Screen doesn't scale up on lower resolutions

[Anchel]

Hey there,
So I'm having this really strange problem that, so far, only happens with ACIVBF. Been trying to solve it for a while without success, so I guess it was worth a shot asking here :)

The game runs quite well for me on medium-high settings as long as I'm not aiming for 1920x1080. Well, 30 fps stable kind of well, but that's all that I'm asking for, really.

The problem is, whenever I lower the resolution of the game on my laptop (1280x720 for example), I get a black frame all around it, and it's bigger the lower the resolution. Simply put, for some reason the image is not being scaled up to cover the entire screen.
Here's an example of what's going on: http://i.imgur.com/A5OmAZL.png
(Please mind that I put that image together in Photoshop. I couldn't take a screen capture, so the settings you see there are not the ones I'm using ;-) )

Now, normally this is an issue I'd solve with Intel/Nvidia's scaling options.
But I'm actually able to play every other game perfectly fine when lowering the resolution. I've been trying with Skyrim, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, FORCED and even Assassin's Creed 3 and they all fill up the screen nicely. So it's only happening with Black Flag.

Now, on to my specs:
- Asus laptop N76VZ
- Intel Core i7-3630QM @2.40 GHz
- 8 GB RAM
- Nvidia GeForce GT 650M 2 GB (with an Intel HD Graphics 4000)
- Running Windows 8.1

And yes, I have tried to update to the latest drivers from both Intel and Nvidia, even tried using Asus' slightly outdated drivers to see if that solved the problem. Changing compatibility settings of all sorts didn't do anything either.

Also I should mention that on the Nvidia Control Panel the scaling option is not available, since scaling is handled by the Intel drivers, and on the Intel Graphic Properties panel I do not get the option to scale while I'm on the desktop (http://i.imgur.com/YjXAuyT.png), but if I change the resolution, I do get some options (http://i.imgur.com/pcaqyzG.png), it just returns to the default whenever I change the resolution back to 1920x1080.

Anyone has any idea on how this can be solved? I'm running out of tricks to try... :/

[-=Empathy.Inc=-]

I have exactly the same problem and no idea how to fix it yet.

One suggestion I found was to search for a folder called "Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag" in your "My Documents" folder. inside there should be a file called "Assassins4.ini". edit the lines that says "DisplayWidth=X DisplayHeight=Y".
set X and Y to the wanted resolution and save the file.

...But I can't seem to find the .ini file... sigh.

[Anchel]

I've tried that before as well, and you can change the resolution of the game from that file, sure. But it doesn't fix the black frame problem.

If you want to give it a try, the file should be located by default in C:\Users\[Your Windows Username]\Documents\Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag

There's two files: Assassins4.ini and GFXSettings.AC4BFSP.xml

[-=Empathy.Inc=-]

So I found the .ini file ( I was looking in the steam folder not in my documents)
It didn't do any good though. The file resets to the initial resolution as soon as I launch the game.

I was hoping that forcing the resolution to 2048 x 1152 or 2560 x 1440 would fix the black box, as those are not available from the ingame menu. But as I said, the file just resets if I give it resolutions which are not listed.

[BulloRosso]

Any news on this? I'm trying to play the game on a MS Surface Pro at 1280 x 720 - it would run ok but it's too small to recognize anything!

[Sargon Aelther]

It used to scale before, but after the patch this started happening to me as well. Really annoying.

[Sargon Aelther]

Ok I seem to have fixed the issue. I did a lot of things like force custom settings in Nvidia Control panel, also set AC4BFSP to run in admin mode and with win xp sp3 compatibility and one of these thing fixed it.
I then undid all the changes I did in NVidia control panel and compatibility stuff on the games .exe file and the problem is still fixed, so no idea what exactly fixed this but, but I'm glad it's fine now.

But if I had to guess I'd say the running as admin fixed it. Usually a lot of problems can be solved that way...

