A short story behind this mod: I love the 1st Assassin's Creed game as well as Ezio trilogy. These games and their stories have become my sweet memories.

After many years I've felt like revisiting these games and replay them all over. However these days I mainly play on a PC connected to TV and with a controller in my hands. PC versions of AC games have higher poly models, textures, higher drawing distance and much less blur but unlike their console  counterparts suffer from severe stuttering (it's at it's worse in AC2 where it's so noticeable, frustrating and distracting that I can barery play it). Console version of original AC games do not suffer from such problems.

None of the recommendations (changing CPU affinity, blocking ubi hosts, turning off internet) worked. I was almost ready to play AC using it's inferior PS3 version just to get a smooth experience when suddenly I've found the solution:  Special K. Without tweaking anything when I run original AC games with Special K it makes the experience buttery smooth. Great! But here's the catch: PC versions of original AC games do not support Playstation controllers (to be fair they barely support any controllers out of the box) and therefore (of course) do not show Playstation button prompts which is not that convenient. 

There's a mod already which uses an additional run-time-texture-replacing app and it works but (!) you can't use both Special K and that tool (uMod) at the same time. The game won't work. So I would have to choose between the smooth stutter-free experience and having convenient Playstation icons... what a bummer.

But I don't like compromises so I've decided to create my own mod that would replace PC icons with Playstation button promts without relying on any additional tool and without having to start the app, then start the game, Alt+Tab it, then open archive with new textures, load them and then Alt+Tab back into the game. And more importantly - I can use Special K with my mod! It's the ultimate and definitive way of experiencing Assassin's Creed Director's Cut on PC in 2024 IMHO.

P.S. finding the correct textures among thousands of files scattered between hundreds of packages was quite a challenge. I've spent 2.5 days of my vacation, almost reached the point of giving up but decided to persist and eventually succeeded. May this serve as a reminder to anyone reading this to never give up and patiently persevere until you reach your goal. ;-)

I'd appreciate any feedback if you found this mod useful or even just insightful. Tool used for unpacking and repackaging AC's forge files: AnvilToolkit.

I plan to make similar mods for AC2 and AC: Brotherhood in the nearest future.

P.P.S. Love from Ukraine!