SCSKiller is out (Patreon)

SCSKiller 1.0 is out: a free, open-source Windows app that compiles your games' shaders before you play, so the game doesn't stop to compile them mid-game. That's where shader compilation stutter comes from.

It reads the shaders a game ships with, works out the pipelines it will build, and compiles them into your GPU driver's shader cache while the game is closed. When you launch the game, they're already there. NVIDIA and AMD.

Some numbers from my testing, about 5 minutes of play per game, cold cache vs. compiled:

- Silent Hill: Townfall: 24 shader stutters down to 0 (worst from 347 ms to 8 ms)

- Hogwarts Legacy: 1,014 shader stutters down to 87.

- Final Fantasy VII Rebirth: 19 shader stutters down to 0.

Your numbers will vary by game, GPU and driver. It fixes shader compilation stutter only, not traversal or streaming stutter. With the recorder on, each game's page shows a frame-time graph of your last session, so you can see which hitches were shader compiles and which weren't.

What's free: everything the app does on your PC. Compiling, recording a game that needs it, recompiling after a driver update. No account needed.

What Patreon pays for: the servers behind the community shader hash database, and early builds.

- Patreon supporter (€3): the community shader hash database, so your games get covered from other players' recordings without you recording them first, plus beta builds.

- Patreon backer (€6): all of that, plus alpha builds and priority on game requests.

Sharing your own recordings is opt-in and anonymous: only shader hashes, never game files or anything personal.

To unlock your tier, sign in with Patreon in the app: Settings → Patreon and community database.

Download: https://scskiller.com (or https://github.com/BlueHeisenberg/SCSKiller/releases/latest)

Found a game it doesn't detect, or something broke? Tell me in the comments or open an issue on GitHub.