Halo: Combat Evolved
| Cover image missing, please upload it | |
| Developers | |
|---|---|
| Bungie | |
| Publishers | |
| Microsoft Studios | |
| Engines | |
| Halo Engine | |
| Release dates | |
| Windows | September 30, 2003 |
| macOS (OS X) | December 3, 2003 |
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|
Warnings
- The macOS (OS X) version of this game does not work on macOS Catalina (version 10.15) or later due to the removal of support for 32-bit-only apps.
| Halo | |
|---|---|
| Halo: Combat Evolved | 2003 |
| Halo 2 | 2007 |
| Halo: Spartan (series) | |
| Halo Online | 2015* |
| Halo 5: Forge | 2016 |
| Halo Wars (series) | |
| Halo Recruit | 2017 |
| Halo: The Master Chief Collection (series) | |
| Halo Infinite | 2021 |
Key points
- 1.10 patch fixes issues with modern hardware and replaces GameSpy with a new master server. Test version of this update can be downloaded from here
- Modding tools are available as a separate download
- Great console port
- Small community
General information
- Bungie.net - The developer's site
- Halo Nation - A very detailed wiki for everything Halo related
- Halo.Bungie.org - One of the biggest Halo fan sites around
- Halo Maps - A fan site for downloading mods and maps for Halo: Custom Edition
- Bungie forums thread about enhancing the graphics of Halo CE
Availability
- The official demo for the game can be found here
Versions
Halo: Custom Edition
Halo: Custom Edition allows players to play multiplayer Halo games on user-created maps. There is no singleplayer campaign. In order to play a downloaded user-created map, place the .map file in:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Halo Custom Edition\maps
Note: this is the path for a default installation on a 64-bit copy of Windows 7. The path may vary. If you downloaded a .zip or other archive, you will need to extract it first. WARNING: Do NOT delete any .map files in the folder by default, ESPECIALLY not ui.map. Halo: Custom Edition and any custom maps can be downloaded from halomaps.org
Essential improvements
Patch 1.09 (Windows)
- This patch also removes the disk check.
The latest version of the game is 1.09. The game can download the latest patch automatically by clicking Internet in the multiplayer menu. The latest patch can also be downloaded manually:
Open Sauce
A mod for Custom Edition that fixes multiple issues and adds several features. It is not compatible with Combat Evolved.
Game data
Configuration file(s) location
Save game data location
Save game cloud syncing
- No save game cloud syncing information; you can edit this page to add it.
Video settings
Widescreen resolution
- Upcoming version 1.10 supports resolutions up to 4800x3600[1]
To play at a resolution unsupported in the ingame options, right-click a shortcut to the game, select Properties>Shortcut, and you will see a path to halo.exe in quotes in the Target box. Add a space after the end quote and then:
-vidmode x,y,z
where x is the horizontal resolution, y is the vertical resolution, and z is the refresh rate. For example, to play at 1920 by 1080 at 60fps, enter:
-vidmode 1920,1080,60
If z is not specified, the game will default to what is set in the ingame options. The game must be started from the shortcut you modified for the custom resolution to work.
Field of view (FOV)
On widescreen resolutions, Halo compresses its vertical field of view (FOV) instead of stretching its horizontal FOV. To fix this, download the following tools as appropriate to the version you are using
- Halo: Combat Evolved: Widescreen Fixer. When running, an icon should appear in the system tray. Right-click it and select Restore. A window should appear where you can configure various settings. To remove the delay when changing FOV/change FOV instantly, set the FOV refresh under Settings to 1 millisecond. After configuring, minimize the window and launch Halo. Once the main menu appears, press the key you assigned to enable the FOV fix (by default it is bound to *). Press the key again to disable the FOV fix. Widescreen Fixer must be running for the fix to work. The FOV fix does not work for Halo: Custom Edition.
- Halo: Custom Edition: Open Sauce. Once installed, the ingame menu can be toggled with F7. Press 1 and slide the mouse back and forth to play with the FOV. Left click to save, right click to reset. Open Sauce also supports custom weapon FOVs which can be configured by pressing 2.
Windowed
In the target box of a shortcut, add -windowed to the end.
Anti-aliasing (AA)
Halo does not support Antialiasing (AA). Force-enabling AA in your graphics driver has no effect on Halo: Combat Evolved and in Halo: Custom Edition causes the game to freeze on the loading screen while playing the main menu music in the background. The only way to escape this is by force closing the game with Alt+F4 or the Task Manager.
- Halo: Combat Evolved: If your graphics card supports it, enable Morphological Antialiasing (MLAA) on ATI cards or Fast Approximate Antialiasing (FXAA) on Nvidia cards to improve image quality and gain an AA-like effect. You may need to update your graphics drivers to gain access to these features. It is recommended that you do not enable MLAA and FXAA globally.
- Halo: Custom Edition: If your graphics card does not support MLAA/FXAA natively, you can still use FXAA by enabling it in Open Sauce (see Postprocessing Filters).
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
To enable AF, do the following:
1. If you wish to enable AF in Halo CE, then make a profile for it in your graphics driver. To do this in Nvidia, open the driver control panel, go to Manage 3D>Program Settings>Add, then browse to haloce.exe.
2. In your Halo and Halo CE profiles, choose your desired AF level and then set the AF mode to forced.
This works for most people. If you know your drivers are current and can't get it to work, do the following:
3.Navigate to your root Halo/Halo CE install folder and open config.txt (you might want to run Notepad as Administrator). Search for this:
Unknown = "Unknown" //UseAnisotropicFilter
Choose the one under the brand of card you're using. Remove the double slash.
Unknown = "Unknown" UseAnisotropicFilter
Save and run the game.
