VOGONS

Theme Hospital - Video Problems

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First post, by lloydey

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Hi

I have just downloaded DosBox (0.70) and have installed it successfully on Windows Vista. Without changing any settings (exept to run it in full screen mode) I have managed to successfully play Theme Hospital (which uses Dos4gw and will not run directly through Vista).

Unfortunately I am having video problems - the colours appear patchy and often there are grey spots on the screen. I have a ATi Mobility with 128mb of dedicated video memory, on a 2ghz laptop with 2gb RAM.

Any ideas about how to set up the video correctly would be appreciated. I have tried searching for relevant topics but cannot find any answers in relation to video generally or theme hospital specifically.

If you need any more info then let me know.

Thanks in advance

Tom

Reply 2 of 6, by MiniMax

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I would try to run a few other games and see if the problem is specific to Theme Hospital.

If you can, try playing around with the different output-modes specified in the DOSBox configuration file (dosbox.conf).

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Reply 3 of 6, by lloydey

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Thank you for your replies.

I am running the latest ATi Vista drivers but will try fiddling with the output config file (is there a tutorial/readme on this or anything generic to help with video problems?).

What is WDM?

I've not tried any other games (and do not have any others) - are there any that are freely downloadable (i.e. legally) that are known to work fine that I should try as a tester?

Thanks again.

Reply 4 of 6, by DosFreak

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lloydey wrote:

Thank you for your replies.

I am running the latest ATi Vista drivers but will try fiddling with the output config file (is there a tutorial/readme on this or anything generic to help with video problems?).

Just open dosbox.conf, go to "output=" and switch between surface, overlay, ddraw, openglnb.

What is WDM?

DWM. Vista includes "Aero" which uses DX9 to render the screen. This can cause some incompatibilities with some applications. To disable it per application you can right-click on the application, go to properties, go to the compatibility tab and choose "Disable desktop composition", or you can disable Aero entirely by going into Control Panel and switching to another theme. A really quick way to disable Aero is to switch to 16bit desktop color if your lazy.

I've not tried any other games (and do not have any others) - are there any that are freely downloadable (i.e. legally) that are known to work fine that I should try as a tester?

Abandonia Reloaded may have some free DOS games.
Liberated games have lists of games that have been "liberated" (once requires $$$ but are now free).

Thanks again.

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Reply 5 of 6, by lloydey

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Many thanks Dosfreak. I will try those things - I've already tried the 16-bit change as I thought that might be it.

Reply 6 of 6, by lloydey

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Just to let you know - it is working fine now (bar a random crash but I've learnt to save regularly). The viedo problem cleared up as soon as I put compatibility mode (for the dosbox app) to Windows 95.

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