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Chimera is the update to Halo: Combat Evolved for the PC that we should have had but never got.
It is licensed under version 3.0 of the GNU General Public License. See LICENSE for more information.
The official repository is hosted at https://github.com/SnowyMouse/chimera
Here is the installation procedure for installing Chimera:
strings-old.dll works.NOTE: Each file goes into the main game folder, NOT controls. If you put the files in controls, it will not work.
Uninstalling Chimera is simple:
strings.dll.You can install binary mods (i.e. dlls) by creating a folder called "mods" and copying the dlls into the directory.
NOTE: Chimera does not support some dll mods such as HAC2 or Open Sauce. This is because they modify the game in similar ways, resulting in them conflicting with one another. Supporting just one of these mods would mean extra development time that we don't have. Sorry.
Chimera provides a number of features and enhancements to the base Halo game. To ensure the base game is preserved as much as possible, most features are not turned on by default, and the ones that are only exist to enhance or fix the game. - Passive features - Custom Edition map support on retail - Ini features - Commands
These are features that are always on. - Interpolation - Limit increase - Compressed maps - Campaign in Custom Edition - Camera shake fix - Checkpoint fix - Reduced DRM - Descope fix - Extended description fix - Fast loading - Fast server listing - 128 MiB map leak fix - Model LOD fix - FOV fix - Sun fix - Zoom blur fix - Multitexture overlay fix - Z-fighting fix - Custom chat - NVIDIA camo fix - Contrail fix - Motion sensor fix - Auto center fix - Shader fixes - Texture formats fix - Fog fix - Model detail fix - HUD numbers fix - Weapon swap ticks fix - Name fade fix - Scoreboard fade fix - Timer offset fix - Sane default Halo settings - Removed update check - Removed Watson - Multi-team vehicles fix - Map downloading - Lua scripting
The game has an issue where object movement is tied to tick rate, thus objects will never move faster than 30 frames per second. Chimera adds interpolation to the game for objects and other effects.
Chimera increases some of the limits of the game. Note that, unless you play a map that exceeds these limits, your performance will not be impacted. If you don't have this on, then maps that exceed the limits will look incorrect and may not even be playable. Therefore, this feature is always on. Here are the increases: - BSP polygon limit boosted to 32767 - Visible object limit boosted to 1024 - Draw distance increased to 2250 world units (~6.86 km)
Chimera supports maps compressed with the chimera-compress compression tool. This allows you to take advantage of the blazingly fast zstd compression algorithm, drastically cutting down map size.
If maps in RAM is enabled, compressed maps will be decompressed directly into RAM. Otherwise, temp files will be used (placed in Chimera's folder).
Normally, Halo Custom Edition does not display a "campaign" option on the main menu. If all of the campaign maps are availible in the maps folder, Chimera will reenable the "campaign" option just like in the retail version.
Chimera fixes a bug where camera shaking does not work at high frame rates.
Chimera fixes a bug where checkpoints time out too fast at high frame rates.
Normally, Halo does not allow you to join servers with someone that has the same CD key. This was done to prevent people from sharing CD keys. However, this protection has shown to not work and, as a result, is purely an hindrance to people who have legitimate copies of the game, such as modders. By disabling the CD key check, you can locally host a game that lets you join yourself. Also, because a large number of players do not own legitimate copies of the game, having the CD key check in place will likely prevent you from getting any players in the first place.
Note that this feature does not "crack" the game. You still need a valid Halo installation in order to run the installer for the game as well as update the game to 1.10.
When you take damage while zoomed in, the game zooms back out automatically. This functionality is broken when in a server, as the client only descopes when the player takes damage on the client instance rather than if they actually took damage on the server. Chimera changes this to making it so if you lose health or shield, you are descoped.
Chimera fixes a bug where the "About" button of the profile settings menu doesn't display the correct bitmap in the extended description.
Halo Custom Edition CRC32s every map on startup. On a small maps folder, this does not significantly increase loading time. On a massive maps folder, this drastically increases loading time, ranging from seconds to minutes.
Some mods "fix" this by storing the CRC32 in a cache, but this negates the point of it in the first place, as now you can join servers with mismatched CRC32s. Chimera truly fixes it by CRC32ing the map when you load the map, not the game.
The game takes forever to query the master server. Chimera speeds it up.
If you load a map that exceeds 128 MiB, the game opens the map multiple times and only closes it once. This results in the map leaking, and eventually, the game could run out of file descriptors. Chimera fixes this by removing the file size check.
The game uses your vertical resolution to determine how detailed to draw a model. However, this results in levels like The Pillar of Autumn showing the highest LOD for some models when it shouldn't, leading to infamous glitches like the "4K headless chief" glitch. Chimera makes it scale by 480p, instead.
