Theme Hospital
Encyclopedia
Theme Hospital is a simulation
computer game
developed by Bullfrog Productions
and published by Electronic Arts
in 1997
, in which the player designs and operates a hospital
. Like most of Bullfrog's games, Theme Hospital is permeated by an eccentric sense of humour. The game is the thematic successor to Theme Park, a game also produced by Bullfrog. The game was a massive commercial success, selling over 4 million copies worldwide.
, which is similar to that of Theme Park in many ways. The player has no direct control over the patients that wander the hospital, although gameplay largely centres on influencing their actions in one way or another. The player does, however, have the ability to pick up any staff member in the building and move them to a different area (to speed up their movement from place to place) and to expel any patients from the hospital (if they are being a nuisance, causing rowdiness or about to die and affect the hospital's statistics). The player may also force the patient into taking a chance of possible cure at the risk of killing the patient (this is useful, for example, if a patient is about to die but has already completed enough diagnostics requirements to identify the kind of disease the patient is suffering from) and rearrange the queue of each of the rooms in the hospital (useful for moving dying patients to the front of the queue so they can receive treatment first).
Each level consists of an empty hospital to plan and design, with set goals in the fields of financial attainment, patients cured, percent of patients cured, and hospital value. Holding negative funds or allowing sufficient patients to die will bring about losing requirements. When the goals have been met the player has the option to move on to a new, more elaborate hospital with tougher winning conditions and more diseases present. The final level in the game, 'Battenburg' consists of an enormous, yet somewhat awkward, hospital with all the diseases and rooms in the game present, all disasters frequent and very high winning requirements.
The game revolves around buying and placing rooms (or facilities) in a hospital, and hiring doctors, nurses, handymen
and receptionist
s to operate it. Some rooms are fundamentally required for the running of the hospital, such as GP's offices, Staff Rooms, and Toilets, while others provide optional services (such as General Diagnosis rooms, Scanner Rooms and X-Rays). Some rooms are dedicated to the treatment of a specific illness, and a number of rooms contain machinery that has to be repaired occasionally. Rooms are divided into 4 categories: Diagnosis, Treatment, Clinics and Facilities. Some rooms, notably the Ward and Psychiatric, may overlap and appear on two categories.
Patients are attracted to the hospital, in part, by the reputation of the hospital and the cost of treatment there. They arrive with a number of amusing fictional illnesses which must be diagnosed and cured to earn money and achieve targets set by the game. Rooms and equipment to treat fictional and comical diseases such as Bloaty Head, Slack Tongue, Fractured Bones, Serious Radiation, Hairyitis and Baldness must be researched before they can be placed in the hospital, while other conditions like Heaped Piles, Uncommon Cold and The Squits require research before a cure can be provided using the pharmacy. Advanced levels in the game feature epidemic
s where the player must either pay a fine and take a reputation hit or try to stop a disease
infecting other patients by curing
infected patients and vaccinating
others within a certain time limit and without discovery by the Ministry of Health
(catching the attention of the ministry by the means of an infected patient leaving the hospital or the time limit running out brings upon a usually more severe fine and harder reputation hit [although this is glitched in some versions of the game and sometimes fine the players less if they try to cover up the epidemic], while successfully suppressing the outbreak and before news reaches the ministry will bring upon bonuses). Medical emergencies also take place, where several patients suffering from the same disease must be cured within a specified time limit, and earthquake
s occur which damage equipment. Equipment may also break down after prolonged use and negligence.
At the end of each year, the player can be presented with several awards based on their performance and management of their hospital. These awards also provides bonuses like additional cash or increased reputation. If the player does badly, however, he/she can lose the game, with the game ending with a creepy albeit humorous CGI full motion video
.
, Nurse, Handyman
, and Receptionist
.
Doctors usually demand higher wages than the other three occupations, and also serve a much larger role; they can diagnose and heal most illnesses, they can research new illnesses and equipment and they can train other doctors. Doctors can specialize in psychiatry
, surgery
or research (or any combination of the three) and they pass their specialization(s) to the doctors they train. However, doctors also have ranks, and only consultant-ranked doctors can train other doctors. Nurses run the Pharmacy
, the room for Orthopedic cast
s called the fracture clinic and the hospital ward, as well as being responsible for vaccinations during an epidemic. Handymen clean the hospital, repair machinery and water the plants.
