Halo: Combat Evolved

What works

• Installing
• Playing on campaign
• All detail settings
  

What does not

• Playing the game comfortably on large maps, as it induces mouse lag that makes it difficult to aim.
• Using the game with the -useff flag (aka in fixed function graphics mode without any shaders). The game would perform even worse than it would with shaders, AND various geometry would disappear entirely, including characters.
  

Workarounds

What was not tested

• Playing online.
  

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU:
• Driver:

Additional Comments

I believe the mouse lag issue is worse for those with systems that are lower-end machines, as there seems to be a pattern between the game working well on machines with higher performance parts and smooth performance. Still, because of the variable experience I cannot rate it platinum, as it was impossible for me to get past large waves of enemies with the horrible mouse lag I encountered.

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