Ymer: Any chance you could upload these files to Mediafire or something for the rest of us to patch them in ourselves or would that be of questionable legality?
Sadly one of the files in question is the .exe, so yeah, that's a no-no as far as uploading it is concerned.
But while replacing the files does get the offending animations to display, and since the last time i fiddled with this was a long way back i just tested it again to make sure that replacing the files does get the animations to display - which it does, it causes other problems, namely with exiting the game. At my end, using the dvd files on gog's install, the application ends but the process (Riven.exe*32) does not, it has to be shut down by hand. The compat settings on the .exe also require some fiddling because with the compat settings that are default with gog's version the game doesn't even boot. Last but not least, i fiddled around with this back then to try to figue out the issue with the animations but i haven't played the entire game with the replaced files so there's no telling if using the files from the DVD breaks other stuff with gog's version. In the end i decided to stick with gog's version as is.
In any case should anyone want to do more testing this is how i got the animations to display at my end.
-Install gog's version of Riven
-In the game folder backup riven.exe and menus.dll by renaming them to something else (like riven.exe.gog and menus.dll.gog)
-Copy the riven.exe and menus.dll files from the DVD to the game folder (it's not required to install the DVD version in order to get to those files, the files can be copyed from the DVD)
-Find Riven's shortcut that gog install places on your dektop, and aplly these compat settings
*execute in 640*480
*disable visual themes
*disable desktop composition
Leave all the other compat settings unticked including the "Run this program in compatibility mode for windows <version>"
Launch the game using gog's shortcut and that's it.
My OS is Win7 64 bit btw.