I hope all the Optimus users enjoy this one! It required quite a bit of effort. Changes:
- DSfix is now a Direct Input wrapper instead of a d3d9.dll wrapper. This was done to fix the Optimus issue, and it should also allow people to use other additional D3D wrappers for postprocessing effects (FXAA, SMAA, etc)
- There is a new setting “dinput8dllWrapper” which allows you to use additional DirectInput wrappers on top of DSfix should you so desire. I don’t think many people will need this, but it’s there for those who do!
- The way logging was handled when disabled has been improved, so you could see slightly improved performance in CPU limited situations with “logLevel 0″ (the default)
When upgrading from previous versions, make sure to first delete d3d9.dll and the old .ini!
Consider donating if you like the mod.
Please please remember to read the README.txt!
Edit: before I forget, thanks to Boris Vorontsov for putting me on the right track for how to fix this issue!
Thanks a lot for figuring out a way to let us use other d3d9.dll injectors.
Could you make option to disable mouse movements in game? Even total disable mouse would be fine. It would be really helpful.
Many players use PPJoy – joystick emulator to smoothen controls with mouse, but current mod that disable mouse causes crashes for some players.
Thx for great mod.
I agree ! compatibility with a popular mouse mod to fix mouse movements would be nice as a lot of players are using PPjoy.
Thanks again for your progress and daily updates ! =]
Awesome switch to use dinput wrapper! Now I would be able to use your mod together with SoftTH!
“it should also allow people to use other additional D3D wrappers for postprocessing effects (FXAA, SMAA, etc)”
Oh god yes. Fucking amazing.
And you can skip logos too? Holy crap.
Excellent job, hope you accomplish your current goal soon.
When I install this for Nvidia Optimus cards, Games for Windows won’t start up and I am stuck playing Dark Souls in offline mode. If you need my computer specs, let me know.
Can somebody tell me why i have only max 15 FPS? I have deactivated v-sync in the driver panel and additonal AA and motionblur. i switched between 1600×900 and 800×600 but nothing append, i have max 15 fps, no more and less. should i update my driver? (nvidia 301.42, not beta)
i dont know your graphic card, but my card is gt 555m and i installed the driver NvidiaGEForce 304.48 BETA, and i put the resolution 1600×900, in option DoF i put “0″ instead of 540, and i set DATA.exe and DARK SOULS.exe to run with nvidia optimus, in nvidia control panel, the games run fine,only some areas the fps drops a little.
It depends on the GPU you have. Game has a built-in frame limiter working with the ~33ms granularity which locks max framerate to the 30FPS. This limiter is independent form vsync so you couldn’t get rid of the limit by disabling vsync (but I suggest disabling vsync through nVIDIA Inspector while testing for performance problems). You could think about this limiter as a 30Hz double-buffered vsync: in case game fails to render a frame in a 33ms timeslot – it delays its output for another 33ms. 1frame/(33ms+33ms) = 15FPS.
So your problem is that your system isn’t capable of rendering frames fast enough. You hadn’t supplied any info on the hardware details so noone here could be able to tell you what’s the problem exactly.
If you’re on a notebook with optimus – it could be nVIDIA drivers not detecting the game to be a “demanding 3D application”. There’s a big lie here from nVIDIA side telling that they “detect DirectX usage” but in fact they’re only whitelisting game executables they’re aware about.
If you’re on notebook without optimus you might be hitting another “semi-bug”: for the most of the part the game puts pretty low load on the GPU so driver’s power management system could push your GPU into power-saving state. Try forcing GPU into “Max Performance” using either nVIDIA CP or vendor-supplied utilites that had been pre-installed on your notebook (in case you’re really on a notebook).
If you’re on a desktop system – it might be that your card is simply too slow for this particular game to run well. Anything slower than 8800/9800/250GTS or 550 Ti is in a “danger zone”. And even with GTS250 or 550 Ti you would get drops to 15FPS from time to time. It’s not that those cards are too slow, it’s the game which is poorly optimized. We all hope that this would be fixed at some point in the future.
Next, do you use DSfix or not? If so – had you configured it through DSfix.ini to fit best for your system? I’d recommend to start with a “safe defaults” of a “renderWidth 1280″, “renderHeight 800″, “dofOverrideResolution 400″, “disableDofScaling 0″ and “filteringOverride 0″ coupled with force-disabled MSAA, TrAA, AO and AF through the GPU driver CP and having in-game fullscreen resolution set to match renderWidth/Height, i.e. to 1280×800. In case you’re on 16:9 monitor – try using 1280×720 for both fullscreen resolution and rendierWidth/Height.