All staff with the exception of the receptionists, are affected by both tiredness and warmth, which must be cared for if the staff are to remain content. Use of staff rooms allows staff to be rested, which can be furnished with a number of relaxing and entertaining devices. Placing a suitable number of radiators in rooms allows staff to be kept warm. Also plants are needed in rooms to comfort patients, as if they get too uncomfortable, they may leave. Having the staff overworked often results in the staff demanding a raise and threatening to quit, but in some cases the staff may go crazy instead, although this has no known ill effect in the game.
is heavily used in Theme Hospital, and it can influence both the hospital's efficiency and its reputation. The player must arrange and furnish the rooms to minimize the time required for the doctors to perform their tasks and satisfy the needs of their patients. These needs include a comfortable temperature (neither too hot nor too cold), a clean environment, benches to sit on, and access to drinks and toilets. Furthermore, the player can manually pick up members of the staff and drop them where their intervention is needed (e.g. place a doctor in a room left unattended to visit a patient, or a caretaker over a vomit pool to clear it up), as happens in Dungeon Keeper
. With no player intervention tasks are completed much more slowly, since in many levels the staff members have to travel from one end of the hospital to another. The player can also advance a patient in a queue for a room or dismiss them, in order to avoid a death in their hospital, which negatively affects the hospital's reputation and reduces the number of end-of-year awards.
Economic management is also important: the player can change the price for the treatment in all the rooms, balancing a low reputation with cheap prices to gain visitors or quickly raising money while maintaining a consistent number of visits due to high reputation. A common tactic is also to place benches and radiators next to one another, in order to make the patients feel too hot and buy expensive drinks from the vending machines.
network gaming. In theory the first two options allow for two players to compete in building the best hospital while competing against two computer-controlled hospitals, while the IPX/SPX network gaming allows up to four players to compete against each other on a network for the best hospital.
.
game engine based on the original Theme Hospital data files.
, Alexander Gitter researched the structure of file formats used by Theme Hospital and documented them in his format specification wiki. The purpose of this site was to accumulate all information needed to eventually create an open source clone of Theme Hospital.
and Lua and released under the GNU GPL. As of September 2011, the project seems to be on hiatus, as the OpenTH blog is no longer being refreshed and the OpenTH forum is down.
and Lua, but with a stronger focus on Lua. CorsixTH is licensed under the MIT License
. The first official release was Playable Beta 1 on December 24, 2009. The current stable version, Beta 8, was released on September 24th, 2011. Despite being a relatively new project, CorsixTH already incorporates a large portion of the original game's functions.
. The port is very faithful to the original, but runs at a lower resolution, lacks background music, changes the size requirement for some buildings, and has minor presentation tweaks, including a game-play based introduction video.
The PlayStation version was released as a download on the PlayStation 3
and PlayStation Portable
in the EU on January 31, 2008 and in North America on August 31, 2010.
Simulation
Simulation is the imitation of some real thing available, state of affairs, or process. The act of simulating something generally entails representing certain key characteristics or behaviours of a selected physical or abstract system....
computer game
Personal computer game
A PC game, also known as a computer game, is a video game played on a personal computer, rather than on a video game console or arcade machine...
developed by Bullfrog Productions
Bullfrog Productions
Bullfrog Productions was a UK computer game developer that was founded in 1987 by Les Edgar and Peter Molyneux. The company achieved recognition in 1989 for their third release, Populous....
and published by Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts, Inc. is a major American developer, marketer, publisher and distributor of video games. Founded and incorporated on May 28, 1982 by Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer games industry and was notable for promoting the designers and programmers...
in 1997
1997 in video gaming
-Events:*October 4 — Gunpei Yokoi dies after a double car accident.*November – Interactive Entertainment Merchants Association launched.*3rd annual E3...
, in which the player designs and operates a hospital
Hospital
A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment by specialized staff and equipment. Hospitals often, but not always, provide for inpatient care or longer-term patient stays....
. Like most of Bullfrog's games, Theme Hospital is permeated by an eccentric sense of humour. The game is the thematic successor to Theme Park, a game also produced by Bullfrog. The game was a massive commercial success, selling over 4 million copies worldwide.
General information
The game is set in a hospital, and requires the player to build an environment which will attract patients with comical complaints, illnesses, emergencies, and diseases. The game has a somewhat dark sense of humourBlack comedy
A black comedy, or dark comedy, is a comic work that employs black humor or gallows humor. The definition of black humor is problematic; it has been argued that it corresponds to the earlier concept of gallows humor; and that, as humor has been defined since Freud as a comedic act that anesthetizes...
