Really, please read what I have posted. It is the other way round. The old installer works flawlessly. It is the current one available to download which does not and is missing the additional content.
I load the old installer and it runs perfectly this one: setup_wizardry8_2.0.0.6.exe
That is what I have from my backup and it predates the 2018 update you show from the log. It also contains a saves folder with a load of premade characters - you can see this in the dir list I showed. Nglide is not broken, it works great, even fits to big widescreen perfectly, no crashes, no sound problems.

Now if I use the one available from the website now: setup_wizardry_8_2001_12_23_(22306).exe
Exactly the same process, same install location everything. I attached a dit list, it is missing the saves folder which has the premade characters. It also opens on a tiny part of the screen (old hd), it also screeches from the sound card, it then crashes at the game intro movie.

So, with the old version not being available to download from here, and ignoring the fact that I have backups, if I downloaded the installer the product does not work and has less content than it used. Simple. The new installer is broken, at least for some people, and is missing content that was available before.

This has nothing to do with anything else, gog need to provide access to all versions of games and the patches, plus update the change logs accurately to what has changed. You show the change log, can you point me to the text where it states that the setup has been changed, or that content has been cut? No, it’s not there, and yet a simple comparison of what is available in both installers clearly shows that there is missing content and something has been changed.

Oh, and do note that others have reported the same issues with the new installer. There is however no solution for them as the old installer is not available - which is the point I am labouring to make!!!

I agree GOG should man up and fix the game in question

That said, I don't think that user you're replying to was supporting GOG in not fixing it(at least not in the way I think of when someone says "support").

Also others(not you) who are not averse to clients could use it to fix the problem until GOG gets off it's lazy butt and does it(we should still push for it to be fixed, as well, in the meantime), if they bought the game & don't mind using galaxy & don't want to refund & don't want to DL the old version through "other sites".

I might have found a fix for this. I posted in the subforum, but Ill put a copy paste of it here.

Okay, so I did a bunch of searching on this, and I may have found a solution. I had to do two things. First, I copy/moved the games folder to the root of my hard drive. Then I needed to change the folders name to "Wiz8". In my case the game will start after this, but it will freeze on a black screen. To fix that I right clicked on wiz8.exe, and checked the disable fullscreen optimizations checkbox. Game starts fine. One potential problem though. While experimenting with this I got a couple BSODs. Im not sure of the cause. I was doing an awful lot of tinkering though. Its possible that the tinkering is why I got the BSODs. I'm not going to play the game right now, so I won't be able to confirm if its stable or not.

This is BS and they need to fix it(or revert to the old version which seems to be on the galaxy files/thing).

That said, I wonder how many people have this issue....I am guessing it's not many or they would likely be on top of this(like with the Deus Ex/Duengeon Siege issues).

All that said, no matter how few people have it(well unless it was maybe 1 person or so only)....they should fix this issue.

Agreed on change logs(don't use em much, but others do), and them keeping the last few stable versions for their games(not all, especially for big games, as that would eat up space unless games were smaller).

(Also i'd like to see them provide original exe files so people could still use their games in dosbox)
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Thanks for this...I will try it if I have issues with my copy. :)

Well, thanks for your input, but it’s not the root of the issue here. The problem is that the version available from gog now, has issues for a lot of users. It also has less content then the previous installer. I have both installers, so for me it’s not a problem, I will just keep the old one. The problem is gog are unable to provide a history of versions and patches, a proper change log, check their installers for actual operation, and even provide an update flag anymore. Preferring to use the standard refrain, use our optional client. This is unacceptable.
Do also be aware, that in the sub forum for this specific game, there has been a lot of people trying this, for instance I never install anything to anything but c:\mygames, so no spaces, nothing longer than 8 chars, not in windows folders etc. Even if that did work, it still does not explain the missing content that is there in the previous version.
I believe we are all fully aware that this is not a one off. It is one however I can demonstrate over and over, and shows difference in content quite clearly. For well over 2 years now these issues have become more and more glaring. Not going to go over them one by one again, but the two tier customer is becoming the de facto. Use the fully optional galaxy, or stick with the broken website, which probably won’t work, won’t get updated (unless it’s with galaxy features), doesn’t have certain functionality.

That user at least provided a workaround....like so many others who have helped fix GOG's shortcomings....yes, GOG should do such themselves if/when they can, but if it works for some then that's some good for some people, at least.

You don't need to tell me about many of the various issues surrounding the site and company....I am aware of many of them already.....that said, all this complaining in the forums seems to do little to solve it, so what do you propose?

Are you sure? Getting the game to work does seem to be the purpose of the thread.

