Special K makes heavy use of the Steam API to enhance the experience of Steam players with various features, including custom notifications for unlocked achievement, smarter screenshot capturing, real-time player count, and various other enhancements.
Due to the nature of these enhancements, third-party Steam API emulators present in illegitimate copies of games are known to cause conflicts and crashes unless the enhancements are disabled.
This allows changing what corner the default Steam Overlay notifications appear in.
There is sadly no way to disable/hide the default Steam Overlay notifications, as this option is not exposed through the Steam API.
Special K includes achievement enhancements such as automatic screenshot capture on achievement unlock and custom achievement popups (requires CEGUI to be enabled [default]) with more details.
Use the
[Test Unlock]button to test the current settings by faking an achievement unlock.Set
Draw Modeto Disabled to disable the custom notification from appearing.Ctrl + ⇧ Shift + T is a hotkey that can be used to trigger a test unlock, however note that this is also used to toggle the clock/version row in the OSD.
Some games might not be limiting the number of callbacks performed to the Steam API, which can have an adverse effect on other parts of the game.
The effect of throttling the callbacks differ between games. Some might not see a difference at all, while other games might see a noticeable improvement. For example, in Final Fantasy XV throttling the Steam API callbacks saw a decrease in loading times and minor improvements to frame pacing when data were streamed from the drive.
CallbackThrottle to a value between 8 and 30 .Set the parameter to -1 to disable the throttling.
Do not use a lower value than 8 , as this can affect achievement unlocks.
The change can be observed on the SteamAPI Frame value at the bottom of the in-game control panel of Special K.
The Steam enhancements can be disabled if troubleshooting compatibility issues with a game, or if not desired.
Silent to true :[Steam.Log]
Silent=true
This also prevents game-specific fixes that rely on the enhancements from being applied, such as the Steam API callback throttling for Final Fantasy XV.