Ninefoldrin
Published
--skip-launcher
Two main issues I had:
The Larian launcher wouldn't allow me to log in, it only said please wait for a brief moment then acted as if I never attempted to log in. A bit of googling showed that this is a problem that has affected people on Windows in the past, so it's unclear if the problem is somehow related to Linux or something on Larian's end. Either way, I chose to bypass the Larian launcher altogether.
As "Alt" is used by my window manager, I was unable alt-click to pick up items I could see with alt. To fix this, I went to System Settings > Windows > Behavior and disabled the use of "Alt" to move windows. Not sure if other WMs use "Alt" in a similar, overriding way as the default in Mint.
Other than those two fairly minor issues, the game seemed to play just fine and I didn't notice any particular difference from playing on Windows.
I didn't try any other proton version, but considering how smooth it ran in GE, I can only assume it runs just as well in the regular 9.0-3 and experimental as well.
Works great right out the box!
Didn't play for very long, but there were zero issues.
Noticed a few minor buggy textures once or twice but they might be an issue on Windows too.
As another user said, to play co-op, you'll need to get your friend(s) to send you two of their .dll files. They cannot be sent over discord unless they're put in a zip as Discord somehow corrupts them. It seems that the game is supposed to sync these .dll files when you try to play co-op, but they won't sync, so you need to manually sync them by replacing the ones on your machine.
Windows File Locations:
First File: C:\Windows\System32\ucrtbase.dll
Second file: C:\Windows\SysWOW64\ucrtbase.dll
Linux File Locations:
First file: steamapps/compatdata/976730/pfx/drive_c/windows/system32/ucrtbase.dll
Second file: steamapps/compatdata/976730/pfx/drive_c/windows/syswow64/ucrtbase.dll
If using discord to transfer files, have your friend put them in a zip (if you get them to name the main zip folder "windows" and put each identically-named file in a "system32" or "syswow64" subfolder respectfully, you can just paste the extracted "windows" folder in "drive_c" and replace the two files it should prompt to replace).
Once trying that, the game ran flawlessly (didn't even have the crashes at the point that stopped our playthrough of H2 back on Windows a year or two ago which might just be a bug fix by 343, but at least the issue didn't occur when playing on Linux). I only played with 2 player co-op so I'm not sure how the .dll sync will work when playing with 2 or 3 windows users and I'm not sure if it's necessary when playing with other Linux users.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/11dftq1/fix_halo_mcc_coop_between_windows_and_linuxsteam/
It seems to be completely playable, but the visuals are terrible and it's hard to understand the environment you're in.
VKD3D_DISABLE_EXTENSIONS=VK_NV_low_latency2 gamemoderun %command%
Many textures are extremely slow to load, if they load at all. Much of the time it appears that chunks of the world are just missing or misshapen leading to the player often "walking on air" or walking through what appears to be solid environmental features. Certain places also have a number of small, white spots appearing regularly around the screen that I'm assuming are part of a graphical element that didn't fully load.
The sliders for determining contrast and brightness would not work with a controller or keyboard, only by using the mouse. Some menu button inputs seemed to only work with a controller button and not with the keyboard (I don't think I tried clicking on those).
Mostly seemed to play okay (from a purely functionial standpoint) though it did feel like it was struggling a little more than it ought to.
This literally would not make it past the splash screens until I added "VKD3D_DISABLE_EXTENSIONS=VK_NV_low_latency2" to the launch options. With all versions of Proton I tried and all other launch options I found here, the game would crash after the splash screens. The game also takes a considerably long time to pre-compile shaders (I believe 30min-1hour), which made testing various Proton versions extemely tedious.
I tested with Proton 9.0-3, Proton Experimental, and GEProton9-18. It didn't even make it past compiling shaders on official Proton. I only found the effective launch options shown here after testing GEProton9-17, so I'm unsure at present if those launch options would enable it to work or work better in other Proton versions.
Worked perfectly. Played for several hours without any issues.
The game pre-configures shaders when it launches and even the menus are near unusable until that's done which takes a few minutes. The cutscene when entering the first big city had some minor framerate issues.
I'm playing on the default medium graphics and haven't tested on higher settings. Overall seems to run fine on experimental. The shaders pre-configuring took annoyingly long and it's not possible to actually play the game until they're done. The cinematic framerate issue was ultimately not very intrusive. I did get disconnected upon traveling from the tutorial area to the main city, though I'm not sure if that has anything to do with Linux or Proton, it could have just been a random issue with the game or server as I had no issues after that.
Played for several hours in multiplayer with no issues at all and no extra steps. I only used Experimental because that was what I was already on. 9.0-2 might work just as well.
