FeralHeart Creations > Other Mods/Creations

Using Vulkan (DVXK) to Improve Feral Heart's Performance

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Kwibjo:
Hey, just a heads up this is probably going to be a bit of an intermediate difficulty post. If you don't know what DVXK or Vulkan is, I wouldn't recommend trying it until you read through the entire post first.

This post is for Windows users only. However, Linux users should be able to figure it out it's more or less the same. ;)
Mac users cannot use this as Apple does not support Vulkan at all, and there is no Metal alternative.

Prerequisites:

* A computer made in the last five to seven years (roughly) that supports Vulkan. (If you don't know if yours does, there's a step for testing further down in this post.)
* Software that can read .tar.gz files. For example, 7zip or WinRAR
What is DVXK?
Created for Linux and Wine, DXVK is a Vulkan-based translation layer for Direct3D 9/10/11. Compared to OpenGL and Direct3D 9 (DX9) Vulkan is intended to offer higher performance and more balanced CPU/GPU usage by working closer to the hardware than what Feral Heart currently provides. While this may not entirely be accurate for us if your game is GPU bound, there should be a noticeable performance improvement.

Testing if your computer will support Vulkan.
Go here: https://github.com/skeeto/vulkan-test
Download "vulkan_test.exe" and run it.
You should see a popup that says "Successfully created a Vulkan instance."

If you don't, I'm not sure; all my devices run it successfully. It should give you informational hints as to what you may need to do to fix it.

Downloading DVXK.
Okay, we're ready to download and install it.

* Go here: https://github.com/doitsujin/dxvk/releases
* Scroll down to "assets" section and download the latest dxvk-*.tar.gz available. (For me, at the time of writing, this was dxvk-1.7.tar.gz)

* Using your archive software of choice open the downloaded file and go to dxvk-1.7 > x32 and extract "dxgi.dll" and "d3d9.dll" to your Feral Heart installation folder.

* Now you need to set Feral Heart to use the "Direct3D 9 rendering system" if it isn't already. The easiest way to do this run the game, go to settings > video > rendering subsystem > Direct3D9 and then restart.

FAQ
Q. How do I know if it's working?
A. Check your FeralHeart installation folder. There should be a file called "FeralHeart_d3d9.log" created by DXVK. If you see this and your game is running in Direct3D9 mode, it's working.

Q. My game doesn't run any faster!
A. Your computer is probably CPU limited. Unfortunately, DXVK doesn't do anything (and may even hurt performance) if this is the case.

Q. My game crashes as soon as I click it!
A. Your computer probably doesn't like DVXK or doesn't support Vulkan. Rerun it, and you should get the pre-game settings. Change the setting to OpenGL.

Q. Screenshots I take in-game don't look right after doing this!
A. I've noticed this too. It's a bug with DVXK. If you want to take screenshots, you're going to need a different tool like Snipping Tool to take them.

Any more common questions you guys have I'll add them down here.
If you're stuck, add me on Discord, and I'll try to help as best as I can. Jellyfish#2224

Dark_heart:
For me works great, thanks for that!!

Kwibjo:
Oops, I just realised I meant to post this to tutorials not here. Can someone move it, please? x.x


--- Quote from: Dark_heart on August 04, 2020, 09:48:58 am ---For me works great, thanks for that!!

--- End quote ---

Awesome! I'm glad I could help! :D

Oddonelynx:
While this doesn't working for me, it's still pretty cool.  :)

LadySigyn:
I'll have to check this out, thank you for this, Kwibjo! Your content never fails to impress me.

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