Postprocessing Filters (Custom Edition)
Open Sauce adds postprocessing filters, some of which are enabled by default. To configure, open %USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\Halo CE\OpenSauce\OS_Settings.User.xml. To toggle bloom, edit:
<Bloom enabled="true"/>
To toggle motion blur and configure blur amount, edit:
<MotionBlur enabled="true" amount="1" />
To toggle FXAA, edit:
<FXAA enabled="false"/>
To allow custom maps to use their own custom postprocessing filters, edit:
<Internal enabled="true"/>
To disable all global postprocessing filters, edit:
<External enabled="true" />
Input settings
Audio settings
Issues unresolved
HUD Stretch (Combat Evolved)
When played at custom resolutions on widescreen monitors, the HUD (Heads Up Display) and all ingame menus will be stretched horizontally. There is currently no fix for this for Halo v 1.09. Read this thread for more information on how to fix HUD stretch in previous versions.
Issues fixed
HUD Stretch (Custom Edition)
With Open Sauce installed, press F7 ingame, then 3, then 2 to toggle HUD stretch compensation. Note: When using a scope, some of the HUD elements are still stretched. The devs say that there is no fix for this.
Enabling EAX on Windows Vista or greater
Environmental Audio Extensions (EAX) applies effects such as echo, reverb, and flange to ingame sounds, making the game sound more realistic, in theory. However, if played on Windows Vista or later, Halo does not support EAX. To fix this, those with Creative sound cards can download Creative ALchemy, those with ASUS sound cards can download GX2.5, and those with Realtek integrated audio can download Realtek 3D SoundBack. All three programs re-enable EAX effects in pre-Vista games by emulating EAX calls in OpenAL. Even with these programs, EAX cannot be used unless you enable it in the ingame audio options. Using these programs, specifically 3D SoundBack, may result in sound clipping and other audio artifacts.
Active Camo Fix (Combat Evolved)
- Officially fixed in upcoming version 1.10[2]
Active Camouflage in the Xbox version of the game looked kind of like the stealth mode in Crysis; as enemies walked around they would refract and distort the scenery behind them. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like that to all owners of the PC version. If your cloaked elites look flatly transparent, then we've got a fix for that.
1. First step, download DXTweaker from the net, or from my mirror.
2. Now extract the program somewhere, and run DXTControl.exe Note: If the program is completely black, you must disable visual themes on it. To do this, right click on DXTControl.exe, and click properties. Go to the compatibility tab, and check "disable visual themes".
3. Click the New button under projects, then under Properties:
• Check Active.
• For path, navigate and use your halo.exe. It should fill out workpath.
• For arguments, you can put in something like "-console -screenshot" Note: The camo fix breaks any solutions that involve adding arguments such as -vidmode and -windowed to shortcuts. If you want to use these, add them here.
4. Expand Modules to Load and scroll down until you find Ident Changer. Select and check the box next to this item on the list.
5. Expand Module Properties with Ident Changer selected. Fill out as shown below.
Driver: ati2dvag.dll Device Name: Radeon X1900 Series Driver Version: 6.14.10.6599 Vendor ID: 1002 Device ID: 724B SubSystemID: B121002 Revision: 0x0000
6. Now the fun part! If you want, you can click Start under Projects, or you can create a shortcut to start Halo with this fix and the arguments you provided. Create a shortcut on the desktop to: C:/.../DXTweaker/Config/halo.dxtp Now when you run this shortcut, halo will startup with the fix! Have fun.
Active Camo Fix (Custom Edition)
- Officially fixed in upcoming version 1.10[3]
There is no need to use DXTweaker. Installing Open Sauce should automatically fix this issue. If it does not, navigate to %USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\Halo CE\OpenSauce, open OS_Settings.User.xml, and ensure <nVidiaActiveCamouflage basic /> is set to "false".
Other information
How to play Campaign with Open Sauce
Open Sauce (and all its fixes and improvements) is incompatible with Combat Evolved. However, Custom Edition does not include a Campaign. To fix this, we will modify Custom Edition and add the classic Halo Campaign back into the game.
First, navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Halo Custom Edition\maps. Backup ui.map by changing its filename to "ui.mapbackup" or similar. Make sure to change the file type from .map to something else or it could confuse the game.
Next, download a new ui.map from halomaps.org. We'll be using this one. Note: this tutorial is for making Custom Edition indistinguishable from Combat Evolved. If you'd like to experiment with custom content, including modified Campaigns and main menus, feel free to browse halomaps.org for alternative maps to download.
Now to download the Campaign itself. The following is a list of links to downloads of all the original Campaign levels. Put all these .map files in your \maps folder. Note: DO NOT try to copy the Campaign maps from the Combat Evolved \maps folder. They are all in an incompatible format. The following downloadable versions have all been modified to work with Custom Edition.
- Level 1: The Pillar of Autumn
- Level 2: Halo
- Level 3: The Truth and Reconciliation
- Level 4: The Silent Cartographer
- Level 5: Assault on the Control Room
- Level 6: 343 Guilty Spark
- Level 7: The Library
- Level 8: Two Betrayals
- Level 9: Keyes
- Level 10: The Maw
These all work exactly like they do in Combat Evolved: cutscenes, seamless level transitions, save & quit functionality, checkpoints, difficulty selection, the works.
System requirements
| Windows | ||
|---|---|---|
| Minimum | Recommended | |
| Operating system (OS) | 98SE | ME, 2000, XP |
| Processor (CPU) | 733 MHz | |
| System memory (RAM) | ||
| Hard disk drive (HDD) | 1.2 GB | |
| Video card (GPU) | 3D T&L capable 32 MB of VRAM | |