Ubisoft has finally provided us the fourth and so far best installment of the well known gaming series “Assassin’s Creed”. We are now in era of Black Flag which is set in the year 1715 leaving us between Caribbean Pirates who have no rules in their livelihood. The game is really amazing with interesting gameplay and graphics. Probably this is the only must play game in this month apart from CoD Ghosts. I’m too playing the game on my PC and have completed about 50%. During this period I came across few problems since installing the game until first few missions. This was expected as this is high end video game. Fortunately I tried several fixes and now am moving ahead comfortably without any more issues.

So, I guess you guys might also come across all those problems hence, I thought to share the troubleshooting which I did assuming it might help you guys as well if you also facing those problem on your PC. By saying problem I mean FPS issues, lagging, crashing, etc. I have covered almost everything I came across during the game. Hopefully it will surely work for you guys as well. Now before starting the troubleshooting I will suggest to first of all make sure that your system meets atleast any of these mentioned system requirements of AC4 Black Flag. If its even lower than minimum rig provided below, then I don’t think these guide is going to help you out.

Assassin’s Creed 4 Black Flag Minimum System Requirement:

I just finished playing this game's main story for a second time through, since I revisited it after completing it the first time last year. Coming back after playing through AC1, AC2, AC: Brotherhood, & AC: Revelations, this game really jumps the gun when it comes to graphics. I am aware that this is because, the opposite of the previous games, this game was ported from console to computer. In Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, NVIDIA has leveraged DirectX 11 to enhance the 'High' God Rays option with tessellated, polygonal light shafts, which use less memory, and are faster to render, improving frame rates. This innovative solution greatly reduces aliasing on visible rays, too, further increasing image quality.

• Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag utilized an upgraded version of Ubisoft's AnvilNext graphics engine, first debuted on PC in Assassin's Creed III. For Black Flag, the engine received a variety of significant upgrades, including pre-baked Global Illumination, volumetric fog, dynamic weather, and dynamic foliage to name but a few examples.
• Add addon Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag Realistic Graphics Location Games: Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag: Mods: Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag Realistic Graphics: Addons.
• And unzip all of the files and ShaderFixes folder into the Assassin's Creed 4 exe folder. 'C: Program Files (x86) Ubisoft Ubisoft Game Launcher games Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag' It's a lot of files, 400 or so shader files, and 4 dlls, an uninstall, and the.ini file.

• OS: Windows Vista 32bit
• CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6400 2.13GHz / AMD Athlon II X4 620.
• RAM: 2GB
• Graphic Card: Nvidia GeForce GTX 260 / AMD Radeon HD 4870
• Sound Card: DirectX 10 Compatible
• Storage: 30GB of free space.

Assassin’s Creed 4 Black Flag Recommended System Requirements:

• OS: Windows 7 64bit
• CPU: Intel Core i5-2400S 2.5GHz / AMD Phenom II X4 940.
• RAM: 4GB
• Graphic Card: Nvidia GeForce GTX 470 / AMD Radeon HD 5850 1024MB.
• Sound Card: DirectX 11Compatible
• Storage: 30GB of free space.

As I said if your system is meeting atleast the minimum requirements, we can try out the following steps to fix the in-game problems. And if it is matching the recommended requirements, then its very good and surely you gonna fix all problems of Black Flag using this guide. So lets cover up each problems one by one.

Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag wont install:

This is the very first problem we can face with any of the pc games. There could be several reasons for the same such faulty disk, antivirus blocking, external firewall blocking etc. Here are few things which you may need to go through:

• If you are using Norton Security suite, you must disable it immediately. You may also need to uninstall it because Norton is very well known for creating problems with videos.
• Also disable any other Antivirus or third party firewalls. Many antivirus detect the game installer as virus and block their functionality.
• If still you are not able to install the game then check your game DVD. It might be faulty or having scratches. Clean it with soft cloth and try again.

Apart from these steps, if you are getting any error message during installation, then please post that particular error message here so that I can provide you the fix accordingly.

Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag Freezes on Startup or Wont load:

This is a common problem with all high end games if your system is not up to the recommended requirements. But still there is a fix for the same because the cause of the problem is in the PC itself. When you try to launch the game, the screen turns into black but we hear the sound or the screen appears but freezes. Here are the steps you can go through to get rid of this issue:

• Very first thing you need to try here is updating all your system drivers including video card, motherboard, sound drivers, etc.
• Another major cause for this issue is UAC. No matter you are playing the game on Vista or Win 7, make sure UAC is disabled. You can do it by going to Windows control panel or simply type UAC in the Start field. From the results click UAC and you see a popup window. Bring the slider to down, save and reboot the system. Now try to launch the game.
• If still the game is not loading, again it could be your security applications. Make sure it is disabled.

Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag Crashes during launch or in Gameplay:

• Video games usually crash due to outdated or in compatible Drivers. No matter your earlier games were running good with the same, you should always install the latest drivers from the manufacturer’s official website before installing any new game. This is because every new game comes with new files that need a stable and new version of system files to run. So what you need to do is visit any of the following websites and update your video card driver, right now:
  1. Download latest Nvidia Video drivers from here
  2. Download latest AMD ATI driver from here
• Another reason that causes crash is any of the programs running in background which is conflicting with your game. So before starting the game, simply disable all those unwanted programs. This will also free up the resources for your game to perform better. You can disable the unwanted programs easily in this way:
  1. Quit the game and click Start Menu. Type “Msconfig” and hit Enter. You can also do this by pressing Win Key + R and typing Msconfig followed by Enter.
  2. In the opened ‘System Configuration’ window, click on Startup, check mark the box saying ‘Hide all Microsoft services’.
  3. Now manually uncheck everything from above except your graphics services and click OK. You can also click on Disable All if there is nothing important running.
  4. Now reboot the system and launch the game.
• If still you are facing the problem and if you haven’t disabled your Antivirus and 3rd party firewalls yet, do it now. Remember, your antivirus suite can play major role in all of thegames problem. Hence, better leave it disabled throughout the gameplay.
• One more important thing you may need to do here if the problem exists is that you have the latest DirectX version installed in your system. As mentioned in the system requirements, if you are running older than DirectX 10, you must update it right now. You can check the DX version by typing ‘dxdiag’ in the run box (Win + R). You can download the latest version DirectX form here.
• The problem must be solved until now, but in case it is yet crashing then you should try running the game on only one GPU instead of both. You can do this from your Graphic’s control panel.

Fix Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag Blackscreen and Crashes to Desktop (CTD):

Crash to Desktop and Blackscreen are two most annoying problems which I faced with many games including AC4 Black Flag. After working out for few minutes I managed to fix the problem on my PC, hope it also works for you. Here is what you need to do.

• Very first thing to do here having latest video card drivers as well as chipset drivers installed. It will be well and good if you also update the motherboard BIOS (only if you board doesn’t have auto update feature) if the problem is occurring more frequently.
• Open up your Graphic Control Panel and disable V-Sync, Anti-Aliasing and Filtering. Most of the time doing this fixes the above problems immediately.
• Another reason of CTD is unwanted process running in the background consuming the resources unnecessarily. So quit the game, right click on Task bar, click task Manager, go to process tab and kill all unwanted processes one by one.
• Instead of running the game directly from the desktop shortcut icon, go to game’s installation directory, right click the respective application .exe file and select Run as Administrator.
• I fixed my problems by trying the second and third step here. But if you are still facing the problem then you may need to lower down your graphics settings. Also try turning off multi-sampling and VSync if you haven’t done it yet.
• Make sure you have disabled 3rd party firewall (if any) and in some case windows firewall as well if you are playing the game online. Or simply add the game in windows firewall’s exception list.
• Surprisingly if still the problem persists, backup your Save Game files and uninstall the game completely. By saying completely I mean delete it’s left over files and folders as well. Reboot the system and install the game. Hopefully it will not crash again.

Assassin's Creed Iv Black Flag Ultra Photorealistic Graphics Mod

Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag lagging, and Low FPS issues:

• Lagging or Low FPS are occurs only because of low resources. Hence you will need to free up some resources for the game using these workarounds:
• Open video card control panel and Turn off V-Sync as well as Antialiasing.
• If you are playing the game on triple buffering, you may need to stop it.
• Open task manager by right clicking on task bar and click all unwanted process by going to process tab.

Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag No Sound or Sound Stuttering issues:

• Make sure you have the latest Sound drivers installed on your system.
• Install latest DirectX version.
• If still the problem persists, try reducing ‘sound acceleration’ by typing ‘dxdiag’ in the run box (Win+R). Now go to the sound section and reduce sound acceleration.
• If there is no sound at all in the game, open Windows Control Panel, click Hardware and Sound and click on Sound. Now click on Communication tab and select the last option ‘Do Nothing’. Now click OK and the problem should be fixed.
• You can also improve the sound bit more by going to Playback tab in the above window and click Configure under current audio device. Now simply change the audio channel to Stereo, save it and start the game.

