Halo: Combat Evolved

What works

The Installer

SinglePlayer

Multiplayer (even though barely any servers showed up!)

What does not

Fullscreen (might not be an issue for you)

Specular

Workarounds

What was not tested

Any level past "Truth and Reconciliation" (the third level)

LAN Online Gameplay

Hosting an Online Game

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU:
• Driver:

Additional Comments

Occasionally the mouse will lag, but it is rarely an issue! After installing the program, I had to run it in a virtual desktop or it wouldn't work (to do this add -vidmode w,h,r or -width640). I also had to set some of the graphics settings to medium, and I also had to turn specular off (with specular on, the game crashed). After doing this, the game worked flawlessly. Also Multiplayer worked, but barely any servers showed up. Another reviewer said this too.

1. Install mfc42 - for example, with winetricks:

   winetricks mfc42

2. Insert the CD, or mount the ISO:

   mount -oloop Halo.iso /cdrom

3. Launch the setup:

   ./Setup.Exe

4. Run the updater to patch Halo, which now includes no-cd:

   ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Microsoft\ Games/Halo/haloupdate.exe

5. Run the game. The working directory must be the Halo directory.

   cd .wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Microsoft\ Games/Halo
   ./halo.exe

Installing 'halotrialsetup.exe' into a clean wineprefix should work fine with wine-1.3.37.

To run the game, the working directory must be the Halo Trial directory, e.g.

cd ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Microsoft\ Games/Halo\ Trial/
wine halo.exe

2015-10-06 Admin note: the following issue has been patched in version 1.0.10 of Halo Custom Edition and Halo Combat Evolved.

2014-11-08 Admin note:  the following was extracted from a user comment made on 2013-10-30 and may or may not be relevant to current Wine.

THIS DOES NOT APPLY TO CURRENT VERSION OF HALO CE/PC

Wine is, like Windows, affected by a bug where Halo doesn't render shaders as well on Nvidia hardware. The most visible symptom is that the active camouflage is only using transparency instead of the proper way where it is using a pretty neat shader.
The Windows fix is based on making Halo believe it is running on an ATI card, which is not so complicated within Wine. Loosely based on the Windows fix, enter these into the registry:
As DWORD: "HKCU\Software\Wine\Direct3D\VideoPciDeviceID" = "724b"
As DWORD: "HKCU\Software\Wine\Direct3D\VideoPciVendorID" = "1002"
If your Halo is in a more vast prefix, it is recommended to specify it exclusively for the halo.exe as this fix may have the potential to burn your house down.
This picture will display the basic improvement: i.imgur.com/Rq93SgZ.jpg

Use argument -windowed to play correctly

Example: wine halo.exe -windowed