Oh My God!! Sorry for the harsh words but this release is !!GARBAGE!! People having stability issues, graphical issues. WTF!! This is no modern computer compatible release people. GOG pushed out a cd-check disabled version of the old game.

Command lines mostly helps getting a better image quality (or not, I'm not sure but some of them may give you thin black lines around some texture boxes - in software mode). I tried many times to get DK2 run well under various configurations (with nVidia and ATi cards, old or recent), and considering the bugs are mainly due to GPUs and rather than Windows, it is not that puzzling that this release has the same problems (compatibility is officially assured for modern OS, after all; GPUs are more tricky).

Maybe it's been posted that somewhere else, but just in case, here are some tips which allows the game to run fine (normally):
- compatibility mode: XP SP3, desktop themes/composition/scaling deactivated, launch as Admin. (not sure it's of any help on GoG's version)
- apparently Hardware Acc. is OFF by default, which is a good point, as it's a bit tedious to turn off in the original release (change mode, load a map, quit to desktop, re-launch)
- uncheck QSound in sound options (old useless echoes effects and all, might trigger crashes)
- CHOOSE 800x600 !!!! This resolution is the best one to avoid crashes in objective menu
- unchecking one CPU core might help, but I've found that on my rig (Core 2 Duo 2.4Ghz) slowing the CPU is better. Use "emulate slow CPU" in Microsoft's Application Compatibility Toolkit. Not sure it's of any help on GoG's either.

Command lines for Software mode, if GoG hasn't added them already:

-softwarefilter => blurs textures so that rendering is close to Hardware (no pixellisation; I think this one may give you thin black lines)
-32biteverything => better colours and contrasts
-disablegamma => allows for a different gamma (desktop) to be used
-enablebumpmapping
-enablebumpluminanc

With all that, I got the game running fine (apart for two random crashes, maybe absent in GoG's) last time I played it (1.7, all packs, with an ATi 4850, Windows 7 32bits). Hope this helps!

Gog, please get your act together with your new releases. too many games still need tweaking, its getting a little out of control.

You know what... I Dont Give A F**k!! I bought the game to play it not to deal with technical issues. I have the original game on the cd so if I would like to go over this pain I've installed it from the CD.
I'm a big GoG supporter, bought several (44 to be exact) games from them and recommended the portal to my friends. And now I get this SH!T worth release. Sorry for the harsh words but I'm pissed!! The game is unplayable on my PC. Constant crashes, graphical bugs (it even killed my display driver after the last try). So there are some command line switches to over come this issue and some compatibility options inside windows. WHY THE F**K!! should I care about those!!! It's there job to take care of this, that is what they try to advertise this site for. You get an old game that can be run on a modern PC. So why are there so many complaints about this release. Because it's the SAME OLD GAME THAT WAS 12 YEARS AGO!!. If the situation won't change in the next few days I will have to ask GoG to return me the money because this is not the products that it is advertised to be.

I see it that way too. It's their job! That's why we pay them instead of getting out our old CDs... And if there are only certain configurations how the game runs, they should tell! I got half an hour without crashes now by playing in 800x600 resolution. Don't know if that does solve them all, but it MAY do so. But even if it does and the game would be completely stable now, THEY SHOULD TELL US THAT THE GAME ONLY RUNS SAFE IN 800x600 AND SOFTWARE MODE. Why do we have to spend time and energy to find these things out if THEY say they make old classics WORK under Win7?

As i said before, GOG is about to lose me as an "insta-buy" customer. Looks like i have to be more careful about what to buy in the future...

Your reaction is perfectly understandable (had the same when I bought it for 10£, boxed, supposedly compatible with modern systems. Yeah right.). I just meant that the state of affairs is not uncommon at all with this game and that those hints might help. I'm not even surprised the game runs badly here. I agree it's not normal at all though, and I really wondered how they could have made it work better (considering the bugs are known to be very redundant), and if they had, on release. Well, the answer is they failed, at the very least partly. As you say indicating what are the limitations would be a HUGE improvement in some cases... A bit like Stranger's Wrath, where they should REALLY have indicated that ATi cards won't work correctly with it (10$ lost). But that must be a complaint to post on "General Forums" now that I think of it.

