Theme Hospital on a Modern Windows PC
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If you're interested in another modern take on the game, you can try Galacticare; Theme Hospital with aliens in space.
The spiritual successor "Two Point Hospital" is now out. From some of the staff that worked on the original Theme Hospital, the game brings back most of the gameplay, humour but also some new changes that add new challenges. Might want to give it a go before playing the classic again!
To save you the hassle of going through all these technical tweaks, try Corsix-TH instead. It is still in its early development stages so you'll spot the odd bug but from what I've tried so far, it is easier and a lot more stable than using these tweaks and supports today's modern screen sizes. No more funny colours and blurry graphics to look at!
It's very simple to setup. Install your copy of Theme Hospital or simply copy the whole "HOSP" folder from the CD. Now install Corsix-TH and let it know where you copied the folder. Then you're ready to run the game!
Would be nice to have the cutscenes ported over too such as the board and opening animation but, oh well. Keep up the great work, guys! =)
Been feeling like playing Bullfrog's classic "Theme Hospital". It really is a brilliant game despite being over 10 years old and I highly recommend you try it if you haven't already! You run a hospital trying to cure humorous fictional diseases like "Bloaty Head" by popping them like balloons, "Slack Tongue" or "Invisibility". Then there's the receptionist announcing the odd lines over the intercom in a sarcastic voice like, "Patients are asked to be patient," "Patients are here at their own risk," or even "Patients are reminded not to die in the corridors" every so often. Some hospital, eh? The game still plays (and looks) amazingly well for its age.
However, it doesn't look like it's getting a remake any time soon even though Theme Park got one on the DS. I tried getting the Playstation version via PSN but it's very poor, lacking music and has poor controls.
Eventually I decided to try and get the more superior PC version but the catch was, it's so old Windows Vista and later isn't supported. That said, there are ways you can get the game running if you look around such as using the legit DOSBox emulator. There have also been people who have suggested installing the legit Windows XP Virtual Machine provided by Microsoft.
Or, if you want to avoid the hassle of installing more software just to get Theme Hospital running in Windows 7 (or perhaps Vista too), here's how to get it up and running on today's PCs.
Get a copy of the game and copy the whole "Hosp" folder to somewhere on your drive.
Open up Hospital.cfg in Notepad - easy way to do this is run Notepad then drag the file into it. Edit the line...
"SAVE_OVERRIDE=[PATHHERE]"
And change it to wherever you saved your folder. The easiest way to find the text you need is open up the folder, click in the folder's address bar and copy what's there.
Now right-click the Winmain.exe and go to the Compatibility tab. Choose to run in Windows XP mode then check every setting underneath apart from the DPI box.
Now you can create a shortcut to Winmain.exe and you're ready to play!
Oh, you might have to adjust your monitor too. I had to on my widescreen which the game was never designed for but it scales just fine.
If you still have problems running the game, try setting the compatibility mode to Windows 95 instead. Your mouse cursor will probably lag and to fix this, you'll have to...
- Press Alt-Tab to switch out of the game
- Right-click your taskbar and open Task Manager.
- Go the Processes tab and see if you can find Winmain.exe.
- Right-click it, choose Set Affinity and make sure "All Processors" is checked.
- Close the Task Manager and return to the game.
This should work for Bullfrog's other classics such as Dungeon Keeper and Theme Park but I haven't tried. In any case, hope you enjoy the game!
Anke
Now how do I have to adjust my monitor ?
George
Dan Allinson
Abstractlogic
Kate
Falky
LHY 作者
Katie
LHY 作者
SAVE_OVERRIDE=E:\Hosp\
See the reply I wrote for Ashley.
Scott
Bluebaerry
Instead of using DOsbox, you can just use CorsixTH (open-source clone of TH). All you need to do, is have the old game or a demo(installed) and then install CorsixTH and run the game. Check it out!
http://code.google.com/p/corsix-th/
Louise
Chaz
To fix the graphics all you have to do is open Task Manager go to processes then find exporer.exe run up the game and then tab out to the task manager then end processes on explorer.exe. now tab back to the game and it should be all good :D.
please note you will have to run explorer.exe back up again if you want to gate back to your desktop, most of you proble no how to do it but here it is, just go to task manager look for applications then look at the botim of the window there is a button saying, New task go to this and then tipe explorer.exe in to it and your have your desktop back. hope this helps :)
LHY 作者
Catty
LHY 作者
Mick
TattieMuncha
Ben
Ben
James
Nicolas
Sophie
Sophie
LHY 作者
The enlarged multi-coloured desktop is normal because back in those days, games were produced for "tiny" screens and didn't have enough colours to display photos with wide range of colours. So as soon as you switch to the smaller colour palette, it tries to refer to the wrong colours and ends up looking really messed up ^^;
Lazers
Chelsia
Ashley
Open up Hospital.cfg in Notepad – easy way to do this is run Notepad then drag the file into it. Edit the line…
“SAVE_OVERRIDE=[PATHHERE]”
there is no text in the folder hospital.cfg that says save _overide.
this is whats in my folder hospital.cfg
INSTALL_PATH=E:\Hosp\
INSTALL_TYPE=MED
LANGUAGE=ENG
LHY 作者
SAVE_OVERRIDE=E:\Hosp\
INSTALL_PATH=E:\Hosp\
INSTALL_TYPE=MAX
LANGUAGE=ENG
SirDonlad
Mine is the 'sold out' vista compatible version and this particular fix i'm replying to sorted everything out for me.
set to run in 256 colours
also set to run in 640x480 resolution
nothing else, just change settings for all users.
NOT running in compatibility mode
i also made the changes to the CFG file and saved it to the desktop, deleted the original and then used right-click copy, right-click paste back into the originals place.
this particular version obviously needs its hand held
George
Kate
Sarah
Any Idea
LHY 作者
Simon N
Katrina