Almost a month-to-the-day on from Guerrilla Games’ announcement that it was “investigating” Horizon Zero Dawn PC crash reports and bugs, and following some patches looking to address various hiccups, a brand-new update has arrived that “aims to resolve additional crashes as well as a host of gameplay and performance improvements”.
As detailed in a post on the action-adventure game’s Steam page, Horizon Zero Dawn patch 1.04 reaches across three main areas: crash fixes, performance improvements, and various other improvements. The crash fixes address various issues, some of which are pretty significant – for example, the notes say there are now fixes to prevent the game crashing when a player tries to create a new save game and their save slots are full up, or during startup (linked to a temp folder). Plus, there are a couple of solutions for AI crashes that could pop up during the action-RPG game’s combat and “in the EventMessageHandler”.
Good news for PC players is a “general improvement to CPU” that “can result in a 1-10% performance improvement”, depending on a player’s specific CPU and GPU speeds, that is.
In addition to a batch of other tweaks and improvements, the developer has provided a list of known issues, giving an idea of what it’s working on in the meantime. Sweet.
Here are the Horizon Zero Dawn PC patch 1.04 notes in full (via Guerrilla Games):
Known Issues
- Some players are experiencing an out of memory error during the game optimisation process.
- Some players are experiencing graphical settings issues, such as Anisotropic Filtering or HDR not working correctly.
- Some players are experiencing performance issues on specific GPUs or hardware combinations.
- Some players are experiencing issues with Aloy’s hair when the game is running above 30 FPS.
- We’re aware of and continue to investigate issues that are not yet solved on both the player-compiled lists by u/EvilMonkeySlayer and u/Rampage572 – thank you!
Crash Fixes
- Fixed a crash that could occur when users would create a new game and their save game slots were full
- Fixed a startup crash related to temp folder
- Fixed an AI crash that could occur during combat
- Fixed an AI crash in the EventMessageHandler
- Fixed a crash related to WorldData sampling (the callstack would end in WorldMapData::SampleAtPixel)
- Fixed a crash when users would instantly back out when changing sliders in the Settings menu
- Fixed a crash that would occur when having the “Greetings” option open in photo mode and then exiting
- Potential fix for memory corruption in AI routines which could lead to crashes
- Potential fix for a GPU hang caused by a threading issue
- Fixed a mismatch that would occur on Shader Model 6.0 and 6.1 hardware which could lead to a crash
Performance improvements
- General improvement to CPU performance (depending on CPU/GPU speeds, this can result in a 1-10% performance improvement)
- Improved performance of camera cuts in cinematics and conversations
Other Improvements
- HDR – Fixed colour banding issues in HDR mode
- Mouse Controls – Fixed an issue where mouse sensitivity was incorrect when framerate wasn’t constant
- Aiming – Fixed an issue where Aloy was unable to shoot while being able to do a critical attack near a machine
- Cutscenes – Fixed an issue where geometry and textures would pop in after camera cuts
- Adaptive Performance – Fixed an issue where lighting glitches would occur when turning on Adaptive Performance
- Volumetrics – Fixed an issue which could cause blinking artifacts in volumetric effects, like fog
- Reverb – Fixed several issues where excessive reverb was noticeable in specific quests
- Visibility – Fixed an issue which could sometimes cause geometry to briefly disappear after streaming
If you’re yet to delve into the game now it’s landed on our home platform, you might fancy dipping into our Horizon Zero Dawn PC review. Malindy scores it a seven-out-of-ten, noting that it’s “a very workmanlike open-world game. Great to look at, competent overall, and charming when it tries something new, but formulaic when it doesn’t – which is most of the time”.