, which is similar to that of Theme Park in many ways. The player has no direct control over the patients that wander the hospital, although gameplay largely centres on influencing their actions in one way or another. The player does, however, have the ability to pick up any staff member in the building and move them to a different area (to speed up their movement from place to place) and to expel any patients from the hospital (if they are being a nuisance, causing rowdiness or about to die and affect the hospital's statistics). The player may also force the patient into taking a chance of possible cure at the risk of killing the patient (this is useful, for example, if a patient is about to die but has already completed enough diagnostics requirements to identify the kind of disease the patient is suffering from) and rearrange the queue of each of the rooms in the hospital (useful for moving dying patients to the front of the queue so they can receive treatment first).
Each level consists of an empty hospital to plan and design, with set goals in the fields of financial attainment, patients cured, percent of patients cured, and hospital value. Holding negative funds or allowing sufficient patients to die will bring about losing requirements. When the goals have been met the player has the option to move on to a new, more elaborate hospital with tougher winning conditions and more diseases present. The final level in the game, 'Battenburg' consists of an enormous, yet somewhat awkward, hospital with all the diseases and rooms in the game present, all disasters frequent and very high winning requirements.
Gameplay
Janitor
A janitor or custodian is a professional who takes care of buildings, such as hospitals and schools. Janitors are responsible primarily for cleaning, and often some maintenance and security...
and receptionist
Receptionist
A receptionist is an employee taking an office/administrative support position. The work is usually performed in a waiting area such as a lobby or front office desk of an organization or business...
s to operate it. Some rooms are fundamentally required for the running of the hospital, such as GP's offices, Staff Rooms, and Toilets, while others provide optional services (such as General Diagnosis rooms, Scanner Rooms and X-Rays). Some rooms are dedicated to the treatment of a specific illness, and a number of rooms contain machinery that has to be repaired occasionally. Rooms are divided into 4 categories: Diagnosis, Treatment, Clinics and Facilities. Some rooms, notably the Ward and Psychiatric, may overlap and appear on two categories.
Patients are attracted to the hospital, in part, by the reputation of the hospital and the cost of treatment there. They arrive with a number of amusing fictional illnesses which must be diagnosed and cured to earn money and achieve targets set by the game. Rooms and equipment to treat fictional and comical diseases such as Bloaty Head, Slack Tongue, Fractured Bones, Serious Radiation, Hairyitis and Baldness must be researched before they can be placed in the hospital, while other conditions like Heaped Piles, Uncommon Cold and The Squits require research before a cure can be provided using the pharmacy. Advanced levels in the game feature epidemic
Epidemic
In epidemiology, an epidemic , occurs when new cases of a certain disease, in a given human population, and during a given period, substantially exceed what is expected based on recent experience...
s where the player must either pay a fine and take a reputation hit or try to stop a disease
Disease
A disease is an abnormal condition affecting the body of an organism. It is often construed to be a medical condition associated with specific symptoms and signs. It may be caused by external factors, such as infectious disease, or it may be caused by internal dysfunctions, such as autoimmune...
infecting other patients by curing
Cure
A cure is a completely effective treatment for a disease.The Cure is an English rock band.Cure, or similar, may also refer to:-Film and television:* The Cure , a short film starring Charlie Chaplin...
infected patients and vaccinating
Vaccination
Vaccination is the administration of antigenic material to stimulate the immune system of an individual to develop adaptive immunity to a disease. Vaccines can prevent or ameliorate the effects of infection by many pathogens...
others within a certain time limit and without discovery by the Ministry of Health
Health department
A health department or health ministry is a part of government which focuses on issues related to the general health of the citizenry. Subnational entities, such as states, counties and cities, often also operate a health department of their own...
(catching the attention of the ministry by the means of an infected patient leaving the hospital or the time limit running out brings upon a usually more severe fine and harder reputation hit [although this is glitched in some versions of the game and sometimes fine the players less if they try to cover up the epidemic], while successfully suppressing the outbreak and before news reaches the ministry will bring upon bonuses). Medical emergencies also take place, where several patients suffering from the same disease must be cured within a specified time limit, and earthquake
Earthquake
An earthquake is the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves. The seismicity, seismism or seismic activity of an area refers to the frequency, type and size of earthquakes experienced over a period of time...
s occur which damage equipment. Equipment may also break down after prolonged use and negligence.
At the end of each year, the player can be presented with several awards based on their performance and management of their hospital. These awards also provides bonuses like additional cash or increased reputation. If the player does badly, however, he/she can lose the game, with the game ending with a creepy albeit humorous CGI full motion video
Full motion video
Full motion video based games are video games that rely upon pre-recorded TV-quality movie or animation rather than sprites, vectors, or 3D models to display action in the game. In the early 1990s a diverse set of games utilized this format...
