I just bought MM8 from GoG to see how it would work. There is no music!!

The music is one of the best elements of all Might and Magic games!

Thank goodness I still have my disks!

I wasted my money on this. Not only is there no music, the sound effects also skip.

Apparently, the MM programs are written to require reference to the disk in order to access the music tracks, and GoG has not found a way around. Their solution is to release the games with no music and skipping audio.

I am a frequent customer of GoG, but they have really let me down with this!

Grayface's patch allows MM6-MM7-MM8 you to play MP3s

Does the GOG version of MM8 come with MP3 files?

I would spend some time troubleshooting, as most GOG users do not have this problem. Does your computer have a CD/DVD drive? You need one, or an emulation program, in order for the music to work with the game. If you don't want to install an emulation program, use Greyface's patch as UndeadHalfOrc suggested.

GOG have NOT released the game without music, you just might need to fiddle a bit to get it working on your system.

Okay, based on your advice, I tried setting "mp3=1" in the .ini, and the music started working. (Yay!) Interestingly, the same thing doesn't work in my old disk-based install

The only way I can get the audio to stop skipping in the GoG version is to run the program as administrator and in compatibility mode for Windows xp service pack 3. (It comes with Windows 95 compatibility mode set by default.)

I wonder how many people out there are playing the GoG version and don't even know that there is supposed to be music.

Thanks for the helpful comments, and I apologize for ranting earlier.

Glad you got it working! No worries about the first post, I understand it is frustrating when it doesn't work right away. By the way, the reason that fix does not work for your disc install is probably because the original game didn't have mp3 music but rather .wav or redbook audio from the disc itself. GOG's version, since it has no disc, uses mp3 music instead.

The default settings are likely done because they work for the largest percentage of users, but with old games like this things can get very hardware- and OS-dependent so sometimes you have to fiddle a bit before it will work.