As for driver version: IMO it’s always better to stay with latest stable release – 301.42 for nVIDIA currently – unless you absolutely have to use alpha/beta driver versions due to fatal bugs in “stable version” affecting your normal workload. For Dark Souls it seems not to be a case – a lot of people all over the world are playing it with 301.42 drivers without fatal issues (except for FPS problems which are issues with the game itself and are not related to the GPU driver).
Thank you very much for your anser.
Now i understand some things, but nothing changed. I did your tips, but i have constantly 15 fps.
I forced in my driver control panel the darksouls.exe and the data.exe to the nvidia card. i forced in the global setting to the nvidia card, i disabled AA, FXAA and other things in the control panel. Then i changed the resolution in the DSfix and ingame, changed the other values in the DSfix, but nothing worked. In the GPU-Activity from my nvidia card the darksouls.exe is shown.
I have an nvidia optimus notebook and i use the DSfix 0.8.
Optimus… hmm, do you have any d3d9.dll sitting in the game folder next to darksouls.exe/data.exe? If so – remove it. It is a known Optimus bug that drivers fail to detect Dark Souls as a demanding 3d app in case you use third-party Direct3D wrappers like DSfix were prior to 0.8 and like injectSMAA/injectFXAA tools are.
Also, you still hadn’t posted what is the model of the videocard you have in your notebook. Problem might be as simple as your videocard being too weak to be able to handle this game at 30FPS level. BTW, how does the game perform without DSfix? Could you get solid 30FPS in that case?
Yes i have deleted the d3d9.dll file, i also reinstalled the game.
Without the Dsfix i have 15 fps too.
I have an NVIDIA GT325M video card in my notebook. I know that this is a very weak gpu, but this can not be reason, that i have only 15 fps. i have with 800×600 15 fps and with 1600×900 15 fps. When i play crysis i have more.
OMG this is awesome. I can now run DS very smooth on my XPS17 with GT 555M now. Thx a lot for your hard work.
I have a problem where the game only renders in a corner of the full window as seen in this screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/kpIOs.jpg
What can I do to fix it?
Disable in-game anti-aliasing.
Thanks
Hey durante have you heard about this problem?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ku1ZBwB7Ghs&feature=player_embedded
The game outputs sounds in 5.1 instead of stereo, cutting out much of the ambiance and intended sound. The only way to fix it for now is to have a sound card able to down-mix the 5.1 signal to stereo but many of us dont. It would be great to see AND hear the game as it was originally intended. Thanks for your hard work.
blimey nvidia 3d vision actually works well too, running at a steady 30fps with it being set to 2160p! boom
auto-save feature is definitely “working” for me now. over working. checked save folder after a couple mins of play and original save plus my own 5-6 backups were all being copied over and over every few secs. had over 600mb of copies growing steadily.
time is set at 600secs. = 10mins if i still remember basic math.
only keep up to 10 backups is set.
??
Sounds like a bug. I’ll look into it.
Great job there, stranger! One small issue I found with savegame backup: if you have more than one gamertag for some reason it seem to back up only the first one.
That’s because I never even considered that someone might have more than one! I’ll keep it in mind, but I can’t promise that I’ll get to it any time soon.
Big props to you Durante for making dsfix a reality also for us Optimus users!! Finally we can enjoy playing this fantastic game in high definition.. Great effort! Donation on the way..
Peter-
Thanks for all the fixes!
Could you also include a toggle button (the next F- button over or something) that will toggle HUD and Subtitles (these can be toggled in the Options menu of the game, but it would be more convenient to have a toggle key.
Thanks!
hi, I’ve updated from DSFix 0.4 (which didn;t work for me because im on an acer with optimus, mainly the GT540m) so i’ve deleted the d3dx9.dll file and replaced it with the contents in the .rar file. now the game does not even display the “DARK SOULS PREPARE TO DIE” title screen and instantly crashes. does anyone have any setting sugestions (for the .ini file) or any tips that i dont know about?
Hi,can you do something with black bars?I have 1280X1024 5:4 and i have black bars on my screen when i play dark souls
I recently got a new card, the HD 7770, and the game is finally running at a solid 30. The only problem, however, that sometimes the drivers crash as I am playing. Was just wondering if someone has the same problem, and how I might be able to fix it. When the drivers do crash, the game says that the framerate of the game is insufficient, which I thought was worth mentioning.
the framerate is insufficient because it drops to 0 when the drivers crash. try updating your drivers, but it could be you got a bad card, you should stress test it in OCCT’s GPU test, or run Heaven benchmark for awhile to make sure. if it is bad, return it for replacement.