.
Staff
The success of any hospital lies in hiring well-trained staff. Staff are separated into four categories of expertise: DoctorPhysician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
, Nurse, Handyman
Janitor
A janitor or custodian is a professional who takes care of buildings, such as hospitals and schools. Janitors are responsible primarily for cleaning, and often some maintenance and security...
, and Receptionist
Receptionist
A receptionist is an employee taking an office/administrative support position. The work is usually performed in a waiting area such as a lobby or front office desk of an organization or business...
.
Doctors usually demand higher wages than the other three occupations, and also serve a much larger role; they can diagnose and heal most illnesses, they can research new illnesses and equipment and they can train other doctors. Doctors can specialize in psychiatry
Psychiatry
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities...
, surgery
Surgery
Surgery is an ancient medical specialty that uses operative manual and instrumental techniques on a patient to investigate and/or treat a pathological condition such as disease or injury, or to help improve bodily function or appearance.An act of performing surgery may be called a surgical...
or research (or any combination of the three) and they pass their specialization(s) to the doctors they train. However, doctors also have ranks, and only consultant-ranked doctors can train other doctors. Nurses run the Pharmacy
Pharmacy
Pharmacy is the health profession that links the health sciences with the chemical sciences and it is charged with ensuring the safe and effective use of pharmaceutical drugs...
, the room for Orthopedic cast
Orthopedic cast
An orthopedic cast, body cast or surgical cast, is a shell, frequently made from plaster, encasing a limb to hold a broken bone in place until healing is confirmed...
s called the fracture clinic and the hospital ward, as well as being responsible for vaccinations during an epidemic. Handymen clean the hospital, repair machinery and water the plants.
All staff with the exception of the receptionists, are affected by both tiredness and warmth, which must be cared for if the staff are to remain content. Use of staff rooms allows staff to be rested, which can be furnished with a number of relaxing and entertaining devices. Placing a suitable number of radiators in rooms allows staff to be kept warm. Also plants are needed in rooms to comfort patients, as if they get too uncomfortable, they may leave. Having the staff overworked often results in the staff demanding a raise and threatening to quit, but in some cases the staff may go crazy instead, although this has no known ill effect in the game.
Micromanagement
MicromanagementMicromanagement (computer gaming)
In gaming, micromanagement describes minor, detailed gameplay elements that must be manually addressed by the player. It appears in a wide range of games including strategy video games, construction and management simulations and pet-raising simulations...
is heavily used in Theme Hospital, and it can influence both the hospital's efficiency and its reputation. The player must arrange and furnish the rooms to minimize the time required for the doctors to perform their tasks and satisfy the needs of their patients. These needs include a comfortable temperature (neither too hot nor too cold), a clean environment, benches to sit on, and access to drinks and toilets. Furthermore, the player can manually pick up members of the staff and drop them where their intervention is needed (e.g. place a doctor in a room left unattended to visit a patient, or a caretaker over a vomit pool to clear it up), as happens in Dungeon Keeper
Dungeon Keeper
Dungeon Keeper is a strategy video game released developed by Bullfrog Productions under Peter Molyneux and released by Electronic Arts in July 1997 for the PC in which the player attempts to build and manage a dungeon or lair while protecting it from 'hero' characters intent on stealing the...
. With no player intervention tasks are completed much more slowly, since in many levels the staff members have to travel from one end of the hospital to another. The player can also advance a patient in a queue for a room or dismiss them, in order to avoid a death in their hospital, which negatively affects the hospital's reputation and reduces the number of end-of-year awards.
Economic management is also important: the player can change the price for the treatment in all the rooms, balancing a low reputation with cheap prices to gain visitors or quickly raising money while maintaining a consistent number of visits due to high reputation. A common tactic is also to place benches and radiators next to one another, in order to make the patients feel too hot and buy expensive drinks from the vending machines.
Networked game
The last official patch from EA for the game (Beta 5 patch) enables a network game option for the PC version of the game. The game supports 3 different networking methods: Serial Cable, Modem, and IPX/SPXIPX/SPX
IPX/SPX stands for Internetwork Packet Exchange/Sequenced Packet Exchange. IPX and SPX are networking protocols used primarily on networks using the Novell NetWare operating systems.-Protocol Layers:...
network gaming. In theory the first two options allow for two players to compete in building the best hospital while competing against two computer-controlled hospitals, while the IPX/SPX network gaming allows up to four players to compete against each other on a network for the best hospital.
