Assassin's Creed Valhalla (2208920)

[Searchstars]

Compatibility Report

• Name of the game with compatibility issues: Assassin's Creed Valhalla
• Steam AppID of the game:

System Information

• GPU: GTX1060 6G

• Driver/LLVM version: nvidia 525.60.11

• Kernel version: 6.0.10

• Link to full system information report as Gist: https://gist.github.com/Searchstars/4190b054072f397d33b289374730196a

• Proton version: Proton 7.0-4 (also tried GE-Proton7-37)

I confirm:

• [ ] that I haven't found an existing compatibility report for this game.
• [x] that I have checked whether there are updates for my system available.

steam-9258640568861327360.log

Symptoms

The game can normally enter the main menu to enter the loading interface, but the game will be stuck on a black screen after the loading is completed. In the black screen state, the CPU usage is maintained at about 30%, the memory usage is about 5GB, and the game hardly reads and writes the disk. The bottom right corner of the game does not appear any logo about loading.

Reproduction

1.Run Ubisoft Connect from steam with proton

2.Run Assassin's Creed Valhalla in Ubisoft Connect

3.Once in the game's main menu, click "Continue" or "New Game" or any button that needs to load the game scene

4.After waiting for the game to load, you will be stuck on a black screen

[Searchstars]

New discovery: it doesn't look like it's stuck on a black screen, it's frozen, running ACValhalla_Plus.exe the game will render normally for 1-3 seconds and freezes, it's not clear why.

[Saancreed]

I suspect NV 515 driver bug, try downgrading to 510 or enable VSync and limit your FPS to 30.

[kakra]

It's now officially available on Steam, and I'm seeing the same problem with Proton Experimental.

No matter if trying to run the benchmark, loading a game, or starting a new game: As soon as the world starts rendering, the game becomes stuck (on a white screen when starting a new game, on a black screen otherwise), no GPU crash in dmesg. Interestingly, the loading screen renders the characters just fine and I can move around and attack etc, no artifacts. So the render engine itself works. But as soon as the world loads and renders, the game freezes immediately, sound is still playing, the Steam overlay cannot be triggered, force quit from the Steam client works. Alt+tab back and forth will simply render a freeze frame of whatever has been on the screen before tabbing back into the game.

No matter the graphics settings, resolutions, vsync, fps limit, nothing changes.

This looks similar to freezes seen in the past for the other Assassin's Creed games (Origins, Odyssey) although the graphics engine probably switched to DirectX 12.

GPU: NVIDIA RTX 3060 12GB, driver 525.60.11

[Searchstars]

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/6154#issuecomment-1340214898

Yes, I heard that this problem was solved in the 520 driver, but it still occurs in the 525 driver I currently use. I don't understand why this problem occurs

[Saancreed]

@kakra One thing that works for me is using Mangohud with MANGOHUD_CONFIG=fps_limit=30,vsync=3

I tried to report this to Nvidia via email about 3 months ago but I got no response. I'm not too surprised however, installing ACV in Wine/Proton when it wasn't on Steam yet was quite a PITA. Maybe some else should try this report this again now that it's much easier to handle.

By the way, does Connect overlay work for you guys out of the box?

[Quentin-ctrL]

Played few minutes, mostly cinematics without issue using proton 7.0-5 and gamemoderun %command% -eac_launcher -nosplash

    Kernel : 5.10.0-19-amd64
    Pilote : NVIDIA Corporation NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060/PCIe/SSE2
    Version  : 4.6.0 NVIDIA 470.141.03

[rennr]

I can confirm that this also occurs for me. Black screen after the loading (where I can move around fine) or white screen after a new game. Game just locks up.

I tried with capping my FPS to 30 and turning on vsync and it made no difference. I also tried with Proton Experimental and Proton GE 7-37.

I haven't tried with a different video driver but I don't really want to downgrade from 520.

Kernel             : 6.0.5-x64v1-xanmod1
Graphics Card      : GeForce RTX 4090 24GB
Version            : 520.56.06

[kakra]

%command% -eac_launcher

Does this disable anti-cheat and allow the game to run with multiplayer disabled? Actually, I'm not interested in AC multiplayer so I could try this.

[Saancreed]

There is no anticheat or multiplayer in Valhalla. That option most likely does exactly nothing. Try the Mangohud thingy I suggested above, it does not do the same thing as using in-game options for VSync and FPS limit.

[MachadoLhes]

Hey! I'm having the exact same issue. Spent about an hour trying different configurations, resolutions and Proton versions, sometimes it would actually load into the cutscene with child Eivor in the bed, but freeze in the first few seconds, other times it would freeze with a black screen

Tried running the benchmark but it also kept freezing to a black screen right after loading

I'm wondering if I should refund the game and wait a bit, or if that will be solved soon

UPDATE: I tried the mangohud thing but no success either. It froze right after Eivor opens the door, and also froze within the benchmark (after 1 minute or so). I decided to refund the game for now and wait until it sees better performance under Proton

[mozo78]

It's running well for me with 520.56.06 and 525.60.11 and FPS set to 30. Otherwise it keeps freezing to a black screen right after loading.

