# Theme Park and XP



## danskibee (Jun 28, 2003)

Hi,

I have been addicted to Theme Hospital as of late and wanted to get Theme Park working on my laptop running windows XP but it just doesn't seem to want to play...it seems to suck all the CPU and page file usage also whilst trying to load it!

I'm running a Samsung V20 laptop with 2.0Ghz speed Intel Pentium 4 processor and windows XP Home.

I have heard it going around that it will not work at all through XP...but surely you guys know how to get it working, right?

Please help,
Danny.


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## Couriant (Mar 26, 2002)

If it's the original Theme Park (like 1995 by Bullfrog) then forget it. It is completely 100% uncompatible. 

I miss Theme Hospital


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## phatmattrat (Dec 9, 2003)

Yah thats the advantage of either partitioning off a part of your hard drive for Windows 98/ME or having it on a separate drive. XP doesn't like old games. Its pretty sad, I can't even play WarCraft II unless I install it on Windows ME... even then, its a bit weird.


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## Mikeybude25 (Feb 13, 2004)

Does Theme Hospital work on XP?

The reason i ask is that Theme Hosptial is my G/F favourite game, and i have just ordered a new pc with XP, my life will not be worth living if it doesnt work!  

Thanks

Michael


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## Couriant (Mar 26, 2002)

Theme Hospital should run on XP, maybe in Windows 95 Compatibility Mode.


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## Mikeybude25 (Feb 13, 2004)

anyone having trouble getting theme park to run on windows xp check out this site

http://www.adamhearn.co.uk/games/themeparkworld/tpwwin2kfix.html

I have done it on my machine and Theme park now works, although sometimes the announcers voice can be a bit choppy.

Michael


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## Couriant (Mar 26, 2002)

I believe that is the newer version of Theme Park (Same type of game but in 3D) so that will not help.

However, daniksbee, in another thread I was in someone mention that VDMSOUND may get DOS games to work (like original Theme Park). Apparantly most of the problems are sound related and this will help it.


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## SIR****TMG (Aug 12, 2003)

and i liked theme park


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## dos_boot (Mar 19, 2005)

The original theme park can easily be made to work on xp if you disable the opening video. Here is what I've figured out so far:

When you startup dos use command.com (located in c:/windows/system32/) and not cmd.exe (the windows default for dos programs). Setup your game to run with no sound and music (for the moment at least). Goto the themepark directory and disable the opening intro by editing the batch file: type "edit theme.bat" at the dos prompt and you should be taken to a blue screen with 4 or so lines of code. Delete the line that contains the word "intro" in it, then save. Now run it and it should work fine. (There is probably a "-abc" command you can do to disable the intro, I lost my install card for this game though).

I'm having trouble getting the sound/music to work, maybe you will have better luck. I've tried setuping the game with various card names ("sound blaster, sound blaster compatible"), etc to no avail. Note that the game has a limited range of irq/io/dma values to use, so you may have to manually edit in the values. To do this, simply open SNDSETUP.INF with notepad and you'll see something like

SOUNDFX = SB16 220 7 1
MUSIC = GENERAL 330 0 0

The first number is the i/o port, the second is irq, the last is dma. You can find your values in system information (start>>run>>"msinfo32.exe">>hardware resources, then look for your sound card). For dma I think you want to use any value that isn't used by something else (usually 1).

I've also tried vmdsound, also with no luck so far. Vmdsound used to have a webpage with a compability list of old school games and specific instructions on how to get each one working but I don't know if their site exists anymore.

If you get the sound working please post here! Otherwise have fun making your own barfing sound effects.


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## Couriant (Mar 26, 2002)

I might try that. Though my machine may be too powerful for it. Last time I got Theme Park to work on a Duron 750, the year went by in about 5 seconds


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## dos_boot (Mar 19, 2005)

The speed problem is easy to fix. You can use either moslo or dosbox to adjust the speed of dos games. Dosbox is slightly more complicated but it also is useful for other things (it's a full dos emulator complete with sound - didn't seem to fix the sound problem for me though). Both of these can be found at this site, click essential utilities on the menu:

http://www.dosgames.com/xphints.php


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## dos_boot (Mar 19, 2005)

Woohoo, got it! Apparently dosbox has a problem emulating sound blaster 16 on theme park. If you use regular soundblaster as your sound/music card and change dosbox.conf accordingly it works perfectly.


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