The drivers are the newest ones available. I’ll run a test, but I doubt its the card as I’ve been playing CSGO on max settings with no problems.
Peter, I found a problem with the intro-skip feature using the latest version 0.8. When the intro skip fix is enabled, I can’t record using Fraps. When disabled, recording works fine. Is anyone else experiencing the same issue?
As a suggestion, it would be awesome if you could add to your mod somehow a way to hide/minimize/maximize the misplaced window that appears whenever the game starts (the black one titled DARK SOULS that is switched to fullscreen 2 seconds afterwards). It’s weird to see that development snapshot.like way of loading.
You are making this game to look something right and wonderful, Durante. Resolutions, DOF, mouse cursor hiding and intro skipping are very good steps forward. Thank you very much!!!
To be honest, this game is just an unacceptable mess of a port. It’s ridicolous that you need something like a 670 GTX to run this game on 30 fps. I still can’t play the game. Doesn’t matter if I use the fix or not. Even if I set the internal resolution to 1024×768, the game still isn’t able to reach 30 fps. 15 to 20 fps isn’t playable. With all due respect Peter, you did a great job with this fix.
I wish I could say this to the makers too. But I won’t be able to play this game until an official patch comes out which fixes these performance problems.
Waited 8 months for this game and I still can’t play it. Not even an official response from Namco or From.
What a joke.
Yeah, the porting seems to be done as a “tutorial how NOT to do the porting” :-). And yeah, you must be pretty tricky to make the game behave almost to the same level badly as it behaves on the 10x less powerful hardware. I’ve been thinking about requesting a refund for my preorder as soon as news arisen about the fixed resolution and 30 FPS but for the country I live at Steam isn’t that permissive and don’t provide refunds for the most cases. Thus I have to play it as it is blaming porters and using DSfix as a must-have solution to make gameplay experience less painful. I’m wondering if and when would we receive official comments from game developers and if there would be any official patches optimizing this game so it won’t require $300 GFX card to barely achieve 30FPS @1080p+AA+AF.
I have a Core i5 2500K OCed at 4.3GHz with a GTX 560Ti, and I even record FRAPS and Skype my friend all at the same time and the game runs fine. FRAPS FPS measurements stay in the 28-30 range depending on what I’m doing, and dip to 20 or less for 0.5 seconds when I sit down at the bonfire, and other than that, no dips.
GTX 670 is overstating it by a lot, but I get that the exaggeration was for effect. I understand you’re upset, but telling people a GTX 670 is required for 30FPS is a straight up lie, so calm down a bit.
Don’t get me wrong, I wrote ”something like a 670 GTX”. That means this game needs high-end cards or smiliar ones to run the game without major fps drops. That was an example. I’m (trying) playing this on a laptop with an NVS 5100m. I can run games like Skyrim and DX:HR on medium settings. But not Dark Souls. Because the game is poorly optimized. It barely makes use of the whole hardware, no matter what hardware you have, and it still doesn’t run with a decent framerate.
> It barely makes use of the whole hardware,
> no matter what hardware you have, and it still
> doesn’t run with a decent framerate.
Truth is that the game uses the hardware but does it in a hugely inefficient way sometimes. Any experienced PC programmer working with OpenGL 3.x+ or D3D9/10 wouldn’t try to perform fullscreen shaders effects on a blended particle systems knowing that the memory bandwidth and/or computation+fillrate requirements would quickly get out of the control with the raise of particles amount. Same concerning the implementing multi-layered fullscreen per-pixel effects with using PBO as a source for 2D texture samplers with blending – you’d efficiently would force the hardware to interpolate at least 4 pixels per target pixel per layer which is damn a lot of work really. Thus the problem with the game is not that it require a card with a lot of computational cores and extremely wide memory bus bandwidth. Rather the problem is that for the most parts the game puts “next-to-none” load on the GPU but sometimes – when rendering some effects like when resting at bonefire or drawing explosions from firebombs – fillrate/bandwidth requirements skyrocket into extremely high values for the time effect lasts. It is something that is called “poor optimization” and is most probably due to “the lack of experience dealing with nowdays PC GPUs”.
Could it be fixed? Well, yes. Either with something like DSfix or directly by game developers in subsequent patches.
