Halo: Combat Evolved

What works

Installer (but must use native mfc42.dll, and unable to click menu items)

Campaign

Internet multiplayer

LAN multiplayer

Various graphical options (specular, high res modes, etc)

What does not

Installer crashes with "cannot find pidgen.dll" error unless native mfc42.dll is installed. Even then, I was unable to click the menu items in the installer - nothing would happen. I was able to press Alt-I to start the Install, and after entering my serial, Alt-N for Next. On the later menus I was able to push Enter in place of clicking OK.

Workarounds

What was not tested

Did not complete all campaigns or play online too extensively.

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU:
• Driver:

Additional Comments

Other than the odd problems during installation, the game seems to run just fine. Little to no graphics corruption with default direct3d settings, seems fast. Because I had to use a native DLL to make it install, I'm dropping the Rating down a notch to Gold instead of Platinum.

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