With the newly released Assassin’s Creed III: Remastered and the entire series approaching the current gen with revised graphics and polished gameplay, the all time fans of the acclaimed series developed by Ubisoft are more and more eager to get their hands over the very first title from the far 2007 in high definition. Despite its old combat system and repetitive quests along the main story, Assassin’s Creed is still considered the true AC that offered the perfect foundation for a successful franchise.

Whether they will release a remastered version for this game as well or not is yet to be confirmed. PC players can currently enjoy the first installment with a couple high resolution texture mod packs and a ReShade configuration to improve the original looks.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Graphics Models

TB’s Texture Mod Project

“This mod includes updated new environment textures, new water textures, new plant/foliage textures and even new character model textures along with updated normal maps and specular maps.”

This texture mod can be downloaded on moddb.com and it’s an unfinished project from 2015. The original Mediafire links posted by the creator seem to be long gone, but you can find a functional Google Drive attachment in the comments section.

The overall image quality is strongly defined by how big the loading maps are. 2k textures (2048px) can already be quite demanding, 4k maps (4096px) are extremely powerful and specifically require a high-end machine in order to keep your fps count intact and prevent crashes or freezes with forced restarts. Both resolutions are included in the texture mod, be sure to own a system that supports high quality textures and heavy games in general to run it properly.

The archive includes the textures pack and a little standalone program called Texmod. You can launch the game directly through it by clicking on the folder button under “Target Application” (pick the DX9 version, it doesn’t work with DX10), your modded textures will appear in the game only when the .tpf file is loaded under “Package Mode“.

The mod may take a few moments to load depending on your system and its speed. A black screen may appear as soon as you start the game via Texmod, but it should then proceed as normal and display a certain improvement on most textures. The first difference I could spot right away was on the white tiles in the Animus room, which appear flat, with way less detail and no specularity at all in the vanilla game.

Assassin's Creed 4 Mods

hecumarine’s Overhaul 2016

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Graphics Mod

The second mod is a bit more intensive and it can be installed through Texmod as well. The author suggested to use OpenTexmod instead for the latest update, but the program seems to have a lot of issues for many users, included myself. I tested it out with Texmod and the packages load without troubles.

The goal of this mod is to change most textures from original ACI to those from Assassin’s Creed Revelations, so you will feel like you’re playing Altair memories in Revelations rather than in old ACI from 2007.

One thing you can notice as soon as you access Altair’s memories in Masyaf, is the outstanding scenery in front of you upon entering the training field. This mod adds a high quality detail to the far mountains and LOD, generally clouded by a thick white fog in the distance. Altair’s outfit also presents a better fabric and the floor tiles in Abstergo have become noticeably reflective.

Note: I ran both mods on a Win 7 machine with 16GB of RAM and a GTX 970, both work smoothly and with no frame dropping.

ReShade Enhancement

AC1 supports the ReShade graphic mod and works wonders with the latest injector. Depending on the kind of effects you want to use and, again, how much your computer can handle between the texture packs and graphic enhancement, you can start testing the waters by installing ReShade 2. The downside about the old version is that you cannot apply modifications and play around with shaders directly into the game; you’ll need to modify the text files and change each value from 0 to 1. Check out this tutorial I wrote some time ago for a detailed overview.

In order to get a crisp image and remove the ugly jagged edges you have to activate the SMAA preset. Alternatively you can try out FXAA or use them at the same time, they are listed in SweetFX.cfg.

In the example screenshot above you can see a lens flare effect with strong sun rays. To achieve this result in game you will need to use AMBIENT_LIGHT, LENZFLARE and GODRAYS in GemFX.cfg.
Additionally, you can modify the contrast and colors with CURVES, LEVELS and/or TECHNICOLOR.

If you want to go nuts and are willing to cross the line memory-wise, you can skip ReShade 2 and go for version 4 directly. With the newest configuration you can open the menu with the Home key (it can be set differently in the settings), create profiles with different combinations and turn everything on and off on screen according to your needs.

ReShade 4 can be installed like its predecessor. The majority of effects have been carried over from the first version of ReShade with the following updates, other shaders were implemented at a later date and mainly work with 3 and 4. Please note that not every effect in the list can be used with AC1 due to its old technology.

If you want a clearer shot without the UI in the middle, you can easily remove it with the HUD Toggle included in GeDoSaTo, also useful to force the game into a 4k resolution.

Assassin's Creed Black Flag Graphics Modern

Go get AC3 Remastered!