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Nioh 3

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Mathias Kowoll edited this page Aug 22, 2026 · 1 revision

Nioh 3

The ninth title, and the one that needed no new bridge code at all — it is fixed by the DYNASTY WARRIORS bridge, not by the one its two predecessors use.
Video NV12, 2560×1440, 29.97 fps, inside the game's own .fdata packages
Played by IMFSourceReader on Media Foundation, presented through the D3D11 video processor
Symptom Failed to play movie.
Fix The DYNASTY WARRIORS video bridge, on amd_ags_x64.dll
Backend D3DMetal, D3D12 — the opposite of Nioh and Nioh 2
CrossOver crossover-preview-arm64-20260821. Not tried on 26.3

Not the same fault as Nioh or Nioh 2

The family name is misleading. Nioh and Nioh 2 are DXMT titles whose D3D9 cutscene surfaces come back with a null share handle. Nioh 3 is D3D12 on D3DMetal and never touches D3D9. What it does instead:

MFCreateSourceReaderFromByteStream
  MF_SOURCE_READER_D3D_MANAGER: SET          <- asking for D3D-backed decode
  MF_READWRITE_ENABLE_HARDWARE_TRANSFORMS: 1

It asks Media Foundation to decode into D3D video textures. Under D3DMetal there is nothing to decode into: ID3D11Device::QueryInterface(ID3D11VideoDevice) returns E_NOINTERFACE, and so does the video context. The bridge answers by passing a copy of the attributes with those two removed — never the game's own store, which breaks the negotiation outright — and Media Foundation resolves in software instead.

That is only the first half. The game then drives the D3D11 video processor itself to present each frame: CreateVideoProcessorEnumerator, GetVideoProcessorCaps, CreateVideoProcessor, the input and output views, and eleven VideoProcessorSet* calls. Every one of those is a method on an interface D3DMetal does not provide, and every one of them is stubbed.

Streamline, and why the first attempt saw nothing

Nioh 3 ships NVIDIA Streamline. It imports D3D11CreateDevice and D3D12CreateDevice from sl.interposer.dll — a drop-in replacement exporting the same names — and never names d3d11.dll or d3d12.dll at all.

A hook placed against "d3d11.dll" therefore finds nothing. The first run reported d3d11 not imported and the game failed exactly as it had before the bridge existed. The fix is one more hook against the interposer's name, and the lesson generalises: the module a function lives in is not the module a game asks for it from.

The latent bug this title exposed

Hooking only the D3D11 half made things worse rather than better: the game crashed with 0xC0000005.

The bridge has two halves that only work together. GetSharedHandle fails under D3DMetal, so one half hands the game an invented handle; the other half recognises that handle when the D3D12 renderer brings it back. With only D3D11 hooked, the first half was handing out 0xD3D12B21D and the second half did not exist — so the invented value reached a real D3D12 device.

Two things came out of that:

  • D3D12CreateDevice is hooked against the interposer as well. DYNASTY WARRIORS resolves it through GetProcAddress, which is why this never mattered before.
  • The bridge no longer hands out an invented handle unless the hook that can read it is armed. That guard was missing from the beginning and DYNASTY WARRIORS never hit it, because its D3D12 always arrived through a path the bridge watched. A game that cannot share surfaces and is told so fails cleanly and says Failed to play movie; a game that is lied to dies.

Caveats

Do not use this on a game with anti-cheat. The fix patches a running process.

Measured on Preview only, and on D3DMetal only. 26.3 has not been tried.

The carrier is amd_ags_x64.dll, which is also Persona 5 Strikers' carrier — but with a different bridge inside and a different export set. The shipped proxy is kept under a distinct name for that reason, and the installer's export check refuses one game's proxy in the other's folder.

What it cost

Four runs, and only the first was a diagnosis. A probe established that the game reaches its video through Media Foundation and dies asking for D3D-backed decode. The second and third were the two halves of the Streamline hook, one of which crashed the game. The fourth played.

No bridge logic was written for this title. What changed was two hook targets and one safety check.

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