Downloaded & installed the latest GOG offline installer of Wizardry 8, setup_wizardry_8_2001_12_23_(22306),exe today.
Wizardry 8 crashed immediately after loading the Glide animation.
Opened up Wizardry8 Settings Setup ultitly, saw that the default settings were set to Graphics Interface: Glide2x 3d acceleration +3d Sound Interfaces: Miles Fast 2D Positional Audio caused game to crash after launching.
Switching Graphics mode to Software (MMX) and Sound to DirectSound3d Software Emulation allowed game to load normally, and am able to create characters normally.

Yes, sorry for the OP. If you check the sunforum (and there are posts in general too), people have tried for a long time. Some people the latest one works, others the old installer. Hope it works for OP.
Yep, I have the full list. You can see as well that content has been removed, and this is not in the change log. The changes they made are also not in the change log, and affect at least some users.

Thanks for the problem solving.

Wow this game is indeed finicky. I already reported earlier that when I installed the game (with the newest offline installer, no Galaxy), it worked fine for me on my Windows 10 laptop. Videos played fine and the game played fine. It was installed to the default location, C:\GOG Games\Wizardry 8\.

Earlier today I tried it again... and it wouldn't start. I set the "disable fullscreen optimizations" as you suggest, and then the game started, but the videos were blank, with audio only. The game itself ran fine.

Then I tried it again at home (same Windows 10 laptop)... and now it would crash to desktop whenever I tried to start the gameplay (videos still played with audio only). I uninstalled the game, and re-installed it into C:\Wiz8\... and boom, now it all works just fine again, even without setting the "disable fullscreen optimizations". Videos play fine, the game runs fine, fine fine fine. Fine.

So from your instructions, right now the most crucial thing seems to be to install it into a short path without spaces. Then again, why did it work for me previously installed into C:\GOG Games\Wizardry 8\ ? All I can think of is that I did run Windows 10 updates recently, not sure if they somehow broke the Wizardry 8 compatibility?

Very odd. So now it works again, but who knows if it still works a week from now? Black magic.

That reminds me of King's Quest 8....it also needs a very short path else when going to some areas(like the castle) and then back again the games crashes(it cannot find the data I believe, as the paths are too long).

It's possible....which is one of the things I dislike about Win10(I wish they'd have went with the old "updates every few months and allow people to DL what they want" strategy of earlier windows versions).

(Song scene starts at around 1:05)

That’s very odd, my install location c:/mygames/wizardry 8, works fine for the old installer, I installed both to same directory. Even if it is win updates, does not explain why the previous installer is fine, and did you check are the premade characters present?

That behaviour implies that a required service or codec isn't running consistently, probably due to being deprecated on win10. On initial install it gets started/ is running as required because it's just been installed. At some point- often after a shutdown with the service not restarting again with windows, but an update could certainly do it too by removing 'unrecognised' stuff- the required service/ codec stops running and the videos won't play or the game crashes.

The path issue is likely to do with length, iirc, not spaces per se. Probably less than 32 characters required, so if it goes into program files or something it won't recognise itself properly due to length.

Similar thing used to be an issue with System Shock 2 which is a game from a similar era, though that only effected the videos and the game itself was fine. If you wanted to see the videos you had to either reinstall the codecs or restart their service regularly- it also wouldn't work with long paths and thought that hard drives were full when they weren't due to coding limits they didn't think would be important.

By default the offline installer installs the game into "C:\GOG Games\Wizardry 8\" (the offline installers haven't used the default "C:\Program Files something something" installation directory for years, as that caused problems to so many older games). Yeah it might be it was not relevant that I now installed into C:\Wiz8\, but rather that I re-installed the game.

I have no idea where Galaxy installs its games by default though. The same folder where you originally installed the Galaxy client? Does Galaxy install itself by default under Program Files?

Also it appears to me there are (at least) two separate problems with the game. One is whether the videos are shown (or played with audio only; sometimes the game would also crash to desktop without playing any video, or sometimes the intro video worked with audio only while the "introduction" video caused the game to crash to desktop), and the other is whether the actual gameplay will start or just crash to the desktop.

Also, what was different when I tried to run it earlier yesterday and then later the same day was that earlier my laptop was connected to a dual-monitor setup (desktop extended to two monitors), while at home it was connected to one external monitor which shows the same screen as the laptop screen. That could affect things as well.

EDIT: Also I didn't check if the Windows updates I ran recently may have changed some settings, like switching off those DirectPlay settings or whatnot that some games need. Hard to keep track of what changes Microsoft does to my PC, but at least I've been able to disable forced auto-updates on Windows 10 Pro, and I can run them manually.