I'll post this here too. You never know. It's already been sent to customer support.
It's kind of unfortunate that with this game GOG seem to only have increased the problems with it. Not only does it crash anyway, it seems GOG have bollocksed the key bindings in the game too.
The defaults used to have the arrow keys for movement. Now it's impossible to use the arrow keys for movement without the game crashing as soon as I try and start a new game. The main problem is the down arrow, it seems. I can use the rest just so long as nothing is bound to moving backwards. Which can be a bit of a problem. :P
There are other problems with bindings causing crashes, but this is the most game-breaking for me as I'm left handed and WASD is just a bunch of random keys over the other side of the keyboard.
I've already tried manually editing the autoexec file alternately with the names (down arrow) and numbers (##208). This doesn't work either.
Does anyone have the retail version of the game? With the original autoexec file? Or any other ideas about how I can fix this?

Not trying to be annoying, but what does being left handed have to do with preferring the arrow keys to WASD? It seems to me you will be using keys either way, I don't know why one set or the other would be better or different.
And my best friend is a lefty and uses WASD.
Just wondering.

I've always used the arrow keys. Since Doom, basically. Not only are they better positioned anyway, but they're surrounded by the numpad, Home - Page Down block and all the keys on the right side of the main block, which are usefully distinct.

Yep.
I am right handed, and use the arrows also.
I also have the original game from disks, and rebound everything to arrow + surrounding keys, Rmouse=forward, Lmouse=fire.
Works fine for me.
I just bought the gog version (hoping I can actually play in hardware mode for once).
I will try doing the same bindings when I get home way later tonight and let you know if everything works well.
In the meantime, can you see if any of the keys are double bound?
That usually hoses things in blood games.

No, unfortunately. I tried unbinding everything first.
Thanks a lot! But these seem to crash the game out just as fast.
I think I figured out how to bind the down key anyway. If you try and bind Forward to the down key it will assign it to Backward for some reason. Then just assign the up key to Forward again to complete the process.
It seems like the Enter key was the one causing most the problems. I thought it was the down key mostly because it was such a bitch to assign.
But I can at least now play the game with only the usual amount of crashing out.