DSfix based solution would be a damn hard to implement as it would require Peter to implement framework that would allow him to determine what does the game actualy do when it calls this or that D3D9 API routine and then to replace some of the calls with the equivalents that would produce similar visual results with less requirements wrt GPU fillrate. Same states for shaders. And shaders could be one of the “pain in the ass” things here in case there’re contained in the game in pre-compiled form instead of using d3d9x HLSL runtime compiling framework. Still it is possible but isn’t really that easy so I don’t expect Peter (or some other person in case DSfix would went open source soon) to implement “performance fix” in the near future. We’ll live we’ll see.
Well, some poeple have slow downs even with a gtx 670. its not affecting everyone but it does affect many people. certain particle effects seem to be causing it. for its the yellow wall in demon ruins. looking at lots of torches in blight town. hydra spitting water. regardless of settings and resolution, these things slow the game down to 15fps. so something is definitely wrong.
There’s nothing really “wrong” with those instances you mention. It’s simply that the game features some effects that overdo it on the blended particles, resulting in massive spikes in bandwidth/fill rate requirements.
In regards to people talking about forcing AA and SSAO, I just thought I’d share a few things I’ve found, seeing as this is probably the most relevant place to put them.
Firstly, I’ve found that 0x404010C5 as an AA flag seems to work slightly faster than the 0x004000C0 flag, although doesn’t seem to apply MSAA to the depth-of-field effect. I haven’t tested this thoroughly, so it might just be a placebo in effect, but I did notice a change in my framerate when I tried switching between the two.
Secondly, the SSAO flag for Street Fighter IV (0x0000001A) works very well with Dark Souls, providing a much softer but arguably nicer looking effect compared to the Fallout 3/Skyrim flags.
Oh, and by the way, this fix is wonderful. Thanks for making things better!
Works very nice, constant 30fps, 3840×2160 @1080p, 670 GTX – 3570K
Just need to get that 360 save working, changing it to a .sl2 does not work, get corrupted save in the dark souls boot up, and it wont open in the 2.5 save editor! for someone in the know im sure this could be done! great job though mate
also it runs perfectly with x4 MSAA from the control panel
I can confirm a small fps boost, most noticable in New Londo or Ariamis. The fps drops are still there, but less frequent and rarely down to 15, usually in the 25 fps range. The spot at the Blighttown bonfire looking westwards is still just as bad tho.
HD5850 + P955BE
As soon as I click on Play in Steam with this mod installed, it immediately tells me that the game has stopped working. Yes, I have the aa and motion blur in game disabled. Any suggestions would be appreciated!
Hi there,
Does anyone managed to make the game work at “triple screen” resolution ?
Like 5760×1200, 3840×1024, 5040×1050 etc…
For sure I can’t ^_^
Man! Thanks a lot! Finally i can play this wonderful game on my notebook! 30 fps is all i need.
I agree with the above, runs smoothly until you get to a boss / larger area then drops to around 15-20 fps. I think the next big fix should be about improving fps if that’s possible, would really appreciate it.
Hi, I really appreciate your work, and the effort you keep in releasing regular updates to your mod
As a PC user my rig isn’t really impressive and my PC is quite old :/ so I used your mod to implement lower resolutions e.g: 800×600, All I had to do is to convert videos to lower resolution and it worked just fine 
Still I got some problems when it comes to depth of field, and areas where there is fog and stuff, so could you include options to reduces these specific resolution, or add a description in you *.ini or README files :)) Don’t forget about gamers with low end rigs 
with all my gratitude, and kep the good work
Thank you very much! The skip intro didn’t work for me in version 0.7, but in this version it works.
Now that you use a directinput wrapper, can you add an option to disable the game mouse? I’d like to use the mouse replacer here : http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2910072 but their dll makes my game crash (most likely because I use XP, and the others users reporting the issue do the same)
yep this would be awesome – if it will work with middlemouebutton
The last thing, and your fix will be perfect !
Well, to be perfect it would need proper mouse options. Surely you meant great instead.
Thanks for creating this mod. You’ve helped a lot of people get a better gaming experience!
Thx for Optimus fix – works great now
But i doesnt work with this mouse fix which uses 2dlls (http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2904768). Hope it will work in next versions together(i am waiting when the author of that add middlemousebutton to be usable for that fix)
Unplayable on my 6770 … fps incredibly fluctuate…my pc X4 3.0 Ghz 6770 1gb 4gb ram…
I’m sorry I do not quite understand angliski to write to you through Google translator)) I have a laptop with Optimus had not helped any one patch was 10.7 fps, after installing this patch, the FPS was 15, no longer raised in what could be the problem?
