Arena Evolved on Danger Canyon, played from MCC's own files: the EVO RIFLE with its holo sight, a Warthog ahead, AE's HUD

The classic, fully evolved.

Halo CE as you remember it, with everything today's games made standard.

Arena Evolved plays Halo: Combat Evolved straight from your Steam copy, Workshop maps included, and lists modded custom games in a server browser. LAN, bots in every mode, split screen and menus made for today's PCs. For Windows and Linux PCs.

ADownload YGet it with Quiver

Needs Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary on Steam, alone or in The Master Chief Collection, with its campaign and multiplayer installed. We recommend the full Master Chief Collection to get all of Arena Evolved's features. A fan project, in beta.

Danger Canyon · from your MCC files

Modded custom games, with a server browser

MCC has no server browser for modded custom games. Arena Evolved does. Host from your own install, find games in the server browser or on your LAN, or join by address. A player missing a Workshop map is told which item to subscribe to.

Arena Evolved finds your Steam install by itself and plays Halo CE's multiplayer maps and every Workshop map you subscribe to from the game's own files. No disc image, nothing converted.

Stock MCCThe Halo CE multiplayer maps as MCC ships them.
WorkshopYour subscribed maps, sorted into their collections, with pictures.
NeedsHalo: Combat Evolved Anniversary on Steam, campaign and multiplayer both installed: some Workshop maps use both. The full Master Chief Collection is recommended for all of Arena Evolved's features.
HostingWorkshop maps are hosted from a player's own game; dedicated servers serve the stock and Custom Edition maps.
Coming soonCustom campaign mods from the Workshop.

CHANGE MAP in Arena Evolved: folders for STOCK OG, STOCK MCC, Workshop, community maps and more — Change map · stock, MCC, Workshop

Online, LAN, and bots to fill it

Server browser, LAN search, invite links, join by address, dedicated servers for Linux, text and voice chat. Custom Edition and community maps you lack come from the host as you join.

Bots in every mode, six levels from RECRUIT to DEMON: a wingman for each player, squads that flank, flag crews that escort, bombers that plant and defend. They drive, ride, know the item timers, and step aside when a player joins. Every bot plays in a fireteam of up to five, and the one you lead holds your FOLLOW ME, REGROUP, ATTACK and DEFEND orders.

PartyA live CREATE GAME lobby: friends and bots join while you set up.
Split screenUp to four players on one PC, each with their own profile and settings.
CrossplayPlays with ChupathingyCE and OpenCE build-334 and later (network version 41) on Halo CE's own gametypes. Arena Evolved 0.7.5 and later play together; older builds cannot join.
ModerationOpen any player's card to move them to the other team, kick them for 2 minutes or ban them from your games. BANNED PLAYERS lists every ban, to lift any of them.

CREATE GAME lobby on Battle Creek from MCC, with MY PARTY and the quick options — Create game · my party

Servers

Live from the Arena Evolved master. Open JOIN BY ADDRESS in the game and paste an address.

Everything it adds, and every bit optional

Each of these is a setting or a gametype rule you can switch off. Halo CE's own gametypes keep Halo CE's rules.

Weapons for CE's sandbox

Battle rifle, EVO RIFLE, DMR, SMG, carbine and suppressed weapons as packs that work on stock, Custom Edition and MCC maps. Each turns on or off per gametype.

In testing: the NEEDLER, BOLT SNIPER, COMBAT RIFLE, SIDEKICK, HJ MAGNUM (suppressed, 2x scope) and BRUTE SHOT are in as betas, and the ENERGY SWORD as an alpha. Numbers will move as people play them.

Modern spawns

Better spawns for every game bigger than 2v2, on small maps and in big team battles. You come back away from the fight and out of enemy sight, not in front of someone's gun.

Optional: the SPAWNS row in GAME OPTIONS switches back to CLASSIC. The CLASSIC COMP set and Halo CE's own gametypes keep classic spawns.

Bots in every mode

Six levels from RECRUIT to DEMON. They flank in squads, escort the flag, plant and defend the bomb, drive and ride vehicles (the Scorpion too), answer your team's calls, and step aside when a player joins. They play in fireteams of up to five, each with a job for the mode: defend the flag, push, hold a site. Lead yours with FOLLOW ME, REGROUP, ATTACK and DEFEND and it keeps the order, through the fights. PLAYFIGHT bots aim but never shoot, for practice.

Classic competitive

Competitive rules and gametypes inspired by Halo 1: NHE and modern competitive arena shooters: the CLASSIC COMP set, AE COMP 2v2 and 4v4, NO SPREAD: FIRST SHOT, item timers with spoken callouts, a match clock, and the community's competitive maps from the Workshop.

