ProjectReclaimer/project-reclaimer-releases v0.8.12

on GitHub

New features

Copy and paste in the game's text boxes and chat

Every text box in the menus, the chat line and the Forge search now take Windows' clipboard keys: Ctrl+V (or Shift+Insert) pastes, Ctrl+C (or Ctrl+Insert) copies the selected text and Ctrl+X (or Shift+Delete) cuts it. Pasted line breaks become spaces in one-line boxes.

To copy from the chat, open it (T), drag over the lines you want and press Ctrl+C. Passwords can be pasted but never copied.

End hosted games without losing the lobby

Hosts can choose End Game in the pause menu to return everyone to the lobby together, keeping all players connected.

More Workshop maps, and maps without a .mapinfo

Workshop maps whose authors never gave them a map ID now show up in Host Game and can be hosted, joined, shared and downloaded like any other mod map. That covers seven maps of The Battlefront Pack (Coruscant, Death Star, Kashyyyk, Mos Eisley, Mustafar, Scarif and Utapau) and three of Digsite Halo 3 Maps (Blam Mountain, Pump Haus and Shaft). Everyone in a game needs version 0.8.12 or later to play them.

Mods that ship their own shared.map, as Digsite Halo 3 Maps does, now load it. Before, their maps failed to start.

A multiplayer .map file on its own also works now: put it in its own folder in your Mods folder, with the shared.map it came with if it has one. It is listed under its file name, blam_mountain.map as "Blam Mountain".

Turn mods off and on, and rebuild the asset library

Settings → Mods now has an ON/OFF switch beside every mod. A mod you turn off stays on your PC, but the game leaves it out: its maps leave Host Game and its objects leave Forge. Steam Workshop mods can be turned off too. Joining a server that needs a mod you turned off asks first: ENABLE & JOIN turns it back on and joins.

The same page has a new Asset library section, which says whether Forge's objects match the mods you have turned on. After you turn a mod off or on, install or delete one, it recommends a rebuild: press REBUILD NOW to build the library in the background, with its progress shown beside the button. Otherwise it rebuilds the next time you open Forge or start the game. REBUILD also works when the library is up to date, for example to try a mod whose objects were left out again. Rebuilding is not offered during a lobby or game.

Game mode scripts can award points and react to melee kills

For mode makers: scripts can now

• award or take away points with the new score action, so a mode decides what a point is worth while the game's score limit still ends the round;
• run an action only when a condition holds, with when, and compare values with <, <=, >, >=, == and !=;
• tell how a player died: kill.melee is 1 for a melee kill, and kill.assassination is 1 for a melee attack from behind;
• hand out the Flamethrower, Missile Pod, Machine Gun Turret and Plasma Cannon (flamethrower, missile_pod, machine_gun_turret, plasma_cannon). Someone who drops one gets it back;
• shrink players, their health and their damage down to 10% (scale, health and damage now start at 0.1).

The new Gun Game and Growth use these. The scripting guide describes each one.

Vote to shuffle uneven teams on dedicated servers

When teams get lopsided on a dedicated server, any player can call a vote to shuffle them. Tap Tab to pin the scoreboard and choose SHUFFLE in its title row, next to END ROUND and END GAME, or type /vote shuffle in chat (T). Answer with F5 (yes) or F6 (no), as with other votes.

If the vote passes, every player, split-screen guests included, is dealt at random across the teams in play, so no team has more than one player more than another. If everyone was on one team, a second team comes back. Team scores stay with their teams. The shuffle evens out player counts, not skill. It works in team games while a round is being played, with at least two players, on servers that take votes.

Separate volumes for game audio and voice chat

Settings → Audio has two new sliders, both from 0 to 100% and both at 100% to start:

• Game audio volume sets the game's effects, dialogue and music without touching voice chat or menu audio. Lower it when the game drowns out your teammates.
• Voice chat volume, under VOICE CHAT, sets how loud you hear other players. At zero you hear nobody, and others can still hear you.

