Since I tested Gorky 17 (GOG) today, is the main problem for most people now that the GOG version fails with Direct3D support? EDIT: Just to clarify, so does the original CD version, this is not a new glitch introduced by the GOG version I believe.
On my Win7 laptop, I also get a "DirectX initialization error" if I try to run the game with Direct3D support, the error doesn't come until the start of a mission. With software renderer the game seems to run pretty fine on that system, some minor sound "flapping" in the menu and with some longer character speeches.
I tried it also on my older WinXP laptop, and there the Direct3D option works. But frankly, the visual enhancements with D3D seem so minor that I couldn't care less. Most of the game graphics are apparently 2D anyway, so all I could see was that with D3D the (small) character textures were filtered (smoothed), and in combat there was a transparency effect used on how it showed the tiles where your characters can move, while the SW renderer used rasterized color. Overall, I had to look quite closely to see the difference (I actually ran it side by side on my two laptops), and since the game apparently is not about graphics anyway, I couldn't care less. The GOG version seems pretty fine to me, even in Win7.
However, the funny thing is that on neither machine both the SW and D3D renderer works, only one of them. :D So on the Win7 laptop (Lenovo ThinkPad T400, some ATI/AMD graphics chip) the SW renderer works but D3D renderer gives the error and aborts the game.
On the XP laptop (ancient IBM ThinkPad T41, some older ATI graphics chip) vice versa, Direct3D renderer works but SW renderer causes the game to crash already on game launch. Go figure.
If someone is unlucky enough to have both renderer options failing, sorry to hear. :( I think the OP had a problem specifically with the D3D renderer, and I disagree with him that the SW renderer makes the game look like "trash". Frankly, the differences seem quite minor to me.
Post edited April 15, 2012 by timppu