I recently got Realms of the Haunting for free on Steam from IndieGala. I'm only at chapter 2, and while I love the atmosphere and everything so far, I was not really expecting the old style controls, which aren't even rebindable. So, what with the Fall GOG sale, and RotH being on sale for just 3 bucks, I'm wondering if GOG made enough improvements to the game to make it worth buying it from them. Does anyone have both versions, or can you say if there are many big differences?

I have not played this game for a long time now, but I recall the GOG version is the same. Not 100% sure though. But you might want to check this, which fixed some issues when I played it and should work with steam's release, as I suspect they are the very same. In fact, in some Steam DOS games, I have seen ".gog" files, so figure it out :P

Edit: I copypaste some text from that thread to explain why I think it might interest you:

Q: What effects does this patch have on the GOG version of Realms of the Haunting?

A: The first difference is the addition of a difficulty selector in the menus, which you can read about here:
http://www.realmsofthehaunting.com/editions_differences.php
The other significant difference (which goes oddly unmentioned at that page) is the ability to re-configure a sub-set of the control keys. Unfortunately some keys are still hard-coded, so you may still need to use the DOSBox key mapper; but it still offers a huge improvement on the (absolutely horrible) default layout.

Nice, thanks! I can finally strafe!

I'm having a problem with the lighting, though. I posted in the thread you linked to, but I'll mention the problem here too, anyway: in dark rooms with candlelight, the lighting seems to cause some odd colors which I don't think used to be there.

I am glad I could help you with the controls, but I fear I shall not be as useful for your new problem, as I do not remember any graphical issues aside of being a really old game, so perhaps it is just that we have forget how graphics were back then. If you really think those are glitches and not belongings to the game, I would suggest thinkering with your DosBOX, let it be by changing config files or be using a SVN build of DOSBOX. It could also be related to your OS, to your drivers or to a combination of the above.

Nevertheless, if the color glitching is something like this, I have fixed that for another games (like Diablo, Outlaws and Starcraft) by starting the game with windows' explorer shut down. I created a batch file which kills the explorer (downside is you cannot copy files while playing, because it belongs to explorer.exe process too), starts the game and pauses, so when you quit playing you press any key and restarts the explorer automatically.

I doubt this is your problem, but if you want to try it, you must write this code into notepad and saving as whateveryouwant.bat :

taskill -f /im explorer.exe
start "Pathtoactualshortcut.lnk"
pause
start explorer.exe
exit

I type "actual shortcut" because steam's ones are weblinks to the launcher and I am not sure if they would work. Here in GOG, the shortcut invokes conf files and dosbox. So be wary. The code might be wrong, as I am typing from memory, but more or less it is like that. But again, I REALLY doubt that would fix it, as those games suffering this glitch suffer it on all the screen.

You might try to run the game in a window though.

Don't you need to have Steam running to play its games? GOG is DRM free so it'd be my obvious choice (but I already have the original CDs :P)

thanks for the patch :)

does anyone know why gog doesnt update game so that this patch is allready included ?
this kinda upsets me

but the us version is official ... why dont you offer this version ?

the patch just pimps the gog version so that its like the better and more fleshed out us version

Theres a uk release by gremlin with at the very least a similar patch (it also comes with a bunch of making of videos) I have a couple of copies sat on my shelf.

I'd advise you to get in touch with GOG support to try and discuss if the ISO can be distributed. Alternatively could you try to use a simple program that compares and creates a binary patch between the folders of the gold edition and those of the GoG edition?
http://www.clickteam.com/patch-maker

This makes a binary patch so no full files being distributed (no piracy) all while helping ensure the gold edition lives on :)

I have but I'm unable to change the controls in GOG version as yet and are still looking for methods to change the controls in both