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Proto:Theme Hospital/1997 Playable Demo

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This is a sub-page of Proto:Theme Hospital.

ThemehospitalDemo-Title.png

A playable demo released in early 1997, including on the cover disc of Issue 50 of PC Zone magazine. The demo contains a single level, in which the player has one year to cure at least 20 patients.

General Differences

  • Both Windows and DOS executables are present, but they behave exactly the same.
  • An on-screen counter records the number of cured patients.
  • Gameplay seems identical to the final, with a few exceptions.
    • The player is granted some more advanced rooms out of sequence. For instance, General Diagnosis is not available, with the Scanner given from the start instead.
    • There is no research room, so the initial selection of rooms is all that can be played with.
    • Oddly, all doctors that can be hired in the demo seem to be psychiatrists.
    • Attempting to access any of the management subscreens shows they are identical to the final, but are grayed out and the player is prevented from accessing them.
  • ThemehospitalDemo-PIngame.png
  • ThemehospitalDemo-PMap.png

Unused Graphics

The demo files contain several graphics files that are cut from the final.

PANEL03V.DAT/TAB
A pair of interface graphic files that are missing from the final game. Investigating them reveals they actually contain the graphics for the older "curved" UI seen in some pre-release screenshots. Even more interestingly, they seem to have been recycled for use in some kind of debug mode. This includes buttons for various game map options including heat map visualizations and options to buy land plots.

ThemehospitalDemo-P3Balance.png ThemehospitalDemo-P3Calendar.png ThemehospitalDemo-P3BuyPlot.png ThemehospitalDemo-P3BuyMap.png ThemehospitalDemo-P3HeatMap.png ThemehospitalDemo-P3NoiseMap.png ThemehospitalDemo-P3PlantMap.png ThemehospitalDemo-P3Ret.png ThemehospitalDemo-P3Icon.png

BUTTON01.DAT/TAB
A file containing the various interface graphics. These were moved elsewhere in the final game and are almost identical. More interesting is a leftover graphic of what appears to be a nurse's hat inside the files. It's found alongside the graphics for the various doctor specialities (surgeon, psychiatrist, etc.), so possibly this would be seen as a skill for nurses at some point.

ThemehospitalDemo-B1NurseHat.png

SHOT1-4.DAT
Four raw image files of screenshots of what seems to be a near-final build (the wards no longer have the fold-out screen visible anymore). Only Shot3 is of particular interest, as it shows a lone alien wandering the hospital outside of an emergency (no light over its head) and a doctor with a cut icon that appears to be checking his watch.

  • ThemehospitalDemo-SHOT1.png
  • ThemehospitalDemo-SHOT2.png
  • ThemehospitalDemo-SHOT3.png
  • ThemehospitalDemo-SHOT4.png

Unused Sounds

The demo uses the file SOUND\DATA\SOUND-0.DAT for sound effects and announcements as per the final game. This is largely cut down for the demo with lots of unneeded sounds removed to save space.

However, the demo also oddly includes the file SOUND\SOUND.DAT, which doesn't seem to be used and contains only emergency announcements. Even stranger is that it doesn't use the game's sound archive format, instead seemingly using the same format as Dungeon Keeper sound files.

Different Cheats

The demo still has remnants of code for cheats not found in the final game. See here for more details.

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