AC4 crashes constantly [EDIT: Solved!]

[Lorente]

I simply can't play the game. When I played it at first, I had no problem. Then, after like 20 hours of gameplay it started to crash once in a while. Now it crashes every 5 minutes. I'm playing, doing any activity, and then the screen freezes, the sound keeps playing, the game minimizes itself and I have to pull the task manager to close it. Anyone with the same issue?

Edit: Good news... After almost 2 months I've decided to open the game just to check if I was still bugged. Turns out that Uplay updated and I can now play normally. Yay! Guess they finally fixed it.

[blackwind777]

looks like a hardware issue... seemingly the graphixcard of yours is running hot, therefore shutting down service...

[Lorente]

My GFX Card is ok, no heating problems apparently, keeps constant temperature during game execution. It's not overclocked or anything. I run all other games on maximum settings without any problem.

And no, I don't turn my PC off when that happens, I just shut down the game.

I'm reinstalling it right now.

[blackwind777]

if you would post your machines stats, maybe we could help...

[Bad 💀 Motha]

What are your hardware specs and OS?

What are your CPU & GPU temps during gameplay?

Also just try a game install repair (i.e. Verify Game Cache via Steam) as it could be a certain corrupted file that isn't presenting an issue until u get a certain % through the story and such.

[creep_]

same problem here. sometimes it does not crash for an hour, sometimes it crashes after two minutes. it seems to be completely random. happens at sea, land, in mission, out of mission.

i monitored my GPU temp and it seems to be at around 65 constantly when running the game, crashing or not.

contacted ubi-support on that one too. their suggestions: delete your tempfolder and update your soundcarddrivers.GENIUS . they have no clue why this happens and there are a lot of people having that problem.

[seville57]

I got the same problem, played for 10 hours without any crashes or freezes for some time ago.

If I have bad luck, the game can crash/freeze next day after 1 - 3 hours of gameplay.

No heat problems with the graphic card.

Have AC 4 BF on Uplay.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Alot of sound cards default to 24bit audio, try changing to 16bit, 48khz and see if that helps. Under Windows Audio > Playback

But yes, most updated drivers for GPU and Sound can help. Helps to also make sure the drivers are clean-installed, but uninstall your current ones, rebooting, then installing the latest.

If you are using NVIDIA, try disabling "PhysX" in-game and see if this helps.

[creep_]

its an nvidia and its up to date. soundcard...i don't know. the "latest" driver for those are from 2012. updated it anyway, nothing changed

i even tried to play on the lowest possible settings. same results. there does not seem to be a pattern in this. the only thing where it happens quite often is in sea battles. i tried to get it to crash on purpose to log the gpu by getting as much action as possible but it ran for two hours. next start it crashed after 5 minutes starting a sea battle.

i ran three logs on 3 different crashes but there is nothing unusual about them. the temperature of the gpu is far from critical. all the other stats look normal as well.

i will try 16bit sound anyway. it helped once in a rainbow six game about 10 years ago. it's a long shot but i am out of ideas as well. still sounds more probable than "delete your temporary folder" to me, so thanks for the note

[creep_]

at first i was tempted to say "wow this actually worked" but no, crashed collecting a chest on an uncharted island after a dozen battles. but it worked for over an hour which is amazing by my standards

the CTD seems to happen most often when engaging an enemy above the level of a schooner at close range. it is not neccessarily a heavy shot that is being fired i suppose but being close enough to use it effectively.

i started to notice this when you are supposed to gather some metal missionwise early in the game and have to attack a brigg. it took me about a dozen tries because the game kept crashing. now i am after the spanish navy and i think it was my 5th or 6th attempt to get that thing. every try ended in a CTD.

it is not even frustrating anymore because you expect the game to crash by now

[ShArP_ObJeCtS]

I have the same random crashes. Will try the sound things:

my spec

FX 8350 4ghz
M5A99 EVO 2
MSI R9 270x 4gb
8gb 1600mhz vengence DDR 3

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Another thing those having AC4 crash issues is:

Try turning off In-Game Overlay for either Steam or Uplay (or both) and see if one of those overlays is effecting your game stability. I often have had to do this for Metro 2033/Last Light, as well as alot of Origin games.


Also if u have a PC build that is using Win7 (any version) coupled with an AMD FX CPU, u need to ensure that you have installed the "Microsoft Win7 Hotfixes for users with AMD FX CPUs" which are located here > http://www.ngohq.com/news/21092-amd-bulldozer-performance-hotfixes-for-windows-7-a.html

This AMD FX CPU issue was fixed upon release of Win8.

[ShArP_ObJeCtS]

Im on Win8.1 and the sound trick didnt work. I will try turning off the "overlay"

[creep_]

reply from ubi-support: "update your browser, uninstall this and that, this SHOULD solve the problem"...what?

overlays off, same result.

it seems to be linked to certain events. i started off on the jackdaw at eleuthera or whatever:

first crash: 2 schooners on port, incapacitated, blew up the barrels they dropped-crash

second crash: no ships in sight anymore, decide to get the fragment on the island nearby, leaving vessel, hear gunfire, wondering whats going on, NPCs fighting?-crash

third crash: on that island again, gunfire, oh those are redcoats and spaniards fighting, neat, get the fragment, jumping off a tree-crash

fourth: again on that island i hear them fighting, run back to the ship and sail away as fast as i can. it worked from there on

i had a similar experience in havana earlier in the game but did not think about it much. game crashed every 2 minutes until i decided to leave the area completely out of desperation.

[Greylok]

Possible fix - go to local files and run Verify. I had the same problem after about 20 hours, and this process identified soem corrupted files, re-downloaded them, and problem fixed.

[Lorente]

My PC is a Intel i5 4430, with a 8gb ram memory and a gtx 770.

I got the problem solved, apparently.

I had the game reinstalled and it didn't even open anymore. So I verified the game cache files hoping for a solution, and nothing happened. So I went to sleep, mad with ubisoft, and when I woke up it was working again!