Multiplayer compatibility
The last official patch was version 1.01 and this allows multiplayer over DirectPlay IPX as well as serial, modem and IPX. Theme Hospital was never supported in internet game browsers (e.g. GameSpy, TEN, ENGAGE, etc.) but it is possible to play over the internet using either Hamachi or DOSBoxDOSBox
DOSBox is emulator software that emulates an IBM PC compatible computer running MS-DOS. It is intended especially for use with old PC games. DOSBox is free software....
.
Open source clone
Various attempts have been made to develop an open sourceOpen source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
game engine based on the original Theme Hospital data files.
Format specification wiki
Through the means of reverse engineeringReverse engineering
Reverse engineering is the process of discovering the technological principles of a device, object, or system through analysis of its structure, function, and operation...
, Alexander Gitter researched the structure of file formats used by Theme Hospital and documented them in his format specification wiki. The purpose of this site was to accumulate all information needed to eventually create an open source clone of Theme Hospital.
OpenTH
On 2 September 2008 a new open source project OpenTH began a fresh attempt at cloning the game based on the Theme Hospital format specifications. OpenTH is written in C++C++
C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
and Lua and released under the GNU GPL. As of September 2011, the project seems to be on hiatus, as the OpenTH blog is no longer being refreshed and the OpenTH forum is down.
CorsixTH
Launched on 24 July 2009, the project named CorsixTH is another open source attempt to make a modern clone of Theme Hospital. It is also coded in C++C++
C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
and Lua, but with a stronger focus on Lua. CorsixTH is licensed under the MIT License
MIT License
The MIT License is a free software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . It is a permissive license, meaning that it permits reuse within proprietary software provided all copies of the licensed software include a copy of the MIT License terms...
. The first official release was Playable Beta 1 on December 24, 2009. The current stable version, Beta 8, was released on September 24th, 2011. Despite being a relatively new project, CorsixTH already incorporates a large portion of the original game's functions.
PlayStation port
There is a PlayStation port of Theme Hospital, developed by the team who also ported Bullfrog's Magic CarpetMagic Carpet (video game)
Magic Carpet is a video game released by Bullfrog Productions in 1994. A revised edition, Magic Carpet Plus, included the Hidden Worlds expansion pack which added 25 levels and a winter-themed tileset...
. The port is very faithful to the original, but runs at a lower resolution, lacks background music, changes the size requirement for some buildings, and has minor presentation tweaks, including a game-play based introduction video.
The PlayStation version was released as a download on the PlayStation 3
PlayStation 3
The is the third home video game console produced by Sony Computer Entertainment and the successor to the PlayStation 2 as part of the PlayStation series. The PlayStation 3 competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
and PlayStation Portable
PlayStation Portable
The is a handheld game console manufactured and marketed by Sony Corporation Development of the console was announced during E3 2003, and it was unveiled on , 2004, at a Sony press conference before E3 2004...
in the EU on January 31, 2008 and in North America on August 31, 2010.
Windows port
The Windows port of Theme Hospital was actually a Win32 version of the DOS version, but all display, mouse, keyboard and sound output and input was performed using DirectX. Because of this, it still had a Low Resolution mode, despite the fact that it could only simulate it. Also, some dos applications were still installed with it (including MIDIFORM.EXE for converting midi files, and the companion batch file).Influence on other games
- The Sims 3The Sims 3The Sims 3 is a 2009 strategic life simulation computer game developed by The Sims Studio and published by Electronic Arts. It is the sequel to the best-selling computer game, The Sims 2. It was first released on June 2, 2009 simultaneously for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows...
has a condition called "Bloatyheaditis" in the Medical career, a reference to Theme Hospital's "Bloaty Head" illness.
External links
- Theme Hospital at GameSpotGameSpotGameSpot is a video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information. The site was launched in May 1, 1996 by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. It was purchased by ZDNet, a brand which was later purchased by CNET Networks. CBS Interactive, which...
- Theme Hospital at MobyGamesMobyGames-Platforms not yet included:- Further reading :* Rusel DeMaria, Johnny L. Wilson, High Score!: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games, McGraw-Hill/Osborne Media; 2 edition , ISBN 0-07-223172-6...
- Theme Hospital Clinic, a resource page and forum.
- Theme Hospital, at ThemeParkGame.com
- OpenTH.org, a clone project, also has download links for the Theme Hospital demo and the Pregnancy patch.
- CorsixTH, also a clone project, but further in the development and more active than OpenTH.
- Beta 5 Patch at Wine AppDB