Hi,
Could I please have some information confirmed regarding the GOG.com release of Descent2:-
1. Does it include "The Vertigo Series" expansion?
2. Are both the Descent 2 and Vertigo Series original redbook audio soundtracks provided?
Thanks in advance.

1: It does not include any of the Infinite Abyss content (Vertigo, editor, etc)
2: Not 100% certain since I haven't played into this version much yet, but the track from the redbook audio for the main menu was definitely there.

Well, having the Redbook audio explains why it's 500 MB instead of 50. :) (Well, and the videos, I suppose.)
I still have a CD copy of the Descent games, so I bought this mainly for trial, safekeeping, ease of use, etc. tried installing the Vertigo Series on top of the GOG Descent 2. It took fine; I haven't noticed any ill effects yet, despite replacing the executable and a few other data files (DESCENT2.HAM/DESCENT2.HOG) in order to add support for the campaign.
So if you still have the CD, you can play the missions, if not the new music. (How you'd support that in-game, I don't know... run a CD selector before starting the game each time?)

Taking an absolute stab, but I'm assuming they've got it tweaked to read the redbook audio differently. With how it worked on the original, you could use any audio CD for music actually as it just read from the CD drive. As far as where this version is pulling the music, I'm not sure yet. From looking at the file directory, I'm guessing the soundtrack is in the DESCENT_II.gog and modified the executable to see that as the redbook audio disc. As far as if it's possible to modify the music played, that's something gog.com staff will have to give a word on.

It's quite simple actually. The descent_ii.gog file is a CD image (don't know what specific format, but I'm guessing a standard ISO), which contains a stripped down version of the Descent II CD (movies and redbook only). The executable is thus probably modified with a small loader program which mounts the image out-of-view at runtime.
So, if you have any applications which can mount CD images, then you can most likely just load the .gog file in there and it'll treat it as a valid CD image.
This also means that you can also rip your vertigo cd, place it in the D2 folder, and create a .bat file (if you know how to work them) which renames the CD images according to what you redbook and such you want running when playing.

If you want to play the Redbook audio from the CD image, you need to mount "DESCENT_II.inst" instead of "DESCENT_II.gog". Don't ask me why, but if you just mount the .gog file, the audio won't work. Both files need to be in the same folder, however.

Ahh, yes. Sorry, was a bit on the tired side yesterday and had forgotten about the .inst file. That file is just a renamed .cue file (just like descent_ii.gog is a renamed iso file). It's a cue sheet, a file that simply denotes the content format of each track, where they start and where they end. If you're not sure what I mean, simply crank it open in notepad or any other text editor.
EDIT: Oh, and if you check the shortcut, you will see that it doesn't actually launch the game executable, but a proprietary launcher (gog.exe) which probably is what sorts out all the CD image mounting and such.

Sucks that it doesn't include Vertigo. I have one of the old anniversary packs that came with Vertigo but I've since lost the CD. I thought about buying it to get Vertigo back. I guess I'll just wait for a while and hope they add it on.

Vertigo