Kelltic, the download and install of Direct X 9 is pretty straight forward and takes less than average about 5 minutes to install. If you were to buy similar games on Steam, by default developers have these installers included in the download to help try and mitigate technical tickets or refunds from being raised to Steam Support.

Didn't realize that Whiterabbit was, as usual, ahead of the game. HIS link is to that Mac page on Big Fish. Also, his link to the earlier giveaway has some useful comments on this one. More mixed, with some positive points brought out too.

watcher13, Back in the day of casual games, Real Networks had launched their Real Arcade service which greatly helped expose a lot of these games and companies on a worldwide level. Eventually, Gamehouse was acquired by Real Networks and was merged with Gamehouse and the Real Arcade service was eventually discontinued. Also Big Fish was founded by a former employee who worked with the Real Arcade project, I don't know if they still are working there today. It was once thought that these casual games were targeted at a specific audience of gamers of a certain age. Later data uncovered that more people younger than the certain age targeted are playing these games.

Peter,

Hi Peter, please read my reply to Luise above. Thank you

Luise O'Reilly,
it sounds like from your error that directx is not installed or broken

Luise O'Reilly,

Hi Luise, the game uses an earlier version of Direct X called DX9.0. All versions of windows will have the latest version installed , however, if you get the error you posted, you may need to reinstall the direct X you require.

You can read about the issue via Microsoft answers HERE and download it from Microsoft's official download centre HERE.

john Heffernan,

:)

Luise O'Reilly, also Peter, if you can figure out what the version of that original module is, you can obtain a copy online and try putting that into the game's folder. Many of these games are programmed to be self contained enough so that they will look in their own folders 1st for modules and then look into Windows if they can't find them. 50/50 chance, maybe, but might be worth a try if you want to the game bad enough. And it can't do any harm - the rest of the programs on your machine will just ignore anything in that folder - and this way you won't have to install older software into Windows which might actually interfere with other software you have installed, and cause those programs to become un-useable. In fact, modern versions of Windows will actually warn you if you try and rollback the modules on Windows to earlier versions. Maybe some of the folks who have the the game installed can tell you what version of that module it could be that game is looking for.

IMPORTANTLY though, it's playing for Whiterabbit and Sailorbear, who systems I'm sure have up to date DirectX, so maybe you 2 good folks may be even behind what the game requires. In other words, it may be you, not the game, that's out of date. Most of the current software built into Windows is what's known as "backward compatible", so that it plays well with older software, though this game may be an exception. Maybe you should check your Direct X. I'm not sure if the toll I'm going to mention is found slightly differently in newer versions of Windows, like Win 10/11, but it's easy to check in the older versions. Go to your Start menu, select Accessories when the program menu comes up, then the System Tools folder, then click on "System Information". Then along the top menus - Files, edit, etc. - select Tools, and then click on the DirectX Diagnostic Tool. Or, even easier, when your on your desktop, click the F1 button and your Windows help system comes up. Just type DirectX Diagnostic Tool into the search box and an article about it - which has a direct link to it - will come up. In fact, finding the DirectX tool through help probably works in ALL current versions of Windows. This tool not only tells you what version you have - on this Win XP machine it's 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904), for example - but also has a nice set of tools so you can see if everything is working correctly. Those tools should all be explained in the help article, if there's any confusion. It will even tell you which version you have of d3dx9_39.dll - under a tab marked DirectX Files - and, if you can't find it in that list, that's telling you that it's missing and that's your real problem - and you need to reinstall your DirectX, or maybe even better, install the latest version, if you don't have it already.

One more point of clarification. That module is a Direct Link Library, hence the dll at the end. Windows is ALL modular - there really is no giant Windows program - and dlls are tiny modules of commonly used code that can do basic functions that usually more than 1 program needs. This saves a lot of space. If the program wants to do some common function, like copy and paste in a word processor, it's just calls on the appropriate module of common code already built into Windows. In the case of d3dx9_39.dll, it's a module of 3D rendering code, to at least make things look like they're not flat and have some depth.

Oops, forgot. If you do get a copy of that module online to put into the game folder, it's probably a good idea to run a virus scan on it 1st. You can use your built in anti-virus, but probably even better to use 1 of the online virus scan sites - as Whiterabbit does just as a double check for that game giveaways. VirusTotal is the clear winner, with 75 anti-virus scanners. Although, with 75, you often get a handful of hits that say there's a virus. You often have to go by the majority. If it's only a handful of 75, they are probably false positives. Some scanners are overly aggressive looking for suspicious things that aren't really all that suspicious. But, it's your safety that's important, so your choice. There's also Jotti's malware scan, with 15, including, like VirusTotal, some well known scanners, but it's reputation isn't as strong as VirusTotal's. Some of these download sites carrying these modules aren't well curated, so it pays to be cautious.