There is a bug in the game where, when you increase the vertical resolution of
the game, your FOV gets slightly more narrow, even if you are on the same
aspect ratio. Chimera fixes this so FOVs stay consistent between vertical
resolutions. This does NOT fix low FOV at widescreen aspect ratios, which is
what chimera_fov is for.
Lens flares are drawn at a set number of pixels regardless of vertical resolution. Chimera makes it scale by 768p, instead.
The zoom blur radius is a set number of pixels regardless of vertical resolution. Chimera makes it scale by 480p, instead. Chimera also increases the resolution of the zoom blur effect, improving the quality.
Chimera fixes an issue where multitexture overlays in weapon_hud_interface tags do not blend correctly (notably the sniper rifle angle ticks).
The game has an issue where as the player gets further from the center of a map, Z-fighting gets progressively worse due to loss of floating point precision. Chimera attempts to reduce decals Z-fighting with level geometry.
The Keystone chat is crashy and broken. Chimera adds a replacement chat.
Chimera fixes a bug where, if the GPU is an NVIDIA graphics card, it uses alpha blended camo instead of the liquid camo shader. This is only applicable to Halo Trial.
Chimera fixes a bug where contrails are bugged at high frame rates.
Chimera fixes a bug where the motion sensor fade is incorrect at >30 FPS
Chimera fixes many gearbox shader regression to restore Xbox accurate rendering. This includes missing shader types such as shader_transparent_generic.
Chimera restores support for the monochrome and p8-bump texture formats used in the Xbox version.
Fog in maps such as Assault on the Control Room's sky fog now works as intended.
The "detail after reflection" flag in model shaders now works as intended.
HUD numbers are no longer drawn oversized if modified to be a higher resolution.
Weapons are now picked up with the correct timing when holding the action key.
Chimera fixes a bug where the game does auto look centering based on frame rate. This would result in vehicles being difficult to handle at high frame rates.
Names now fade in/out correctly at high frame rates when staring at a player.
Scoreboard now fades in/out correctly at high frame rates.
Halo PC has a bug where equipment spawns floor(8.1n) ticks (where n = the
netgame equipment index). This bug is fixed.
Halo's default video (not including resolution) and audio settings are set to more appropriate settings for modern PCs:
| Setting | New default | Note |
|---|---|---|
| FRAMERATE | NO VSYNC | |
| SPECULAR | YES | |
| SHADOWS | YES | |
| DECALS | YES | |
| PARTICLES | HIGH | |
| TEXTURE QUALITY | HIGH | |
| HARDWARE ACCELERATION | YES | Requires dsoal |
| SOUND QUALITY | HIGH | |
| ENVIRONMENTAL AUDIO | EAX | Requires dsoal |
| SOUND VARIETY | HIGH |
The check for updates that occurs when clicking on "INTERNET" in joining or creating games is disabled.
When Halo PC crashes, it launches a program called "Watson" to attempt to report errors to a server that has not been online in years. This is a waste of time, and it presents a minor annoyance for people who are unaware that you can simply remove the Watson folder. Therefore, Chimera removes the functionality altogether.
Servers with Chimera's chimera_allow_all_passengers, multi-team vehicles, or some equivalent feature enabled will not desync a client with this fix.
Chimera will automatically attempt to download maps off of the
HAC2 Map repo upon joining a server that
is playing a map you don't have. A different map source can be configured using
the download_template setting. These maps are stored under chimera/maps in
your Halo profiles folder by default (see the download_map_path setting).
Lua scripting ported from Chimera -572. Scripts in the global folder are loaded on startup. They remain permanently loaded unless the user uses the scripts reload command. Scripts in the map folder is loaded when a map is loaded and unloaded when a map is unloaded. Scripts may also be contained inside of map files.
Chimera has a very customizable chimera.ini text file that you can use to further tweak your game.
Note that .ini comments start with a ; and some features are commented out
(disabled) like so: ;enabled=1. This is so if you want to enable a feature,
you simply have to remove the semicolon.
Below are the features you can take advantage of. - Halo settings - Scoreboard settings - Name settings - Memory settings - Font override settings - Video mode settings - Controller settings - Custom chat settings - Hotkeys
These features exist to modify how Halo is initialized.
- path (changes the profile path location)
- map_path (changes the path maps will be loaded from)
- download_map_path (changes the path custom maps are downloaded to)
- exec (changes the init text file loaded)
- server_port (set the default server port)
- client_port (set the default client port)
- console (enable console)
- main_menu_music (disables the music in the main menu)
- background_playback (allow Halo to play in the background)
- multiple_instances (allow Halo to spawn in multiple instances)
- hash (set a custom hash or % for a random one)
This exists to manipulate the scoreboard
- font (change the font)
- fade_time (change the fade in and fade out time)
$ claude mcp add chimera \
-- python -m otcore.mcp_server <graph>