Game fix : Assassin’s Creed 2 White Screen Bug – Animus Fix

It all began when i got a frantic call from a friend saying that his PC has been infected and the “Special” virus has affected only his Assassins Creed install and removed his save files. His Profile had been removed and whenever he tried to play, all he saw was a white screen. He had reached far into the game and did not want to play it again. So i went over determined to get him out of his misery and also confused as to what kind of a virus would it be that affected only the game. And here’s what happened…..

The issue that he was facing was that as soon as he went in to the animus, a white screen appears with a rhombus like shape with an exclamation mark in it appeared and the game used to completely hang up not allowing him to carry on forward, other than killing the game. On Googling, I found that this issue of gamer’s is the Animus Bug in the Assassins Creed 2.

One reason for it is that it is not the genuine copy of the Assassins Creed 2 and you are violating the copyright terms and condition of the game but my friends installation was genuine so that could not be it.

The other probable reason was his fluctuating internet connection which had been going haywire the day the problem first surfaced.

From that i could glean as much that the new DRM system of AC2 had efffed up and as a result he had been facing the problem as his save files were not being downloaded from the server and hence the white screen. So the best solution would be to disable this online file saving feature. You have to do it from the AC2 Launcher. Here’s how to do it :

1. Run the AC2 Launcher.
2. click on the cogwheel at the upper right side of the launcher and disable the saved games from being stored online. 
3. click on play now and you are all set to enjoy the masterpiece. 

With that taken care of, the next major problem was that his save files were not working and he was being started from square one(He said that he was on some 7th level or something, i found it hard to believe :). He is a lousy gamer…i know that…:P).

Anyways, some more googling led me to the answer, the thing is that the game saves every checkpoint in the game as a temp file so even though your saved game and profile is effed up,  you still have them. The important paths to remember are : 

Save games Folder : C:\Program Files\Ubisoft Game Launcher\storage\”Some Random AlphaNumeric String like Y933aM==”\4

Temp Folder : C:\Program Files\Ubisoft\Ubisoft Game Launcher\storage\temp

Now what you need to do is first delete all the files in your Save Games folder, take a backup of the temp folder(!!) in a separate location and then start the game. Your profile will be missing, so create a new profile (Same name as before). Then exit the game (Play a bit if you want :D).

Next go the back up temp folder, there you will find a bunch of different temp files, organize them by date last modified and you will have your most recent saves. Copy the top 2 files from the approximate time the white screen first appeared and rename one to 1.save(usually the bigger sized one) and the other to 2.save(This is the smaller one, around 3 kb).

Note : You may have to replace 1.save a couple of different times with different saves from the temp folder. But trust me, it is worth it if you can get back to that same level and do not have to play the whole game again only to be stuck up at the same location.

Anyways as it turns out, my friend was really at the 7th Stage(“Sheepish Smile”) and was quite happy when he could resume from his last checkpoint. Just thought i should share this with anyone facing this problems….Let me know if you need any help.