[Chef GrumpyBlitz]

your settings are all kinds of wrong for your system you should never lower the res

here is what it SHOULD be for optimal settings

Environment Quality - Normal
Texture Quality - Medium because for the love of god high is for 4k users medium and low have almost no difference
Anti-Aliasing Quality - SMAA
Shadow Quality - normal or High
Reflection - Normal
Motion Blur - ON why have it off its realistic
Ambient Occlusion - HBAO+ low
Godrays - Low
Volumentric Fog - ON
Vsync - off but with d3doverrider it actually improves FPS

[Sargon Aelther]

Originally posted by TakesOneBullet:

your settings are all kinds of wrong for your system you should never lower the res

here is what it SHOULD be for optimal settings

Environment Quality - Normal
Texture Quality - Medium because for the love of god high is for 4k users medium and low have almost no difference
Anti-Aliasing Quality - SMAA
Shadow Quality - normal or High
Reflection - Normal
Motion Blur - ON why have it off its realistic
Ambient Occlusion - HBAO+ low
Godrays - Low
Volumentric Fog - ON
Vsync - off but with d3doverrider it actually improves FPS

Well I have to lower res to play the game. I keep everything on lowest setting possible (except for texture quality, I keep it on high, since it makes literally NO difference whether it's low or high on my laptop) and I still have to lower res to make it playable.
AC3 and all previous titles were running great on Max though... But oh well they were made for last gen consoles....

[Ezmirly]

If anyone finds a fix for this please follow up... I'm running a Radeon 6970, i5 3570k, and 16 GB DDR3 1600, but my monitor is 2560x1440. Even with the graphics settings all the way down, maintaining 2560x1440 resolution my framerate drops below 30 in some situations and never even really gets above 45-50. I get 60+fps in 1920x1080, even with some of the settings raised a few notches, but I can't stand the lack of scaling to full screen... I need to be able to use my full real estate. It's pretty frustrating.

I've tried enabling GPU scaling in the Catalyst Control Center, I've edited the .ini found in my documents, as well as the .xml file. I've tried running the executable in compatibility mode to XP sp3. I've tried different combinations of these, all to no avail. For having such a "focus" on PC, it sure seems this was a big oversight...

[H3rCul3S]

*****FIX BLACK BORDERS*****
i know it comes late, but better late than never, i dont know if you guys made it work or not, but this is kind of work around to make it work. it took me so long , and as all great things i did it by accident. Here it goes. Star your AC4 , then change resolution in game, for me 1600*900 . then , i usually go ALT-TAB and was trying everything to scale up. it didnt work . But the trick was to CTRL-ALT-DEL . and will notice right away that your desktop will have black borders LOL
so the next thing lower your resolution to match 1600*900 (or whatever) and then go in Catalyst and scale, you will see that scale will say centered , change that to FULL . and witness "miracle" . Two things to remember , first set your desired resolution in windows, than start a game , change to match in the game , go CTRL-ALT-DEL return to desktop , go to scale , and set on FULL instead CENTERED ! I really hope this will work out for you guys !

[willargueforcash]

-UL- H3®cul35 dude, you're a savior! Thanks for your help! It helped me, even though I have NVidia and not AMD

[Tsumeo]

This topic is a bit old but I just wanted to say thanks again, this solution worked for me ! :) I have a really bad computer for gaming and I can play Assassin's Creed IV only on 800 600 resolution, and this helped me a lot !

[H3rCul3S]

Glad it helped . Cheers

[Cube]

Originally posted by =AM= H3rCuL35:

*****FIX BLACK BORDERS*****
i know it comes late, but better late than never, i dont know if you guys made it work or not, but this is kind of work around to make it work. it took me so long , and as all great things i did it by accident. Here it goes. Star your AC4 , then change resolution in game, for me 1600*900 . then , i usually go ALT-TAB and was trying everything to scale up. it didnt work . But the trick was to CTRL-ALT-DEL . and will notice right away that your desktop will have black borders LOL
so the next thing lower your resolution to match 1600*900 (or whatever) and then go in Catalyst and scale, you will see that scale will say centered , change that to FULL . and witness "miracle" . Two things to remember , first set your desired resolution in windows, than start a game , change to match in the game , go CTRL-ALT-DEL return to desktop , go to scale , and set on FULL instead CENTERED ! I really hope this will work out for you guys !

Ok that works a charm and all. My question now, is how do you keep this lovely perfect resolution and screen aspect, so that you dont have to constantly redo those steps every time you start up the game. Or is there no way :/ I mean i'll do it if need be, but if there was a way to keep it that way, then that would be fantastic haha :)

[H3rCul3S]

Unfortunately, havent found anything permanent , as i said it is a workaround , and yes , you have to do those steps everytime you want to play the game.It sux but what can we do. I dont know if that is the case with most games, but when it comes to UBISOFT they are experts of having great idea , making a game with great potential and screw it up with poor optimization and silly bugs. Sometimes i think that they make such a buggy game on purpouse , just so they can update it over and over again as a mean to fight piracy