OpenTH Development Blog

CorsixTH Beta 8 Released

Jax — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 17:55:18 +0000

Some previous releases of CorsixTH have not been reported on this blog, so it may seem like a sudden jump. However CorsixTH Beta 8 now features large amounts of the original game.To use it, you’ll have to have the Theme Hospital files. The demo files will not allow all the dialogs to be accessed. If you already have it, that is fine. Otherwise pop over to some abandonware site in order to download it – this linkworks fine for me. Extract the files to some location and remember it, for you will need to select it later.Download from the CorsixTH page the correct version. The “Windows Installer (32- and 64-bit)” will be correct version for most people. It should install three versions – DirectX, OpenGL and SDL. SDL should work for everybody, but DirectX or OpenGL could be better depending on your graphics hardware.

A small list of changes include (since Beta 5):

People litter, puke, and go to the toilet (possibly on the floor if there aren’t toilets around)
Doctors go crazy if they are too tired, and also slowly gain skill on the job.
VIPs are now implemented
Patients can now die
The boilers breaking is now implemented
Plus lots more…

Also check out the interview with the original creators of Theme Hospital

CorsixTH Beta 5

lego3 — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 18:20:55 +0000

The CorsixTH project has seen a lot of development over that last year, and during the holidays the team made their fifth release called Beta 5.

For more information on what has been added, visit our wiki here.

The last post on this blog was about Beta 2, so the smart reader has already figured out there have been two more releases in between these. Changelogs for those are found here and here.

As always we’re looking for more people interested in contributing to our great project. If you’re one of them, get in touch!

Downloads, including installers for both Windows, Mac OS and Linux, can be found in our Downloads section.

Hoping you will have a great time playing the game!

- The CorsixTH Team

CorsixTH Beta 2

corsix — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 00:00:08 +0000

In what is the beginnings of a quarterly release schedule, the second beta of CorsixTH was released a few days ago.

A screenshot from CorsixTH Beta 2

There have been a number of notable changes in the three months since beta 1, including: save / load functionality, emergencies, a tutorial, new treatment / diagnosis rooms, and new UI screens. Despite this, there are still things which aren’t implemented yet – if you’d like to help, then get in touch.

Like OpenTH, CorsixTH uses the original graphics. So you will need an original copy of the game installed, or alternatively a copy of the demo. As previously, don’t forget to open up config.txt before launching CorsixTH to ensure that the path to the original data is correct (if you take advantage of the new CorsixTH Windows installer, then this is handled for you).

Download

CorsixTH Milestone (Playable demo)

lego3 — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 13:17:00 +0000

OpenTH’s sister project, CorsixTH, has seen a lot of development this autumn and has now released a first playable version.

A screenshot from CorsixTH

CorsixTH Playable Beta 1 implements many of the features of the original game, and runs natively on Windows, Linux, and OS X. This intent of this release is to increase awareness of CorsixTH, and to encourage more developers to assist in the project. Many rooms, diseases and features have been implemented, but there are still many things missing.

Like OpenTH, CorsixTH uses the original graphics. So you will need an original copy of the game installed. The demo also works which you can easily download. You need to open up the config.txt file which comes with the game and change the path in that to the path of your installation (the top-level directory which contains HOSPITAL.EXE and others).

Download

CorsixTH Playable Beta 1 implements many of the features of the original game, and runs natively on Windows, Linux, and OS X. This intent of this release is to increase awareness of CorsixTH, and to encourage more developers to assist in the project.

Google Wave Invites

Jax — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 01:48:56 +0000

Hello, just quickly telling everybody that I have five Google Wave invites left if anybody wants them.

The project is not progressing too much at the moment, however in the University holidays OpenTH should progress. I believe CorsixTH is in the same situation.

So, sorry that it has been so quiet around here but don’t give up =)

Update: They are all gone now, sorry!

New Projects

Jax — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 21:51:39 +0000

Hey everyone, I know it has been a while since an update on here. The problem is that the work recently on the code hasn’t really produced anything worth looking at.

Nevertheless, there are two new Theme Hospital related projects that are being updated at the moment. One of them is CorsixHospital, developed by Corsix. A screen shot of this is below:

You can also watch a video of it:

The other project is Java Hospital, which does not use the original graphics and is top down. And written in Java. I don’t have any screenshots of this right now.

Both projects have new sub-forums at the OpenTH forums, so the community can be kept together. Feel free to post and give your opinions!

What should the dialog for the room select look like? (Updated)

Jax — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 01:52:53 +0000

Hey everyone. I’ve spent all of today programming you’ll be pleased to know. There isn’t a massive amount to show for it, but I’ve gone about fixing some of the things that changed. The only other new features is that now there are error dialog boxes, which strangely wasn’t on anybodies request list.

However, one thing I was wondering is what should we do with the dialog box for selecting rooms. Currently it has the tabs down the left, like the original TH one, and then a list box just saying the names, which is rather boring. To remind you, here is what the original one was like:

The room selector from Theme Hospital

I really like the little picture previews. It says cost, what other information could we give? (For instance, minimum size, doctors required, number existing, any technology upgrades?)

Suggestions welcome and mockups doubly welcome!

Update: And just because I know you guys are dying to see it, here is the new message dialog class used for errors. The interesting thing I suppose is that this new GUI is completely custom written so it isn’t rubbish.

You guys love error messages! Right?

and here is the current selector:

The room build dialog in OpenTH right now

What has been happening

Jax — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 01:52:06 +0000

So the code has had the following changes applied to it by Paul. Most of these are internal things which you won’t care about.

We don’t use GUIChan anymore, the poorly written user-interface library that was used. OpenLayer, Allgegro and SDL are gone too. Freetype (for fonts), libpng (for png loading) and Lua (for scripting) are all the dependencies we have now.
UI and event system rewritten
Fonts rendered more efficiently. Textures handled in a more programmer-friendly way.
Unicode is supported nearly everywhere, so it will work in non-Latin languages too in future.
Coding is more consistent now

So these are big, important changes. The bad side is it doesn’t work right now. However, just when I was going to repair these changes we noticed some code had been deleted by TSVN. This is annoying to say the least (especially for Paul). However, it will be rewritten and the repairs will come into effect and we will have a better core.

Then I’m not entirely sure what is next. Whatever we feel like I suppose. Drag and Drop can be improved, staff rooms & research can be better implemented and we want to change the way outside objects are rendered to name three things. I will also try and tidy up Lua sometime and make a guide but I don’t want to do it quite yet. Machine/Person interaction is high on the list too.

We’re back!

Jax — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:27:11 +0000

Hello everyone!

You will have noticed the project has been dead for a while. This is because we’ve all had exams. But now they are over! At least for Paul and I. Hopefully we will get to do some more programming soon on the project.

Other developers also have various commitments but hopefully will come back into the game this summer

- Jack

Adding new in-game graphics

lego3 — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 12:39:13 +0000

At the current state the game uses the in-game graphics from the original game, and that is all well for those who own a copy of it – and still know where it is. For the rest of us, however, it will be quite hard to play the game without them. Therefore we’ve started a graphics replacement project similar to what OpenTTD has. The project is still in its very early stages – there are no finished objects – but here are some examples of what we’re currently working on.

Work by Bami:

Bench

Radiator

Work by Kamo:

Plant

Litter Bin

Work by vommie:

Desk

Follow the development in the art section of the forum.