that’s all, you don’t lose 20fps+ by moving 3 feet back or forward.
Common, while we had a little spat a few days ago(ultimately a big misunderstanding since I was saying we both could have been more civil. Sorry for that), I agree with what you’re saying. It just doesn’t make much sense to lose that much FPS from moving 3 feet forward or back unless there was some major issue at hand in the game.
I remember some sandbox games you would lose fps depending on the camera placement (if it was top down close to the character, fps gain, if it was pointing forward – showing npc’s, cars, etc. fps loss) May not be the case here…
Thanks for the heads up I will not be using it, I don’t really trust that Kaldaien guy and his dlls.
Going to just stick with the vanilla Steam version for it runs with out issues for me anyways. To simulate his mod or what it was supposed to do I just disabled Steam overlay, go in offline mode when I play, and un plug my K&M and just play with my Xbox One controller. Feels safer than having some unknown dll running hooked into a process that has potentially damaging rights to your system.
Yeah after all that childish “DRM” that Kaldeien did with his mods just because bad scary pirates were using them i also wouldn’t risk using it unless it was a necessity.
I’ve read aome of his discussions on Steam forums and that guy is really unstable.
Well this is just it, and I totally agree with you and that is one of the major reason I don’t trust it. Sucks cause it is always cool to use community mods that make games better but you really have to be careful what you use cause such mods and others could potentially do a lot of bad things to your sys if the maker really wants it to.
Is that what I did? 🙂 And here I thought the reason you can bypass all of these problems is as simple as setting one option int he INI file and opting-out of SteamAPI enhancement was because I don’t want to deal with debugging the crashy fake pirate versions.
i asked help and he answered with buy a new gpu your 970 is trash…
Total toxic dude.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s been busy trying to meddle with the mod over the past week. This is the same modder who tried to screw over people he thought were pirates.
I have argued with him before, and he definitely comes off as a smarmy know it all kind of guy (The kind that never admits to being wrong).
“Screw over” yeah, how dare he decide who gets to use his completely free mod. Everyone is 100% entitled to his work because of reasons!
If he hates pirates so much he should develop DRM’s not mods…
Anyone can use the mod at any time. However, how dare he try to screw over people’s games via his modding.
If pirated versions have the potential to introduce further issues (and they can) why should a modder support anything but official releases? Especially if openly supporting pirated versions could get them in hot water. Aside from FFXV, it’s not like the guy is exactly working on games from mod-friendly companies. SE and Bandai Namco are gigantic a**holes when it comes to things they view as violating their copyright or anything like that.
“If pirated versions have the potential to introduce further issues (and they can)”
It’s mostly the other way around.
“why should a modder support anything but official releases?”
There is nothing stopping him from doing just that. It shoudn’t be his concern if a pirate can use his mod as well.
“If pirated versions have the potential to introduce further issues ”
How does a pirates copy seemingly affect retail and store bought copies?.
My issues is with him deliberately trying to input tweaks into his mods to screw with people’s games.
Look at modding in general. I’ve seen enough C&D to know that modding isn’t a green areas, and is more of a grey one at that.
John, apparently there is a new pirated version of the final game, not the demo exe, that is completely Denuvo-free (i.e. Denuvo is not in the exe at all, instead of being bypassed). If that also performs better than the legit version, it will prove all the shills wrong once and for all. You should test that one.
You can get 2 responses from shills, depending on the gravity of the evidence:
1-Denial (with all sorts of logical fallacies to go along with it)
2-Silence
why are we assuming it is shills? I think we should see if the Origin and Windows version are having the same issues and it’s not related to Steam platform itself, if it is Denuvo we should see that problem across all versions of the game; but heck, why common sense in analysis right?
I’m not talking about everyone who disagree, only general shill behaviour(someone already invested in a narrative). And i’m not stating Denuvo is to blame, but that an legit FFXV version of STEAM (who happens to use DENUVO) is having peformance problems
We may test it. We also got in touch with Square Enix in case they can provide us with a Windows Store key for FFXV (if they don’t we won’t cover these other versions).
Why would Squenix give a known pro-piracy blog a free game key? So you can spout more clickbait “tests” with intentionally flawed methodology to back your predetermined outcome? Yarite.
Guys, we have a white knight here, riding on rotten donkey.
I can guarantee you it will not perform any better. Square Enix has profound technical issues where they have taken the exact opposite path and done some anti-optimizations.
I’ve been working on Denuvo games now since Arkham Knight, if they’re performing poorly it’s always because they have a poor engine and I can fix that.
Kaldaien? pfff I’d trust you about as much as I’d trust a Denuvo salesman.
But I have actual data, what do you have? 🙂 Aside from some unheatlhy hardon for Denuvo.
All you have is “trust me” and a rotten reputation. No thanks.
BTW if you want to use condescending emojis, they feel more condescending if you include a nose :^)
See?
Don’t know about this issue that you’re having, looks like a memory leak (?) but overall, I seem to have a LOT less stuttering with this new version of the mod. That was the only thing really doing my head in, so I’m happy.
Hopefully SE will support the game and release patches to fix issues and not go all Nier Automita on us.
not gonna try K mod , he stores weird files in your PC and spies on you
tinfoil much
I feel it’s important to point out that my methodology has always been sound here. The version tested was actually my initial data collection build. The only thing it did special (aside from identify thread scheduling issues I have now completely solved) was disable the anti-debug so that I could start doing detailed analysis.
This already included thread scheduling adjustments, but I was far from thorough having just removed the anti-debug a few hours prior and having no CPU profiled data to work with yet. This anti-debug stuff, it’s terrible. If Square Enix doesn’t remove it, as tempting as analyzing another underperforming game from them might be,I’m just going to pass.
There’s plenty of other software where only something benign such as Denuvo is there and providing absolutely zero obstacle to reverse engineering (you have to find that funny, because I sure do).
so you admit to pirating the game……smart very smart……