Assassin's Creed is unbeatable by any other game I've found, but it's still with sync errors.

I find that the voices and things said are always perfectly in sync with the visual element, but it seems that the special effects like knife/sword-strikes and breaks during the cinematics are completely out.

e.g. Tamir's slices are heard long before he even draws his dagger, but his voice is perfect.
The doctor in Acre orders the man's legs broken, I heard that long before they even touched him, it came while he was ordering him back to his room.

It's really odd, these moments of de-sync only occur during cinematics, while everything else is flawless, even the brace-counter kill when he pushes it into the guys stomach, punches him off then sticks it up into his brain comes with a perfectly timed slice and crunch.
If a patch could be made that would remedy this it would be appreciated, it kind of ruins the reality of the game.

yea, i get the same thing
ignore it -- patch is out but does not fix this cause i think it's a hardware thing -- i have all updated drivers and i still get it.
i just ignore it since the rest is fine.

It's kind of aggrivating, and it can't be a hardware defect because I have all the latest gear on my pc and it's all perfectly compatible with the game.
The patch that just came down were for all the major glitches, I'm hoping there'll be one for these minor ones, if the game's truly going to be the masterpiece they've introduced it as.

I've read some of your posts on other threads and I think you'd be the only other person on here that actually thinks before you say something, you know this is just a software issue, as I do. Maybe for Assassin's Creed 2 they should think about not rushing into the making of it, to be sure that it's perfect on not only the 360 but everything else as well.

I also doubt the hardware is faulty.

quote:

Originally posted by altairego:
yea, i get the same thing
ignore it -- patch is out but does not fix this cause i think it's a hardware thing -- i have all updated drivers and i still get it.
i just ignore it since the rest is fine.

I'll post some following information that was helpful to me in fixing the Visual/Audio sync problem:

There is one main way to access advanced tweaks in Assassin's Creed, and that's via the game's initialization (.ini) files which are found under the following directories:

Windows XP: \Documents and Settings\Username\Application Data\Ubisoft\Assassin's Creed

Windows Vista: \Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Ubisoft\Assassin's Creed

The two .ini files are Assassin.ini which holds all the in-game settings related to graphics and gameplay, and DARE.ini which holds all the audio-related variables. You can open and edit these files using a text editor such as Windows Notepad, but make sure to back them up first before making any changes.

For our purpose we want to open up and edit the DARE.ini file.

I edited the following entry for increasing the DirectSound3D cache size for the game. Normally it will be:

DS3D_CACHE_SIZE=2097152

but instead change the number to 4194304 (4MB), so it will then look like:

DS3D_CACHE_SIZE=4194304

which is the number I chose and the sync problems seem to have gone for me now.

Or if that still is not enough, you may even try a larger size of 8388608 (8MB), so it will look like:

DS3D_CACHE_SIZE=8388608

Save your changes and see if it works.

Another thing to try that may help is from Windows, click on "Start" then "Run", then enter in the command of "dxdiag" which should launch the DirectX Diagnostic Tool. Click on the "Sound" tab. You should see a "Hardware Sound Acceleration Level" slide bar. Try moving the slider to another setting, perhaps the "Basic Acceleration" level, OK everything and give it a try. If the problem still persists, perhaps try a different level setting on that may work better.

Of course it's always good to disable any background running applications (such as AntiViruses, Memory Managers, Instant Messangersetc... as well as perhaps disconnecting from internet before playing the game), as any background programs eat up the memory and CPU usage which can also cause conflicts and slowdowns.

Another suggestion that may also help improve overall gameplay performace is to do a hard-disk defragmentation on the drive that you have Assassin's Creed installed. One way to start the Windows built-in defrag tool is to click on "Start", "All programs", "Accessories", "System Tools" then "Disk Defragmentator", then select the hard-drive you want to run a defrag on.

Hopefully it may help some of you after trying the above suggestions.
Good luck!

Good idea but it didn't make a difference, it's a programming error I'm hoping Ubisoft will create a patch for.

Yeah, did not do much for me either. As the majority believe, I think its an issue of hardware.

I also get a strange echo effect in the game on occasion that persists even after the game is quit - have to reboot to get rid of it. But my hardware is at the bottom of the range, so I am not complaining; just happy to be able to play!

I think that trick with the Cache size didnt make much difference here. Maybe there were more hickups but i started it again with normal size and it was still perceivably high. Anyhow no 100% fix.

I had a similar problem. It would seem like it was syncing up well until I did a counter-kill like slashing and running someone through and the assassinated mark's death speech would be both horribly off. I'd hear the sound but it lagged on showing what was happening.

Turns out it was an issue of RAM. I had the GFX set too high and it slowed all visual parts of the game. Sound files will play at regular speed no matter what, the visual elements and all the rest of the gameplay will bog down horribly if it set too high.

By the way this makes the fights much easier since you can react to enemies' slow attacks and counter every time. I never realized how lightning fast the battles were supposed to be until I turned the GFX settings all the way to minimum.