Bored Gunman from Steam forum, hope this can be useful:
“0xF3CE6CC2
so far this has smoothed things over a little bit when running past fires(not bonfires) but it isn’t close to perfect yet. Bit#27 slows everything to a crawl. I’ve been using lower burg as a test bed running by the fire back and forth, one way the performance is great, other way it drops to 15 fps. Go figure :P”
I have problem with fps its like 10-15 fps spec:GPU Nvidia Geforce 8400 GS CPU intel dual core 2.61 ghz and RAM 2 gb i play it on intel resolution 720x520x it’s from my PC or it’s form the game i NEED FIX pls HELP DURANTE …
Another awesome update!
Now the only thing i missing is real widescreen support for my 16:10 Display.
Currently i have black borders on top and the bottom, since the game support only 16:9 aspect ratio.
I have tried few tools like “flawless widescreen”
(https://www.flawlesswidescreen.org/index.php/Flawless_Widescreen)
but the only thing those do is to stretch the image, not actually changing resolution or FOV.
Would be nice if you could look into it.
I cant get it to work. After i got ingame i only have a small screen in the top left corner, but the hud fits normal. Do i miss something?
Disable anti-aliasing in the in-game options menu
Great mod – my fpses jumped 5=>30 (intel 4000 => 650m). I don`t know how to thank you. Donated 25 eur.
So I’ve upgraded from 0.3 to 0.8 and my game just crashes on the start screen. I haven’t really changed anything from the default besides resolution and language. As soon as “Press START” and the dark souls logo appear the game dies.
Someone got an idea how to fix it? The old dll and ini have been deleted.
It’s an issue with the video (I think only on Radeon cards?).
You either fallback to 0.5 or rename/move
your .wmv in the movWW folder.
Happens on my GTX560, so it’s not an ATI issue. I guess I’ll just have to watch the ending movie manually when I beat the game because I’m not going back to v0.5 now that SMAA and intro skipping works.
Nope, nevermind. It’s just a video of scrolling credits. Why they didn’t use the in-game engine for that is yet another mystery about the dev’s decisions.
Cool! I have 30-40fps in FullHD on my ultrabook Asus UX32VD, Nvidia GT 620, core i7 3517U!
Frame drops to 15 FPS when using inject SMAA (even turn to low, medium, high or ultra have the same 15 FPS)
So I have the latest fix downloaded, but I have no idea what to do now. I know I have to change numerical values, but I have no idea which ones and where. Any help?
Thank you based petert for the Optimus fix.
Donating a burger too you as lord Gabe would have done.
next paycheck i am so dropping a 20 your way
Is the text of the messages still broken? I mean, it is broken for me; I wanted to know whether it happens to everyone or it’s just me.
It shouldn’t be, not since 0.2!
It is broken for me too…
make sure youre using the right aspect ratio for your monitor. e.g. 1280×720 for 16:9 instead of 1024×720
Yep, aspect ratio was the ticket.
I’d actually want to use a lower resolution to get better framerates, but the lower I can go is 1280×800. Anything lower either breaks the text (if I use something that’s not 16:10) or crashes the game at the menu. Oddly enough, if I use 1024×720 (which I understand is the game’s default) I still get broken texts.
Well, 1280×800 is still playable enough, and the other goodies of the fix are totally worth it.
Is there anything specific about the geforce 320m integrated graphics that makes the game runat 11-15 fps? And does your fix work for resolutions LOWER than 1920×1080? Like 1280×800 for example? Thanks.
-Also, im using the nvidiainspector controls as shown in the most popular pic. is that wise?
Yes, any resolutions with at least 720 vertical pixels should work.
Yuuuhuuu! Thank you very much, i waited for a version with the ability to combine with fxaa! ^^ And the option to disable the intro. The whole mod is just…epic, godlike, legendary and so on!
TY! <3 This last version made me happy! I gaind a huge fps boost since this version, plus better graphics due to fxaa antialiasing, sharpening, colorcorrection and so on. 
Performance increased noticeably on my desktop PC, even though I added injectSMAA. Thanks much, superhero!
Does anyone have anything they prefer to use instead of injectSMAA?
I much prefer SweetFX. It’s clearly the best anti-aliasing injection mod out there – and I’m not just saying that because I made it
You can find it here:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1296721/how-to-anti-aliasing-injection-methods
Hey man my spec is : Q8400 , 1GB gts 250, 4 gb ram
I dont see any inprovment with 0.8. Framerate drop when GPU load is down to 13 5. Please help me!!! Do you have any solution???