Next time they should really wait, or not release at all. Better that even indicating anything. I think they were aware of issues by the way, as screenshots seem to be in software mode (indeed necessary), while the game is hardware by default (on CD). So they knew about some bugs, and not other common ones ? How strange...

@Darucas: GoG behavior is unacceptable. This game is not in a state to be able to run on modern hardware. And if so that the info on the page is misguidance to a potential customer .

Agreed. I meant that by "how strange" by the way. How strange they have released that without knowing of crashes too, isn't it? Everyone here agrees that's not normal. I strongly doubt the game has a place here only because it's "most wanted" if it's as bugged as always. And reading whatever issues arouse in the last few hours makes it even worse. I think they should avoid releasing games that may be too buggy.

To those arriving at the end of this thread, there's a new one which seems suited to complain about this, and you should:
[url=]http://www.gog.com/en/forum/dungeon_keeper/plenty_of_dk2_issues_reported_will_we_get_fixes[/url]

Maybe if enough people complain they'll change the state of things (if possible - if the game proves to be too buggy for too many players during the weeks to come, they may delete it and find a way to get it work more flowlessly).

I've gotten this game to work from the CD version. Here's what I remember:

The various -32bit options are just for quality. Enabling some or all of them may actually make the game more unstable. Which switches you enable vary from machine to machine.

The main screen is ALWAYS going to lag. Don't worry about it.

The usual turn on XP compat etc. may also help.

Using IMAGECFG to modify the executable to one core was the KEY for me to run this thing.

http://www.robpol86.com/index.php/ImageCFG

(Instructions and files on many sites where IMAGECFG is important).
It would still crash every once in a while. Save early, save often.

I'm on a monitor with 1920x1200 native resolution, and the game is a tiny, tiny box in the middle of the screen. I can't seem to get it to scale with the monitor. I don't necessarily want to try to force a high res, I just want it big enough to see. The only game that's appropriate to play in a window that small is minesweeper.

Even going into the registry and trying to manually set it to, say, 1600x1200 had no effect.

I'm on an AMD 4800 series GPU.

Edit:
My mistake. Apparently it's just the splash screens and main menu that won't stretch. Once you load in, it stretches. Of course, it seems to want to fill the whole 16:10 monitor instead of keeping a 4:3 ratio for some reason, but that's better than nothing.

How about using Glide or some other 3Dfx wrapper? At least it works for me fine for running e.g. Carmageddon 2 with 3D(fx) acceleration on a laptop (which obviously has no 3Dfx hardware in it).

I don't remember if Carmageddon 2 has Direct3D support too, but if it does, I don't think I got it to work ok on my laptop, so I had to use a 3Dfx wrapper. In fact, it may be there were some controller issues when using Direct3D...

EDIT: Now that I remember a bit more, it could have been that if you used Direct3D acceleration, the game would not run (at least properly) if you had a game controller connected. So the options were either to use Direct3D and use only keyboard for controls, or use a Glide wrapper for 3Dfx acceleration, and then you could use a game controller.

Since I wanted to play the game with a PC gamepad (Logitech PS2 controller lookalike), I chose the latter option.

Ps. Regarding Dungeon Keeper 2, of course I will not buy it for now based on these warnings, even though the system where I will mostly run it will probably not face many of the issues (as it is a 32-bit WinXP machine, single-core, 4:3 screen).

Just goes to show that it is still a good idea to keep some XP laptop as a backup plan for retrogaming... Thankfully Win9x machines are not really needed anymore, I don't recall a Win9x game which I haven't been able to run either on the Win2000 desktop (which is also single-core) and/or WinXP laptop. I thought "The Reap" shooter would be one such game, but even it started working with the latest patch.

There is, and as far as I can tell, I have it enabled. The checkbox is checked in CCC, anyway. Lately I don't always trust that, though.

As for the Glide wrapper, I don't think DK2 is able to run in Glide mode. Sounds odd considering its release date, but the readme doesn't mention anything like that (only D3D and Software). Also, when I tried forcing Glide with different wrappers (dgVoodoo and nGlide) the game didn't recognise it. I may be wrong though, and if the game could run in this mode it would be helpful indeed.