[howels]

It's running well for me with 520.56.06 and 525.60.11 and FPS set to 30. Otherwise it keeps freezing to a black screen right after loading.

You set FPS limit to 30 in graphics options?

Limiting to 30fps seems to add some stability but my game still locks up very quickly, after a couple of seconds once loaded past the walking animation.

Kernel:      5.15.0-56-generic
Graphics:    GeForce RTX 2080ti
Driver:      525.60.11

[mozo78]

Yes, not in MangoHud.

[kakra]

I can confirm: Limiting to 30 fps in-game and the game appears to run without freezes. As soon as I turn off the limiter, it freezes within 1-3 seconds.

Another thing worth noting: During the prologue mission, a lot of sounds seem to be missing in the cutscenes, maybe this has something to do with it: Removing the fps limiter seems to silence some ambient sounds right before the game freezes.

I also tried limiting to 40 fps which appeared to be stable for at least a few minutes, but at 45 fps limit, the game freezes within seconds.

[MachadoLhes]

Got excited with that report and bought the game again to try it out. Unfortunately, still no luck, this time, capping the FPS to 30 actually worked until Eivor opens the door and talks to the guy with the lute, but froze immediatly after that

Well, we'll continue trying, it has to work eventually, right?

[howels]

Limited success with 30fps limit + vsync.

Managed a few minutes but freezes were quite common. Often the game would not launch correctly, audio could be heard but the game vanished instead of going fullscreen.

[MachadoLhes]

Guess we'll have to wait a bit, someone up here said that sort of problems happened when Origins and Odyssey first launched as well, so perhaps it'll be fixed soon

[leanija]

for me it flickers and stutters a lot; it seems like its reloading the renderer/the light sources regularly (Proton Experimental, Nvidia GTX 3060 Laptop, Manjaro, latest Kernel/drivers) tried all the fixes described here, none helped. tried other Proton version, no avail.

I recorded some gameplay and uploaded it here: https://youtu.be/iN88Mh7gKMM

[kakra]

I recorded some gameplay and uploaded it here: https://youtu.be/iN88Mh7gKMM

Try setting your graphics to lower settings so it can actually run well above 30 fps, then limit to 30 fps. The stuttering looks a lot like an overwhelmed GPU or too low VRAM, or shader pre-caching is disabled. It runs at 70-80 fps in 4k with FSR set to balanced for me (well, unless it eventually freezes then), on a RTX 3060 12GB. What you're seeing looks a lot like what I was seeing on my previous 1660 Ti with modern games.

It may also fix some of the lighting issues as that seems to be connected to fps drops. I had some lighting issues, too, but not flickering to dark but to overexposure instead, which is probably an issue between vkd3d, the drivers, and the game engine.

[leanija]

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/6154#issuecomment-1343711032

thank you for the suggestions but i have tried all sorts of settings, including running it on lowest settings across the board and lowered resolution etc., fps caps, etc. – unfortunately nothing helped only half of the VRAM is used, so I dunno if that is a problem either

[leanija]

I wanted to add that AC Valhalla runs fine on Steam Deck, so the problem here might be the NVIDIA drivers.

[kakra]

By the way, does Connect overlay work for you guys out of the box?

@Saancreed Yes, it does...

BTW: Running inside gamescope does a way better job of limiting to 30 fps with its nested refresh option than using the game options. The game itself usually limits to 31 or 32 fps, which may explain why it becomes unstable even with the limit set. I wonder why that is... maybe some timing issue? With anyone having Windows, is it the same there?

OTOH, gamescope with NVIDIA usually stutters even with limiting fps to as low as 30 fps: This game can render perfectly fine with stable frametimes for me but in gamescope it still micro stutters a lot, probably related to https://github.com/Plagman/gamescope/issues/495 and similar issue reports.

[Saancreed]

Yes, it does...

Ah, good to know, and thanks for the info. The version I own (the Ubisoft Connect one) has an issue where the overlay crashes the game at launch unless overlay64.dll is disabled or downgraded to version 132.2.10690, though maybe my build of Wine is missing some recent patch from Proton that fixes it.

BTW: Running inside gamescope does a way better job of limiting to 30 fps with its nested refresh option than using the game options. The game itself usually limits to 31 or 32 fps, which may explain why it becomes unstable even with the limit set. I wonder why that is... maybe some timing issue?

Yes, I've noticed that as well, just like the fact that the game seems to happily ignore FPS limit in some situations, e.g. when talking to NPCs or browsing in-game menus, which almost always causes the game to hang. Limiting the FPS with MangoHud works for me as a replacement and the game is mostly stable, though nowadays I play it much more often on Steam Deck.