Round modes

Search and Destroy and Bomb: one life a round, a real bomb carried on the back, a fuse timer on its face. Built on the ChupathingyCE team's Bomb engine.

New: ELIMINATION (beta). A downed teammate waits as a glowing orb, marked through walls: hold the button near it to revive them, while a danger zone closes in. Up to 16 players, bots included, and bots revive too.

Team calls

One button to talk to your team without a mic: tap to mark what you aim at, double tap to call an enemy, hold for the communication wheel: calls such as ATTACK, DEFEND, HELP and RIDE. A mark knows what it points at: when a power item comes back, where a flag is, a Warthog's open seat. Bots on your team answer and go, and NEED A RIDE brings a bot driver to you.

Everything else it adds (17 more)

Ready-made gametypes

More than 250 built in and kept current by each update, sorted in a nested CHANGE GAMETYPE picker: FFA, 2v2, 4v4 casual and COMP, big team with heavy vehicles, objective modes, party modes such as Juggernaut, Grifball, SWAT, Crazy King and Race, the new TERRITORIES mode (beta), and warm-up drills. Start each mode with a pistol, a BR or the EVO RIFLE.

Second-generation game settings

GAME OPTIONS gains rounds and round time, respawn time modifiers, damage resistance and extra damage, weapon respawn, flag and bomb carrier rules, and hill rules such as uncontested hills and team time multipliers. Halo CE plays as before unless you set them. Shields now break with a pop and a flash, the score strip counts rounds, and RESTART ROUND works in any rounds game.

Rules on any map

Fall damage, health styles, combat feedback, no spread, jump height, a pre-game countdown, destructible vehicles, friendly splatter, classic or modern spawns.

Vehicles

In AE's gametypes vehicles take damage from small arms by armour class, come back on their own timer by class (a Scorpion takes longer than a Ghost), and a hold of the action button gets you in, flips them or gets you out. A quicker Ghost with a sharper cannon leaves a burning hull when destroyed.

Training aids

Item timers and waypoints with pictures, spoken callouts in seven voices, a match clock, spawn heat markers, dead ally markers, a green ally reticle and an enemies-only motion sensor.

Host tools

OFFLINE games that really pause. RESTART GAME and RESTART ROUND, bots changed mid-game, CHANGE MAP and GAME OPTIONS from the pause menu, SHUFFLE TEAMS. A playlist editor in the lobby, with weights for each game and SAME AGAIN as a vote.

Controllers

Many layouts including MCC's and a CUSTOM one per player, DualSense adaptive triggers and lightbar, PlayStation and Nintendo prompts, A/B SWAP for Nintendo pads, gyro aiming, stick dead zones.

Mouse and keyboard

KEY BINDINGS, wheel zoom, hold-to-zoom, MCC-style sensitivity, and key prompts that show your own keys.

Menus for today's PCs

Controller-first, just as good with a mouse, sized for anything from a handheld to an ultrawide. Search, favourites and RECENT in the map and gametype pickers.

Medals, kill feed and assists

118 medals for kills, sprees, objectives and game ends, with MCC's own medal art read from your install when you own MCC. A kill feed shows everyone's kills with the weapon and head shots. Assists count on the scoreboard and the post-game, and a driver gets an assist for the kills their gunner makes.

Carnage report and service record

A CARNAGE REPORT after every game with each player's numbers. Your PC keeps a SERVICE RECORD for each player name: games, wins, kills and medals, per mode. SET RIVAL on a player's card highlights them and keeps your head-to-head record.

Competitive HUD

A clean, modern HUD built for competitive play. A score bar shows both teams, the clock and the objective at a glance: who has the flag, the ball or the hill. Power weapon and overshield timers count down in the corner. Compact and big-screen layouts, or switch back to Halo CE's own HUD in one setting.

Graphics

Field of view and viewmodel settings, FXAA, SMAA and MSAA, HDR, resolution scaling and anisotropic filtering, and custom magnum colors for your first-person magnum (only on your screen).

Accessibility

REDUCE MOTION, a menu size setting, values you can type, and help lines that name your own buttons.

Updates and privacy

Signed updates that ask before they install. Stats from the games you host stay off until you turn them on, and crash reports are never sent.

Capture

Screenshots of every split view and video recording with sound.

Map packs and layouts

Community and Custom Edition maps keep their folders and pictures; layout files move items, vehicles, spawns and flags.

Modern menus, UI and HUD

Menus built for today's PCs: map and gametype management with folders, search and favourites, settings that are easy to find, a modern lobby, and in-game menus for single player and split screen. Every screen works with a controller or a mouse and explains each setting in a line of help. In the game, a modern competitive HUD inspired by the classic Halo: CE HUD shows the score, power item timers, and your shields and ammo at a glance. Prefer Halo CE's HUD? It is one setting away. You can switch to the classic menus too, but you'll miss most of Arena Evolved's features.