Keep thinking of things. Also, if you use "VT" or Jotti, they'll sometimes use previous scans of common files. There will be a notice and a link if they do that. In the case of these module download sites, always force VT and Jotti to do a new scan. The bad people are always active. Whereas something you download from Microsoft, for example, is likely clean and a recent, but not current, scan should do fine.

An update. Actually my DirectX Diagnostic tool DOESN'T show that file. But a search shows it's in my system - in the WINDOWS\system32 folder, where these are almost always found. The game works for me and the version I have is: 9.24.949.2307, so that should work for anyone having this problem. It's listed in my search as 3,762 Kilobytes (in other words, 3.762 Megabytes). Also, something I didn't take into account, DirectX left version 9 with Vista, and is up to the version 12 package in Windows 10. Though older individual modules can cause problems in the package for which they were written - version 9 for the file we're talking about - these new packages aren't usually hurt by installing older packages on your new Windows computer. The modules in the newer package are protected. If you install DirectX 9 in your newer computer it's unlikely to cause problems, and you'll get some old modules that you may need for an old piece of software to 2 that aren't commonly used anymore. Those are the rare cases went backward compatibility doesn't work, because the old modules capabilities aren't needed anymore, so no need to make the new packages backward compatible for those functions. And you can use Windows Restore if it does cause problems. Just note today's date so you get the right restore point if you have to use it. Although, just installing that missing module into the game folder may work also. So that gives folks 2 potential fixes.

watcher13, thank you.
updated directX and fixed.

sailorbear510 aka Jason,

This is one of the reasons I'm so happy to see another community member posting their thoughts on these games. Although it's rare, on this particular occasion we do disagree on the difficulty of the game play. Thank you for your feedback, J. much appreciated.

Regular contributions that gave solid positive or negative feedback and opposing viewpoints from the community is something I'd hoped for ever since I started posting feedback and short reviews back in December 2006, when the game giveaway went live as an offshoot from the applications side of the project. Prior to the 8th of December 2006, we'd been getting games a couple of times a week from the main site from the beginning of that side going live in October 2006. I didn't join the community until early November and still have some of those early games that turned out to be free standing once installed.

As I've mentioned before; I'd hoped to see this comments section become a nexus for developers, who would take note of the positive and negative feedback as well as suggestions; and happily give away their latest creations (probably in αlpha or βeta stages of development) to this community because of the work we put into basically testing their product.

With a good reputation, we could have been getting far more high-profile indie and even AAA games. Sadly, that was never to be, because, even when there were tens of thousands of community members downloading games each day, (on average we were getting over 50 000 community members regularly downloading games from the giveaway servers, usually depending on what game was being given away).

Sadly, only a very tiny and insignificant percentage of the community ever bothered to post any useful feedback, either negative or positive or suggestions for improvements related to the game being given. At one point several years ago, I used to calculate the percentage of appropriate feedback against the number of downloads, which was usually, as low as 0.005% (1:20 000) and never above 0.01% (1:10 000 comments) of the community posting useful feedback, apart from in the early days when there were a couple of other community members who used to post reviews between 2006 to 2008, at the same time as I did.

:)

Whiterabbit-uk, yes, but that's true of anything. Massive feedback is always hard to obtain. An adequate amount of representative feedback, if it appears to be so, is the best you can hope for. You often very usefully link to previous giveaways of the same games which have dozens of comments, so it wasn't always so bad, and those comments, as you've wisely realized, are still useful today. Though, I realize not all of those are, as you correctly term it, useful feedback. But, after all, if you had 10,000 comments, nobody would have time to read them all. :P No perfect solutions out there, of course.

watcher13,

Thanks as always for your usual in-depth comments; really appreciated. :)

Those stats I quoted are based on the number of downloads to appropriate feedback on regular occasions when the community was vastly larger than it is now and not just on the number of comments posted. :)

Back then, there wasn't as many free game sites, nor game discounts as well as big name developers giving away big-name games regularly (e.g. this month you can ger Bethesda/Microsoft's Fallout 76 (usually £34.99) and Total War: Warhammer II (usually £39.99) via Prime Gaming and not forgetting Epic Games weekly giveaways. in fact, all of the large developer/distributors regularly give away decent games. We even get Steam games here on a limited basis occasionally. Back when this site was much popular, access to decent free games was nowhere near as regular.

Whiterabbit-uk, I understand. Just saying, having worked in American media, I know getting good feedback is difficult. It's a constant problem in many industries, including media. Also, people are more inclined to post when they have complaints, than when they're happy. The old "no news is good news" cliche. It's an exaggeration, but there's some truth to it. Also, I think it's the free nature of the site contributes. People are more likely to comment when they're purchasing - having more of a stake in it - than when they're getting a freebie. Which, I think is why the pay game sites get more feedback. Some, as you know, even think that complaining about a freebie is "biting the hand that feeds them" (or "beggars can't be choosers"), even though you have often correctly pointed out that feedback can help the developers.