I was finally able to get Nglide to work on KQ8, and test it out.

In NGlide. While its 'nice' that you can force it to load the game into native resolutions (even forcing widescreen), its actually stuck using the 640x480 screen resolution then expanding that into higher resolutions. So menus and subtitles look a bit distorted and very pixelated. 800x600 mode is currently broken apparently, and just causes the game cycle between modes until it crashes.

Running the game in 640x480 mode helps the 2D menus and subtitles look a bit better, but expense that 3D visuals won't look as good on non-native displays.

It also moves like a beast... It's very slow, and to get any useable framerate, you pretty much have to leave "dynamic lighting" turned off. So environment won't look as good. But even then the game is very sluggish on nglide. Even if you use 640x480. You'll get about the same framerate on forced native resolution as you will on 640x480.

Keep in mind that forced native resolution is not a true widescreen option. It still stretched the image to fit across the screen. You might find that using 4:3 still looks better. But 3D still looks slightly better forcing it to native resolutions than running at 640x480 mode, even if it screws up the 2D onscreen elements.

Nglide is somewhat buggy, and sometimes crashes on exiting the game. Loading screens seem to take longer than usual.

Now onto Zeckensack's... This is the standard glide version to use for the game, and one generally recommended. It might be that it was one of the first glide emulators to come along that supported the game.

It handles both native 640x480 and 800x600 modes quite fine, with all bells and whistles turned on. There is only a marginal impact to performance even with "dynamic lighting" turned on.

There is no way to force Zeckenack's into native wide screen modes. You can however 'double' (and possibly triple) the game's standard resolutions however. 640x480 becomes 1280x960 and 800x600 becomes 1600x1200 . Please note that doubling resolutions causes a major hit to performance, and unless you have a beefy machine, its not worth using. You will at least need a monitor that is higher than the two 'doubled' options.

On a modern machine it gets good overall speed, running at 800x600 mode (even with all bells and whistles turned on).

In Zeckensack's there is an issue on some graphics chips (I was testing on a Geforce GT 540M) where the game won't stretch to native resolution (even you have stretch to screen options turned on). So the viewable game is seen in small area surrounded by black bars on all sides. On my computer, I can force it to switch screen modes to stretch to window by using CTRL+ALT+F11. This will cycle through 4:3 stretched mode black bars only on left and right, and 16:10 stretched to full screen. But for the life of me I can't get it to default to either of those two modes on its own. I've only come across a few tames that have this problem. I don't know if this is a problem with the game detecting the chip, and fully activating it, and the fact there is also Intel HD chip on the system as well. But is a negative. This issue doesn't exist when using the Nglide, and it has its own 'stretch to screen' features.

So overall, between the two options. I highly recommend Zeckensack's. Infact if GOG ever incorporates a built in version of a Glide Wrapper into the installation, that is the program they should use. That is also the option that is used in the unofficial new installer for the cdrom version, you can find at Sierra Help pages;

http://www.sierrahelp.com/Patches-Updates/NewSierraInstallers.html#KQ

I haven't tried the other glide wrapper, but in general Zeckensack's glide wrapper worked like wonders when I played Mask of Eternity. There was one occasion where I had to turn it off to play through one buggy part in the game, but that might have been because of some bug in the game or because of my hardware configuration or both.

NGlide is terrible for this game, Zeckensack slows to a crawl with dynamic lighting on...

If you have Windows 7/8 and a DirectX 11 video card, use dgvoodoo 2

http://dege.freeweb.hu/

(link for 2.15 is currently broken on the site, but that one fixes the slow downs with subtitles and menus in KQ:MoE)
http://www.mediafire.com/download/zjdy7vn71mepsog/dgVoodoo2_15.zip

imo it's better to set 640x480 in game and use 1280x960 in the wrapper so you don't distort the load screen graphics (which are natively 640x480).

I get virtually no slow down on zeckensecks with dynamic lighting enabled and I've played through the game multiple times. However I'm running from a better than average system to begin.

So obviously mileage may vary.

I'll try a test with dgvoodoo as well just to what it's like.

I did get a chance to try dgVoodoo and it is quite smooth as you say. Even if I run in 'power saver' mode on my laptop. it gets great performance.

At "high performance" on base settings they run about the same on this system with all options turned on (however I like I said mileage may very depending on which pc you are using).

Now the benefit to dgVoodoo is I can upscale the game to native resolution on my laptop 1366x768 (ya stretching does take place) with almost no impact to performance. This means better defined edges even if scale is stretched. The 2D stuff isn't near as stretched or distorted or blurred as playing on Nglide upscaled (as noted previously, avoid KQ8 on Nglide as it has some other performance issues).

I couldn't figure out if there was a way to maintain 4:3 aspect with dgVoodoo while forcing to scale to native resolution though. Any help with that would be appreciated.

On Zeckensack's there is a big hit to performance if the game is scaled up to higher resolutions.

As far as glide bells and whistles they both seem to function the same. Transparencies function right, colored lighting runs the same, shadows all the same, etc.

THANK YOU! I've been struggling with Zeckesack's all day, trying whatever I could think of to make the game run smoother. Even with dynamic lighting off, it was like a memory leak and the game would slow down and eventually lag to the point of being unplayable. Had to quit out and start it back up again every 10 minutes. Was just about to give up when I did one last hail mary and found this thread.

dgvoodoo 2 works like a dream. No slow downs, can run all effects on, and no more frustrations.

dgvoodoo 2 should be included in the sierrahelp package imo, not Zeckensack's.

Maybe you could recommend to Collector that both glide wrappers be available. I use Zeckensack's Glide Wrapper with all the settings turned on and the game plays perfectly fine for me. No slow downs at all. So it's probably going to be based on peoples hardware as to which glide wrapper they decide to use

Frankly I think one of them should be included with GOG's download. Setup right out of the box.

Upping this as it has some details related to DGvoodoo 2 that people might find relevant.