Halo: Combat Evolved

What works

I'm assuming the install required mfc42.dll, I already had it anyway, it proceeded without a hitch.

Mostly everything seems to work. DX9 shaders seem to work fine, virtually no graphical glitches (keyword is virtually, there were some slight quirks, see below).

Input is what holds this back from near perfection. Once I killed 'pulseaudio', the game was generally playable, audio was perfect. Very smooth FPS, 1280x1024 with 4xAA, maximum details.

I tested the intro sequence and some online (which works as of the 1.08 patch that REMOVES SAFEDISC PROTECTION. You still need a legal serial). You're no match online with the bad input, but you could probably go through the campaign.

Running on an E6600, 8800GTS.

What does not

Input just sucks, very jittery despite the actual FPS being very high. Being a veteran of the game from Xbox and Windows, I found it unplayable but some might be able to live with it (the very tolerant folk. FPS die hards will lose their minds with the lack of control).

I observed one graphical error, it seems decals from weapons (eg grenades, rocket launcher) display z-fighting with ground/wall textures. See the screenshots page.

Workarounds

What was not tested

Playing through the entire single player game or for extended periods of time.

Gamepad support.

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU:
• Driver:

Additional Comments

So damn close.. it's been this close since forever though, the last time I tried it (wine version 0.94?) I had the exact same issues. With a little effort, this game could be running utterly perfectly under Wine.

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