[sfjuocekr]

For me the game won't run at all, I just try to run the benchmark but it crashes every time. Sometimes it starts the benchmark but then locks somewhere halfway through.

I'm on nVidia and have not bothered changing drivers yet, but I tried different VKD3D builds down to 2.6 (not working at all) and up to the latest master. Also tried different wine/proton versions, they all result in the game crashing within a minute of "play" (benchmark).

[kakra]

@sfjuocekr Limiting to 30 fps can work around the freezing problem but it only can, it may still freeze. I've played several hours with 30 fps limit, and next time, it ran just 5 minutes. On the Steam Deck, there's no such problem. So this is probably the NVIDIA driver 525, version 515 is said to work.

[andersnylander]

Kernel:      5.15.85-1-MANJARO
Graphics:    AMD Radeon Vega 64
Driver:      mesa 22.3.1-1

Game runs very well under normal gameplay, but causes a GPU lockup during specific events (reproducible), resulting in a screen filled with pink square blobs of various sizes, recoverable only by rebooting... I would take a screenshot, but given the unresponsiveness of the computer when this happens, that is difficult. ... I was able to "fix" this issue by disabling Ubisoft Connect ingame overlays, so my guess is it's some achievement toast that somehow triggers it. Interestingly enough however, the initial Ubisoft Overlay that shows when starting the game didn't cause this issue, but maybe that's because it shows during the pre-game intro trailers. "Fix" because I haven't seen it happen since.

dmesg.log

[DaroDragonPL]

I had the same issue, menu looked fine, loading screen looked fine, then black screen and some ambient sounds but game was frozen In video settings (in-game) I changed from borderless to fullscreen, enabled vsync and set FPS limit to 60, didn't touch anything else, and now it works fine (restarted a few times to confirm, but didn't run it for a long time to see how stable it is) GPU: RTX 2080 Nvidia proprietary driver version 525.85.05 (included with pop os) Running through steam with Proton 7.0-6 kernel: 6.2.0-76060200-generic OS: Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS (jammy)

[shelterx]

The problem is the newer nvidia drivers, once the GPU hits +90% load the game freeze. Lowerlng your settings and/or limiting your FPS does help a bit. The benchmark however doesn’t work at all.

The 510 version of the nvidia drivers works flawlessly for me so far, no special workarounds needed (also i had to revert to kernel 5.15.107). The benchmark also works with the 510 drivers.

Btw, thanks to @Saancreed for pointing me to try the 510 drivers.👍

[howels]

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/6154#issuecomment-1510429056

Have you tried the recently released 530 driver?

[shelterx]

Replying to https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/6154#issuecomment-1512671480

Yes, no dice. I also tried Nvidia Vulkan DEV driver, it doesn't work either. :( So something happend after version 510, since 515 apparently doesn't work.

[GazimSoliev]

I have the same problem

[shelterx]

Possible "workaround" for Nvidia owners, it worked for me, but the root cause still isn't known. https://github.com/HansKristian-Work/vkd3d-proton/issues/1514#issuecomment-1551011723

EDIT: Game can still freeze while playing tho', it's very random. Sometimes it works for a very long time.

[shelterx]

The Nvidia freeze issue seems to be fixed (for me at least) with the 535.43.02 Beta driver. Game starts fine and benchmark runs fine, without doing any alt-tabbing. Can someone confirm this?

EDIT: I have done some more testing, the game runs fine for me now. But still needs verification from other users.

[howels]

Tested the 535.43 driver under Ubuntu 22.04 and it's still unreliable here. With a clean prefix and both proton-experimental and GE-8-4 the game has issues launching a going full screen on my multi monitor setup. The one time I got the menu up launching the game resulted in a black screen. Windows also persist in the window manager after closing the game. Messy.

[shelterx]

Weird, I've only had one lockup with the 535.43 driver so far and that was when playing for 1 hour or so. Try disabling your secondary monitor prior to launch. Also make sure "Force Composition Pipeline" and "Force Full Composition Pipeline" is disabled in Nvidia settings, having that enabled will freeze the game.

[howels]

Weird, I've only had one lockup with the 535.43 driver so far and that was when playing for 1 hour or so. Try disabling your secondary monitor prior to launch. Also make sure "Force Composition Pipeline" and "Force Full Composition Pipeline" is disabled in Nvidia settings, having that enabled will freeze the game.

EDIT: There is a new driver that should fix the black screen issue, I haven't tried it myself yet tho'.

