FEAR low FPS hack

Fixes the cause of low FPS in the Fear game when playing in modern computers.

The problem

In modern computers, FEAR slows down after a while due to an incompatibility with modern HID devices. The game engine assumes two types of devices: gamepads and "others". Years ago, that works because "other" could only be mouses and keyboards. Nowadays, your Windows will have much more than those three devices.

Unfortunately, FEAR bogus out when dealing with unknown devices. For every unrecognized device, it tries to reset it and try again. This "reset" is done per device many times per second.

The "reset" seems to have some form of leak, which accumulates over time and causes the slowdown in the game.

The solution

This hack works by replacing DirectInput with a hook DLL. This DLL, when placed in the same folder as the game's EXE, it will be loaded before the real DLL. That hook DLL will call out the real DLL as needed.

Then, whenever FEAR tries to enumerate "other" devices, our hook will intercept it and ask DirectInput to enumerate only mouses and keyboards. This avoids any issues with devices unsupported by the game, while keeping the behaviour similar to how it worked years ago.

How to use the hack

1. Download the project
2. Open in Visual Studio
3. Build it
4. Open the "Debug" folder inside the project directory
5. Copy the generated dinput8.dll file to the same folder as the EXE for the game. Do NOT put it inside your system folder

TODO

• Better build instructions
• Use CI to automatically create a downloadable DLL
• List similar solutions