[Linux / Proton] Shaderless Open-source port of SCSKiller that pre-compiles DX12/UE5 shaders into your driver cache before launching the game

[u/Ok-Rooster-8552]

Hey guys,

Over the past few days when I saw the SCSKiller repo I got really excited, but then I realized it's only for Windows so I decided to port it to Linux myself, and today I finally finished it (still need AMD testers though!).

Basically, this tool (Shaderless) does what the original SCSKiller does on Windows reading the game's DX12 shaders directly from the game files and compiling them before you play so you don't get shader stutter but the process on Linux was much harder to pull off because we have the Proton / vkd3d-proton
layer in the middle, with shaders and caches split across multiple places, plus full pipeline states needed by Vulkan.

So I also ported the Record mode to work under Proton: you can turn on Record, play for 5–10 minutes so it learns the exact pipeline states your game uses, close the game, and hit Re-Compile.

I tested it on CachyOS with an RTX 3070 on an Unreal Engine 5 game (Valor Mortis), and in-game shader compiles dropped from ~49% down to 6%, and loading compile time went from 170s down to 56s.

It works with Steam, Heroic, and Lutris games. Right now I've only tested it on NVIDIA since that's what I have, so if anyone on AMD (Mesa / RADV) can try it out and let me know if it works for you, that would help a ton!

If you have an AMD GPU and a DX12 game (especially an Unreal Engine 5 game), I would love your help testing it! There is an AMD Test Report issue template(https://github.com/cyberps96/Shaderless/issues/new?template=amd-test-report.yml) on the repo where you can share whether it worked and where Mesa
 wrote the cache.

GitHub Repo: https://github.com/cyberps96/Shaderless

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[u/HeisenbergVR]

Hi! Official support for linux on SCSKiller is in process! Current Beta version has experimental support. I will be releasing 1.3.0 stable this weekend with it!

[u/edwardneckbeard69 → u/HeisenbergVR]

i think OP can contribute directly to this then!

[u/HeisenbergVR → u/edwardneckbeard69]

Sure! I can check if he opens a pr if something helps!

[u/Ok-Rooster-8552 → u/HeisenbergVR]

Hi!
i already did a pull request on your repo <3

[u/Puzzleheaded_Key768]

Doesn't even load properly. I'm on cachyos and Rx 9070. Very Buggy.

[u/Ok-Rooster-8552 → u/Puzzleheaded_Key768]

hi,the AMD Test still in progress so thanks for the feedback
this issues has been fixed please re download the latest release <3 which is v0.1.0-beta

[u/Puzzleheaded_Key768 → u/Ok-Rooster-8552]

Hi it's not detecting any games at all

[u/Ok-Rooster-8552 → u/Puzzleheaded_Key768]

HI!
Thanks for testing! How is Steam installed: from your package manager, or as Flatpak? Could you run these in the Shaderless folder and paste the output?
./run-cli.sh list
ls -d ~/.local/share/Steam ~/.steam/steam ~/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam ~/.config/heroic ~/.var/app/com.heroicgameslauncher.hgl ~/.local/share/lutris ~/.var/app/net.lutris.Lutris 2>&1

[u/Puzzleheaded_Key768 → u/Ok-Rooster-8552]

I'm using heroic games launcher and everything is native cachyos, soon as I get home I'll do that.