Cannot disable the secondary monitor - that is carrying HDMI audio to the AVR. I haven't customised Nvidia settings. Might just wait on this one. The beta driver caused problems with a few other games here. Might be time to go back to AMD for graphics

[shelterx]

@howels Try this driver if you want. it's the release version of the previous beta with some more fixes it seems. Nvidia Vulkan Dev 525.47.27 seems to work too now, at least under X11 with one monitor enabled. Before I started I removed all old gl/shader caches, also the filles in the cache folder in Documents for ACValhalla. Doesn't seem to have any shader recompiling issues either.

EDIT: But there are new bugs introduced so maybe you should wait. I saw @Saancreed wrote that it causes shaders to recompile every time a game launches. I notice no problem with shader recompilation myself, at least not with AC Valhalla.

EDIT2: ~Nvidia Vulkan Dev 525.47.27 seems to work too now, at least under X11 with one monitor enabled. Before I started I removed all old gl/shader caches, also the filles in the cache folder in Documents for ACValhalla. Doesn't seem to have any shader recompiling issues either.~ Vulkan Dev did work but after 3-4 game restarts it now freezes.

[howels]

Failing to load here with the 535 stable release and Proton experimental. Fans spin up, Uplay loads then nothing I hear game audio but no window appears. My window manager is now locked up completely and I need to systemctl restart lightdm to get back to my desktop. Killing the program leaves a zombie windows entry and my window list doesn't respond properly. 535 appears to have fixed some things, but broken many others.

EDIT: Selecting picom with GLX rendering allows the window to load (I am using Ubuntu MATE 22.04). However that doesn't matter because the game then crashes with a spinning logo on black background and looping audio glitch after the walking-mist-loading screen is done.

[shelterx]

@howels Your bug must be some other bug then. The game can however sometimes hang when launching it, it doesn't go fullscreeen.

[howels]

@howels Your bug must be some other bug then. The game can however sometimes hang when launching it, it doesn't go fullscreeen.

"Sometimes" is an understatement, on my system the game often fails to go full screen and crashes very quickly.

[shelterx]

@howels Still having issues? For me on a RTX 3060Ti using single monitor/KDE the release drivers (535.113.01) and Vulkan Dev (535.43.11) works just fine now.

[Saancreed]

and Vulkan Dev (535.43.11) works just fine

I'm actually a bit surprised by this. For me this driver causes both Valhalla and Mirage to almost immediately die with Xid 109 logged in dmesg with 100% repro rate when startup videos would be played, and one other user confirmed that they experience the same issue in Valhalla on their setup (but could not check Mirage). But perhaps this particular bug could be limited just to Ada GPUs, considering that we tested this only on GeForce RTX 4080 Mobile and 4070.

On the other hand, latest stable drivers and previous Vulkan developer beta drivers (535.43.10) should be working fine indeed.

[shelterx]

@Saancreed I will try again, I've had Valhalla working fine before then it suddenly doesn't work upon a reboot.

EDIT: You are right, scratch version 535.43.11.

[howels]

I tried last night and each time I can get to the menu then there's the loading animation where eivor is standing in a black space, then the screen goes black and I have no audio. Fans also slow so looks like it crashes. Latest nvidia 535 release on Ubuntu.

[rafalcieslak]

RTX 2070 with 535.113.01 here.

Freezes as soon as GPU usage exceeds ~95% (which is usually, but not always, during dialogue cutscenes), very stable otherwise.

Limiting FPS with mangohud low enough to never reach high GPU % prevents freezes.

Lowering in-game settings or using the in-game framerate limit doesn't help, because dialogue cutscenes seem to ignore the settings and always render in max quality.

[shelterx]

Seems like Vulkan Dev (535.43.13) works again, I had a lock after the initiial shader caching but after I killed the ACValhalla process and started again it was fine.

[kristofbolyai]

Seems like Vulkan Dev (535.43.13) works again, I had a lock after the initiial shader caching but after I killed the ACValhalla process and started again it was fine.

Did you do any special changes after the first locking? I am using the same driver and it still does not work correctly. Also tried 545 beta drivers.

[shelterx]

Seems like Vulkan Dev (535.43.13) works again, I had a lock after the initiial shader caching but after I killed the ACValhalla process and started again it was fine.

Did you do any special changes after the first locking? I am using the same driver and it still does not work correctly. Also tried 545 beta drivers.

No, I just made sure I didn't have any leftover wine processes.

[kristofbolyai]

Seems like Vulkan Dev (535.43.13) works again, I had a lock after the initiial shader caching but after I killed the ACValhalla process and started again it was fine.

Did you do any special changes after the first locking? I am using the same driver and it still does not work correctly. Also tried 545 beta drivers.

No, I just made sure I didn't have any leftover wine processes.

Well, I assume a reboot would take care of that.. Not sure why it is not working then..

[howels]

Tried the 545.29.02 driver on 22.04, now the game doesn't open a window after running Ubisoft Connect. I hear audio but there's a flash and nothing happens. Alt-Tab shows no new window in the list.