I love this game. I used to play this all the time. I have all the expansions except for parasites, and a year or two ago I could play fine.
I start the game, get the GSB splash screen, and as soon as I click a mouse button the game closes and I get a Windows error saying GSB has stopped working.
Not sure what has changed since the last time I played successfully, but I’m stumped on how to fix this.
Uninstalled/reinstalled…no worky.
Unsinstalled/ Ran CCleaner / reinstalled…no worky.
Any and all suggestions welcome.
Intel Core I7 machine, AMD graphics (not that I think that matters).
First question that comes to mind: Is anything being written into the errors.txt file in your debug folder?
Should I be concerned that I don’t have a debug folder?
It depends on where you’re looking for it. (The following information is based on the Windows version of GSB.)
You should have a folder in My Documents like so: My Documents/My Games/Gratuitousspacebattles
The debug folder is there. Inside the debug are usually three text files (going off memory at the moment since I’m not at my home machine): debug.txt, drawdebug.txt, errors.txt
These files usually give you an indication of what the game is doing and what if anything is going wrong.
----DEBUG FILE----
Windows 7 detected
GSB Debug File. App version Full 1.38
Desktop resolution is 1280 x 1024
Initialising Direct3D
Initialising global vertex buffer
creating render targets
success in initialising 3D
Initialising Direct Input
Finished Initialising Direct Input
Initialising Sound Engine
Initialised Sound System with 512 channels
Finished Initialising Sound Engine
DrawDebug Contents:
Initialising 3D Engine
Driver : aticfx32.dll
Description : ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series
DeviceName : \.\DISPLAY4
Checking For Shader Support
NumSimultaneousRTs:4
hal_caps.PixelShaderVersion >= D3DPS_VERSION(2, 0)
About to Create 3D Device with width: 1280 and height : 1024
Attempting hardware Vertex Processing
Finished initialising 3D Engine
Initialising Render target of 512 X 512 rt_ship
rt_ship
Initialising Render target of 2048 X 2048 rt_offscreen1
rt_offscreen1
Initialising Render target of 2048 X 2048 rt_offscreen2
rt_offscreen2
Initialising Render target of 2048 X 2048 rt_transition
rt_transition
titlescreen2048.bmp
cwfont20.dds
zekton16.dds
Finally, here are the last several lines of the error file. Note the dates. I have been trying to get this to work far more recently than 2011, and those attempts apparently aren’t even getting far enough to populate the error list.
6/3/2011 - 2::37 - Module Type not found ->frigate_shieldsupportbeam_I:…\src\SIM_ShipModuleType.cpp 272
6/3/2011 - 17::11 - Untranslated HRESULT
6/3/2011 - 17::11 - D3DXCreateEffectFromFile failed
6/3/2011 - 17::14 - Untranslated HRESULT
6/3/2011 - 17::14 - D3DXCreateEffectFromFile failed
6/3/2011 - 17::18 - Untranslated HRESULT
6/3/2011 - 17::18 - D3DXCreateEffectFromFile failed
6/3/2011 - 17::26 - Untranslated HRESULT
6/3/2011 - 17::26 - D3DXCreateEffectFromFile failed
6/3/2011 - 17::35 - Untranslated HRESULT
6/3/2011 - 17::35 - D3DXCreateEffectFromFile failed
6/3/2011 - 17::42 - Untranslated HRESULT
6/3/2011 - 17::42 - D3DXCreateEffectFromFile failed
6/3/2011 - 17::46 - Untranslated HRESULT
6/3/2011 - 17::46 - D3DXCreateEffectFromFile failed
6/3/2011 - 17::49 - D3DERR_DEVICELOST
6/3/2011 - 17::49 - Flip
6/3/2011 - 19::30 - Untranslated HRESULT
6/3/2011 - 19::30 - D3DXCreateEffectFromFile failed
6/3/2011 - 19::38 - Untranslated HRESULT
6/3/2011 - 19::38 - D3DXCreateEffectFromFile failed
6/3/2011 - 19::45 - Untranslated HRESULT
6/3/2011 - 19::45 - D3DXCreateEffectFromFile failed
13/3/2011 - 6::5 - Untranslated HRESULT
13/3/2011 - 6::5 - D3DXCreateEffectFromFile failed
13/3/2011 - 6::15 - Untranslated HRESULT
13/3/2011 - 6::15 - D3DXCreateEffectFromFile failed
13/3/2011 - 6::26 - Untranslated HRESULT
13/3/2011 - 6::26 - D3DXCreateEffectFromFile failed
13/3/2011 - 6::37 - Untranslated HRESULT
13/3/2011 - 6::37 - D3DXCreateEffectFromFile failed
13/3/2011 - 6::43 - Untranslated HRESULT
13/3/2011 - 6::43 - D3DXCreateEffectFromFile failed
13/3/2011 - 6::46 - Untranslated HRESULT
13/3/2011 - 6::46 - D3DXCreateEffectFromFile failed
13/3/2011 - 6::51 - Untranslated HRESULT
13/3/2011 - 6::51 - D3DXCreateEffectFromFile failed
14/3/2011 - 3::18 - Untranslated HRESULT
14/3/2011 - 3::18 - D3DXCreateEffectFromFile failed
14/3/2011 - 3::23 - Untranslated HRESULT
14/3/2011 - 3::23 - D3DXCreateEffectFromFile failed
20/3/2011 - 6::55 - Untranslated HRESULT
20/3/2011 - 6::55 - D3DXCreateEffectFromFile failed
20/3/2011 - 7::0 - Untranslated HRESULT
20/3/2011 - 7::0 - D3DXCreateEffectFromFile failed
Any thoughts? I give up. I got my money’s worth out of the game, but there’s no point in buying the Parasites if I can’t use them.
Just a suggestion to try
Head to My Documents\Games\GratuitousSpacebattles
Rename the \GratuitousSpacebattles\ directory to something like \GratuitousSpacebattlesbroken\
Then run GSB.
GSB will rebuild the \GratuitousSpacebattles\ directory with default settings. See if that gets the game working.
If so then its a matter of moving your saved ship designs / unlocks / etc back.
Its what your Friendly Community Mod Squad is here for 
Enjoy