The communication wheel open on Blood Gulch: SMART, ATTACK, ENEMY, WEAPON, DEFEND, RIDE, GOING and WATCH around the reticle — Team communication system · communication wheel

A pistol marked for the team on Blood Gulch, 10.6 m away, and a bot teammate answering in the chat that it will get it — AI teammates react to AE's communication system

The DMR on Octagon, its on-gun counter showing ten rounds, aimed at a bot — The DMR on Octagon

Bot teammates marked in green, with power item timers for the rockets, the sniper rifle and the overshield in the corner — Bots and power timers

AE's competitive HUD on Timberland: score strip, item timers, shields and ammo — AE's competitive HUD

GAME OPTIONS: every rule of a gametype in topics, with filter chips — Game options

MORE OPTIONS: start weapons and the weapon packs, each on or off — Start weapons and weapon packs

SETTINGS: each player's own controls, video, HUD and more — Settings, per player

HUD settings: HUD style, timers, latency meter and more — HUD settings

Pause menu: bots and their skill changed mid-game — Bots changed mid-game

The EVO RIFLE's scope with its zoom and the rounds loaded — EVO RIFLE scope

The carbine on Carousel, a Workshop map — The carbine

The first-person magnum in custom gold and dark colors — Custom magnum colors

Two-player split screen on Wizard, with power item waypoints and timers in each view — Split screen on Wizard

Play it stock if you want

Halo CE's gametypes play by Halo CE's rules. AE's rules are on only in the AE gametypes, each a row you can switch off.
Halo CE's look: HUD STYLE CE draws the game's own HUD, and the PC version's menus are one setting away (most of Arena Evolved's features live in its own menus).
Stock maps stay stock: the STOCK folders hold the maps as they shipped, from MCC or your disc image.
Classic players welcome: online, it plays with ChupathingyCE and OpenCE build-334 and later on Halo CE's own gametypes.

Get Arena Evolved

Open source (AGPL-3.0). Beta, in active development: Windows and Linux are tested with every release.

Download

Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit · nothing to install Linux x86-64 · most distributions, Arch build too macOS 13 or later, Apple silicon · built, untested Quiver install and update it from the launcher

Each release also has the dedicated server, an untested Android build (it does not start in 0.7.6; 0.7.7 fixes it) and its complete source.

You need your own copy of the game

Recommended: the full Halo: The Master Chief Collection on Steam. It unlocks every Arena Evolved feature: MCC's Halo CE maps and your Workshop maps, and MCC's own medal art.

Arena Evolved includes none of the game's maps, sounds or art. It plays from either, or both:

Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary on Steam, bought alone or as part of Halo: The Master Chief Collection. Install both its campaign and its multiplayer (MCC - H1: Multiplayer): some Workshop content needs both. Arena Evolved finds it automatically.
A disc image you made from your own Xbox disc of Halo: Combat Evolved (.iso or .xiso). Not needed for MCC's maps. It adds:
- crossplay with players who do not have MCC, such as OpenCE players;
- the original Xbox maps;
- the community's maps and mods made for the original Xbox version.

Use only a copy of the game you own. Arena Evolved never provides, links to or helps find game files, and requests for them are closed.

Questions and ideas: Discussions. Bugs: Issues, with your debug.txt.

Built on the community's work

Halo CE is still played because its community kept it going. Arena Evolved stands on the open projects that came first, follows their releases, and sends its own fixes back to them.

BungieWho made Halo: Combat Evolved in 2001, the game all of this exists to keep playing. Thank you.
OpenCEThe port of the Halo: Combat Evolved decompilation that runs the game natively. Arena Evolved is a fork of it and merges its new releases.
ChupathingyCEWhere Arena Evolved grew from: the Bomb engine behind the round modes, Grifball, and many fixes.
GulchCEThe first work on loading MCC's maps, which Arena Evolved's MCC support builds on.
CMTThe source release of The Silent Cartographer: Evolved, where the rifles' and vehicle damage art come from.
Halo 1: NHEThe competitive rules and gametypes that inspired Arena Evolved's.
Map makers and moddersTwenty-plus years of community maps, mods and Workshop items. Arena Evolved shows them with their own names, pictures and credits.

Each project is credited in the README and in every download. Arena Evolved is its own project: these teams do not run or endorse it.

Help build it

Arena Evolved is run by one person in spare time, and it has grown past that. If you want Halo CE to keep going, there is room for you:

CommunityModerators and admins for the community chat and the issue tracker.
MaintainersPeople who can own a part: networking, bots, menus, Linux or Windows releases.
ContributorsCode, play-testing on your PC, maps and layouts, art and sounds, docs and translations.

Say hello in Discussions and tell us what you would like to do.