GFC error: failed to initialize the primary control theme

Endwar 005

The lolrus
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Title says it all. What does this mean? Some thing wrong with...wah?
 
It always seems to give that error if the mod isn't installed in the exact location the game is expecting. I also got it when I renamed the mod, even though it was still in the proper BtS mods folder, and BtS was installed in the default location. (Its too bad, I wanted to keep a couple different working versions on my hard drive to edit and compare.)
 
I had this error but reinstalling the mod, then the media pack and applaying the patch helped.

I was always able to keep several versions of the mod on my drive and they worked good. That was with the pre BTS FfH.
 
I never had any problem with it either before BtS. I think I had over 7 different versions .22 on my hardrive (including an unmodded version, Sureshot's, Maniac's, Blaze' Maxmod, and Snarko's Options mod, some versions that had only changes I made, and some that combined my changes with other modmods), but I deleted most of them since they were taking up so much space.
 
From the first post in the Bug thread:

1. Some people report a "GFC error: failed to initialaize the primary control theme" error loading the mod. In some cases reinstalls have resolved it, in others it seems to be caused when Civ4 isn't installed in the typical location (under Program Files/Firaxis Games/).
 
It always seems to give that error if the mod isn't installed in the exact location the game is expecting. I also got it when I renamed the mod, even though it was still in the proper BtS mods folder, and BtS was installed in the default location.

Lol you named the exact same 2 things i did :mischief:

Sorry, Kael, didn't see the bugs thread. Will pay more attention now :)

....Still not working. Install in prog files or my docs?
 
I put a post on this as well. Make sure that you've downloaded 3 files. There's the main file (which should be obvious, but isn't for people who like to read small print like me :lol: ), the patch file, and the extra artwork one if you want it.

Once you get those 3 files, make sure they're unzipped to the correct place. Different methods you used to buy the game (Direct2Drive, box, or whatever else) may have different directories.

And finally, make sure you have BtS version 3.13.

If you're sure you've done all that stuff, then I'm stumped... but I got caught only downloading 2 files. I didn't have the actual main program :blush: .
 
Is all fixed! I reinstalled BTS, and it then worked for some reason...

What's the media pack all about? Hate to change topic, but...:) i am
 
The media pack is an optional download containing the (opening and wonders) movies, and possibly some other art stuff I don't know about; I never bothered downloading it, because it is non necessary and takes up about as much space as the entire rest of the mod! It probbaly would have been included in the main download, but have a mod take up a gigabyte isn't very download friendly, especially for those with poor internet connections.
 
Is all fixed! I reinstalled BTS, and it then worked for some reason...

What's the media pack all about? Hate to change topic, but...:) i am

That is so werid, I appreciate you reporting back. Any idea if their was any difference between the first time you installed BtS and this time?
 
As simple as it seems, I think alot of people still aren't getting all 3 files. I bet this problem would solve itself if you packed all 3 files together. The site that you download from isn't too clear on exactly which file you're downloading, and any extraneous clicks might get you a different file than you wanted.
 
I know this is an old thread, but for anyone who still comes across this problem with FfH, I found the reason why. I'm still relatively new modding, but I've done my research and I believe I can clear this up for anyone else who came across the same problem.
The reason the reinstall and the repatching works is because in the process of beginning my mod, I first had Ffh2, then I patched it (didn't use the media pack because I didn't have time to dl it then), after I applied Fall Further and Fall Further's patch, then applied Fall Further PLUS. Somewhere in that process I incorrectly merged the separate mods, and tried re-designating it as my mod, but the problem was two things:
1. The mods were incorrectly merged to begin with.
2. Even though I believe I did everything that was necessary (changing the name of the folder, the .exe shortcut, the config file, and changing the designation of the shortcut and the config file) because of the first problem it didn't correlate well.

I'm going to try re-installing everything from Ffh2 on down and see if this works, which it should, i just have to pay more attention. =P

Hope this helps clear up any confusion. ^_^
 
Sorry for opening up this age old thread, but my Fall from heaven 2 multiplayer group had problems with this GFC error in the year 2020, and I was able to find one more solution. We ran a customized version of FFH2 with more naval ai and some anti-oos mods of our own, but some players ran into issues when launching their game, me included when I tried playing on another computer.

We had two problems:
1. reloading the game after an oos or between sessions some players had the game informing them that they had a different version of the mod (even though the game had run fine before)
2. some players were initially unable to launch the mod due to "gfc error: failed to initialize the primary control theme"

Both issues were due to the mod folder being named "incorrectly" in the mods folder of BTS (C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Civilization IV Complete\Civ4\Beyond the Sword or something of the sort). Some players were able to LAUNCH the mod only when the mod folder was named "Fall from Heaven 2" and some were able to launch it only when the mod folder was named "Fall from Heaven 2 - more naval ai". This seemed to depend on whichever name the mod was originally named. At game start there would be no issues, but after a reload half the group would be unable to join the game due to "not having the right mod", as their mod was named differently from the hosts savegame mod requirement. If they attempted to simply change the name the mod would not launch due to the gfc error.

I went through the files and was able to artificially cause the gfc error by renaming a file path erroneusly in the file "C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Civilization IV Complete\Civ4\Beyond the Sword\Mods\Fall from Heaven 2\Resource\Civ4.thm" The file points to a theme file in the mod folder, and if the path was something else than the supposedly "correct" path with the mod folder named wahtever it was originally named, the game would not launch. I named it from "resource_path "Mods/Fall from Heaven 2/Resource";" to "resource_path "Mods/Fall from Heaven 2 - more naval ai/Resource"; in an attempt to fix the issue, but this did not work.

SOLUTION: What did work however was that I added ANOTHER mod folder with the "correct" name in the mod folder; I just copied the original and named the folder differently. The game now launches.

I hope this helps, and I while I am completely dumbfounded by the solution, it works. Maybe somebody wiser than me can explain this phenomenon. Hopefully this comment will show up in future Google searces as well.

P.S. If you encouter new problems in civ4 or find more solutions to odd Civ4 problems please post about them in the forums, there are still some of us left who play the best Civilization!
 
I got this error when I installed Caveman2Cosmos in to the \Documents\My Games\Beyond the Sword\MODS\ folder. The mod seemed to be able to load, then finally it exited with the above error. I could fix it by moving the mod into the installation folder of the game : ...\Civ4\Beyond the Sword\Mods\Caveman2Cosmos\

I hope this helps.
 
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