Howdy folks, here is a tip for some of you gamers out there.  I don’t know how many this might help, but as with some of the other posts on this site, this tip comes from figuring out an error that I ran into myself, so I thought I would share the solution with everyone.  This relates to the game Gratuitous Space Battles, but this type of fix might be something that could fix other games as well, who knows.  This tip does involve deleting files, so as always, be sure to have an appropriate backup in case you need to put them back!

OK, on to the good stuff weight loss fast pills.  I have the game Gratuitous Space Battles and I rather enjoy playing it.  I purchased it through Steam and up until now, haven’t had any trouble running it.  I installed it recently on my laptop, which is acting as a fill in for my main computer since my Alienware desktop finally died on me.  What this means is, I hadn’t had this game installed on my laptop before, but I had the contents of “My Documents” from my desktop restored to my laptop since it was now my main machine, the desktop where GSB had in fact been installed.

I tried the game yesterday for the first time and when it started up, all looking like normal, I received the following error:

Failed to initialize 3d engine

I tinkered with the game a bit but didn’t have the time to fix it so I just closed it up and bagged it for the night.  Then tonight I decided to dig into it, I tried it again just in case the shutdown and restart from last night might have had anything to do with it, but nothing, I got the same error.  I then did some digging and found that in my “My Documents” directory, and then further down into the “My Games” directory, there was a Gratuitous Space Battles directory from where it had been installed on my desktop.  I know it was full of old data because all of my screenshots I had previously taken were there.  What does this mean you ask?  Well, all of the configuration information from the desktop setup is in that directory, including settings for the 3d engine!  Well now, that should be easy enough to fix.  I make a copy of that directory, just in case, and then delete the thing (even going so far as to emptying my recycle bin).  That directory should recreate itself when the game restarts, complete with all new default settings.

So, I fire up the game once again and what do you know?  The game starts up, no problem at all, and the directory gets created again fresh.  Now I can play the game on my laptop!  It’s fascinating to me how simple things like that can be the problem and the fix for so many things.  I hope this tip helps someone out there, until next time … Enjoy!