The game installed straight from CD for me using the "Xplosive" release which I think is version 1.2 - the game will recognise the CD so a no-CD patch is entirely optional. I messed around with the config file to improve the graphics and to set a widescreen resolution. The one thing I found was that if I enabled flares the frame rate would drop and it would become unplayable with audio cutting in and out. Hence I kept this option switched off. I also found that the game would quit to the main menu when loading levels but reading the in game console showed that this was a memory issues so I increase the com_hunkmegs value in the same config.cfg file which got the levels to load.