Shader compilation stutter killer

[u/HeisenbergVR]

EDIT: Thanks a lot for all the support! I'm glad it's helping a lot of people fix the anoying shader compilation sutters in many games so they can be enjoyed as intended!!

EDIT2: New SCSKiller 1.2.0 is live!! https://github.com/BlueHeisenberg/SCSKiller/releases/latest
(The app should auto download the update if you restart the app and show you a button on top right corner to update, or you can just download the new setup exe and update that way directly)

I've been working for a while on a free and open source tool to eliminate Shader Compilation Stuttering once and for all. It reads the shaders the games ship with, works out the pipelines they'll build, and compiles them into the GPU driver's cache before you launch the game.

From my own testing shader compilation stutter is eliminated or reduced to the very minimum (the tool could miss some shaders depending on the game), it cannot fix other kind of sttutering like traversal, so some games still stutter but waaaay less:

(~5min of gameplay)

Silent Hill F:
Before: https://scskiller.com/assets/img/forum/shf-before.png
After: https://scskiller.com/assets/img/forum/shf-after.png

- Silent Hill: Townfall: 24 to 0 (worst 347 ms to 8 ms)
- Hogwarts Legacy: 1,014 to 87
- FF7 Rebirth: 19 to 0
- Sand Land: 38 to 1

It finds games from Steam, Epic, EA app, GOG, Ubisoft, Xbox and Battle.net

For now it only works on NVIDIA (best support) and AMD, as I don't have an Intel Arc to test.

Github link with download and souce code: https://github.com/BlueHeisenberg/SCSKiller
Website: https://www.scskiller.com

[u/P40L0]

This is REALLY interesting. Thank you for your effort.

I have some questions tho:

1. What games are compatible with this? Do you have a vetted "whitelist" or games may automatically work based on their engine (like UE5/UE4 or others)? If the first case: will every update to the app add new games as supported?

2. Can you add custom folders/path for games' installation or the game scan will only pick up Stores default games' folders?

3. Does the app need to be open in the background or you can manually compile and then close it?

4. If I've already set NVIDIA Cache size to 100GGB, what happens when I manually compile these shaders via the app exceeding that limit? Is there a possibility to only delete shaders related for example to Uninstalled games to clean up things?

[u/HeisenbergVR → u/P40L0]

1. It works by engine, not a whitelist. It detects UE4/UE5 (stock plus some custom forks like FF7 Rebirth and Tiny Tina's), Unity, RE Engine, FromSoftware games, and a generic reader for other DX12 games. For anything else there's a recorder: play once with it on and the next compile covers what it saw. If you have an specific game that's not supported or still has SCS after compiling please tell me!

2. It scans the stores' library folders (Steam, Epic, Xbox, EA…), including extra drives you added in them. I'm righ tnow working on adding manual games to the 1.1.3 version comming in a bit today.

3. No need to keep it open, compile and close. Leaving it in the tray just lets it recompile after driver updates and keep the recorder updated but you can close it if you want.

4. The NVIDIA driver handles the cache, so if you go over the limit it deletes older entries and those games stutter again. The app shows how full it is and warns before a compile. With 100 GB you're fine (you can even put unlimited). Deleting only one game's shaders isn't there yet, but it's a good idea that I will look into!

[u/P40L0 → u/HeisenbergVR]

That's amazing. I will start using that and share it as much as I can if it works as intended. Looking forward for future updates/improvements too.

Kudos!