I will admit I am truly surprised at how quickly people managed to find a way to run Halo: The Master Chief Collection on Linux with Steam Play.
343 Industries included an option to turn off Easy Anti-Cheat, to allow people to play single-player and mess around with modding which was the first thing needed to get it working on Linux. While Easy Anti-Cheat supports Linux, it does not work with Proton/Wine.
Sadly though, there was a major problem right at release—it required a login that didn't work with Proton/Wine. However, user LukasRuppert managed to find a workaround for that and posted it on GitHub (with updates after too). So it only took around 8 hours after launch and someone found a way to play Halo: The Master Chief Collection on Linux, simply amazing.
There's a caveat though, it probably will take multiple tries to login before it gets through. It goes without saying but I will anyway, use this at your own risk.
If you don't fancy messing around with building your own Wine with the linked patches, you don't have too. Proton GE already has a test build up on their GitHub. Download it, extract it and place the contents into:
~/.steam/root/compatibilitytools.d/
Restart Steam and then you will be able to select it by right clicking on the game, going to Properties and at the bottom you will see it:
Actually logging in really can take a while. Sometimes it will give a fatal error and need you to restart it, but eventually it should tell you login failed and allow you to hit retry until it works. Took me a good 5 minutes to get in, and even after that you then need to link up an Xbox Live account which also takes multiple tries (so make sure you have a password ready to copy/paste…).
Eventually though, you get in. After that, you can play the campaign and custom multiplayer modes (no matchmaking due to EAC). Here's a video I took earlier of it running on Manjaro Linux:
Direct Link
If you want all the details shown in the left HUD, use this as a launch command:
DXVK_HUD=full %command%
Performance is actually good, once you get past the usual shader compiling stutter and everything else works as expected. I didn't try messing with any VSync settings, which is why the gameplay is locked to 60FPS. Unless you're a Halo super-fan though, it might be better to wait for a less finicky fix. Hopefully a more complete solution will be worked on and make its way into the official Wine and Proton builds.
This is a great start and it's hard not to appreciate being able to play one of Microsoft's top new PC releases on Linux, that's pretty incredible really. Who would have thought 2-3 years ago, or even 1 year ago that this would be at all possible.
You can find the Halo: The Master Chief Collection on Steam here.
Update 13/12: The latest version of Steam Play Proton adds out of the box support.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: gustavoyaraujoSLR is just userspace libraries. What matters is whether it will be in user or kernel space and whether it would require root access. But there's no information, neither official nor rumors so my guess is as good as yours.Quoting: rkfgI think the biggest issue with EAC is how intrusive it is. It clearly includes a kernel-level driver (I found issues describing BSoDs caused by EasyAntiCheat.sys) and Wine, being a userspace set of libraries, simply can't emulate kernel APIs because it would require root access and a kernel module. So Epic/Valve will either develop such a module and provide a way to build/load it from Steam (more likely) or drop the low-level part of anticheat which would make Linux a more preferable platform for cheaters (much less likely). Or maybe they'll find a middleground and do whatever's possible from userspace but with elevated privileges (access to /dev/mem, /dev/kmem and such).That's really a thing We should care about. But maybe Valve is planning to do this inside the Steam Linux Runtime. What you think?
TBH, I don't like any of these possibilities because this anticheat gets full access to your memory, processes and devices and can potentially steal passwords, keys and whatnot.
Quoting: Creak@Liam Dawe How do you enable all these details?According to the readme, DXVK_HUD=full should do the job.
Quoting: XpanderI only played the first one on PC back in the days and it looked outdated even then and controls were slow and unresponsive, story seemed to be nonexistent and it was really not fun to play.I loved Halo: Combat Evolved! Of course, I played it on Xbox. I beat that game multiple times, including solo on Legendary difficulty. I'd say that was my hardest game challenge I had gotten through back then. When the PC version came out, I tried it out and didn't like it.
I think I've beaten every Halo game in the collection, perhaps not ODST although I did play some of it. The last Xbox I owned was the 360, which has been gone for like 10 years now. Thankfully, some of my friends still buy Xboxes so I can play the one game I care about. :D
Seeing this Master Chief Collection come to Steam certainly did make me consider getting it if it worked via Proton. There are pretty much zero FPS campaigns worth playing on Linux, so this is kinda tempting... still undecided since I have already played them all.
Last edited by 14 on 4 December 2019 at 2:59 pm UTC
Quoting: tuubiYup, added a note in case anyone else doesn't know.Quoting: Creak@Liam Dawe How do you enable all these details?According to the readme, DXVK_HUD=full should do the job.
Quoting: Xpanderstory seemed to be nonexistentHalo lore is great in halo 1 and it's there, there is a story mode going on there, and a bunch of stuff happening
Quoting: gustavoyaraujoQuoting: rkfgI think the biggest issue with EAC is how intrusive it is. It clearly includes a kernel-level driver (I found issues describing BSoDs caused by EasyAntiCheat.sys) and Wine, being a userspace set of libraries, simply can't emulate kernel APIs because it would require root access and a kernel module. So Epic/Valve will either develop such a module and provide a way to build/load it from Steam (more likely) or drop the low-level part of anticheat which would make Linux a more preferable platform for cheaters (much less likely). Or maybe they'll find a middleground and do whatever's possible from userspace but with elevated privileges (access to /dev/mem, /dev/kmem and such).That's really a thing We should care about. But maybe Valve is planning to do this inside the Steam Linux Runtime. What you think?
TBH, I don't like any of these possibilities because this anticheat gets full access to your memory, processes and devices and can potentially steal passwords, keys and whatnot.
I doubt it. I don't see how this is even possible without the cooperation of the EAC devs.
Quoting: GuestSo bring your own compatibility layer, try to log in for 5 minutes, and after that you can't even play multiplayer... I think this is the "nightmare" some devs refer to when talking about gaming on linux.Oh come on now, let's not make a drama out of this. This is completely different. We're not talking about a native supported game here, are we? No. This is not about the issues some developers face getting their game working nicely on Linux is it? No it is not.
These issues wouldn't be there, if it was a tested and supported Linux game, which it is not so don't mix it all together.
This is showing off how a massive game can be made to run on Linux, without the developer using a compatibility layer with a quick fix someone posted.
Last edited by Liam Dawe on 4 December 2019 at 4:14 pm UTC
It's curious how fast EAC conquested the market, and most of the newer games have it.
It's really "cheater-free"?
Quoting: fagnerlnJust a question, how good is EAC? I know that VAC has a lot of vulnerabilities, and there's cheaters in all valve's games.
It's curious how fast EAC conquested the market, and most of the newer games have it.
It's really "cheater-free"?
I think it's more like a virus scanner. It weeds out the easy to catch stuff. I've heard plenty of reports from cheaters in games that have anti-cheat (any kind). While some reports might be sore losers, I have no doubt there are people with enough time on their hands to beat it. Just like any other cracking, it becomes a sport in itself.
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