Master volume and Mute still cover every sound. Apply saves the sliders, and they take effect at once, also during a game.

Download server mods through Steam Workshop

Settings → Mods → Prefer Steam Workshop is on by default. When joining a server with missing mods, Reclaimer tries Steam Workshop first and verifies the files against the server's version. Direct server downloads remain the fallback when the host enables Share mod files.

Hosts need no extra Workshop setup for normal published MCC packages: keep the original ModInfo.json when copying them into the server's Mods folder. Workshop downloads work even with share_mods = false, and the host does not need Steam installed. Players need Steam running with MCC available to their account. If Steam is not running or the account cannot use MCC, the download window asks players to start Steam and sign in. That message remains visible while a direct server fallback downloads.

Changes

• Growth: start tiny, grow by your victims' size. Growth has new rules:

  • Everyone spawns at 10% size with two random weapons.
  • A kill adds your victim's size to yours: killing a 10% player adds 10%, killing a 150% player adds 150%. The most you can grow is 300%.
  • Your size is your damage and your health: at 10% you deal a tenth of normal damage and have a tenth of normal health, at 300% triple both.
  • Dying, however it happens, puts you back to 10%.
  • Every kill is worth a point. Two rounds of ten minutes, and the most points over both rounds wins.

  If you already have Growth installed and never changed it, it updates automatically the next time you open Host Game. An edited copy is kept as it is: move it out of the Game Modes folder and choose REFRESH to get the new version.

• Gun Game: every stock weapon, melee set-backs and three rounds. Gun Game now works through all 24 Halo 3 weapons, from the Spartan Laser and Rocket Launcher down to the Needler and Sentinel Beam, then the Gravity Hammer and finally the Energy Sword. Everyone starts on the Spartan Laser.

  • A kill moves you to the next weapon at once, and the weapon in your hands changes. A kill made after you died counts too: you respawn with the next weapon.
  • Each step up the list is worth one point. The first player to get a kill with the Energy Sword wins the round.
  • Melee kills don't move you up. Hit someone in the back with a melee attack, though, and they go back one weapon and lose that point.
  • Unlimited ammo, no weapon pickups, no grenades, no time limit, and three rounds per game. It plays on every map.

  If you already have Gun Game installed and never changed it, it updates automatically the next time you open Host Game. An edited copy is kept as it is: move it out of the Game Modes folder and choose REFRESH to get the new version.

• A second master server keeps the server browser going. Online games and servers now report to two master servers instead of one, and the server browser reads both. While either is down, servers stay listed and players still see them. Nothing needs setting up: hosts and players get this by updating.

Bug fixes

• Fix a crash in large campaign co-op groups. Fixed an AI-related crash with large co-op groups, reproduced on Tsavo Highway after reverting to a checkpoint with 16 players.

• Fix players 5 to 16 being left out of mission events in co-op. In campaign co-op with more than four players, the mission scripts only looked after the first four. Missions now set up as they do for four players, so The Storm opens with its warthog convoy and Halo's warthog run saves checkpoints. When a mission brings stragglers forward, players 5 to 16 are now checked and moved on their own. When a mission seats players in a vehicle, the others take any seat still free for players, and anyone left without a seat joins the group where the vehicle stops.

• Fix an intermittent crash during campaign transitions. Fixed a crash when switching between gameplay and menus or loading screens, reproduced while starting a 16-player co-op mission.

• Frame-rate settings can exceed 60 FPS. Fixed the engine's hidden 60 FPS cap overriding Settings → Graphics → Frame-rate limit. No limit, 120, 144, 165, and 240 FPS now allow higher frame rates when your hardware can render them. Changes apply live, including when reverting a settings preview.

• The server browser no longer gives up on the master server so quickly. Players far from the master server, such as in Australia, or on a connection that dropped a packet, often saw "0 / 2 masters responded" and an empty server browser: the game gave up on the master after two thirds of a second. It now waits up to two and a half seconds. Servers still show as soon as a master answers.

  Games and servers hosted far from the master are listed more reliably too, since their reports to it had the same limit.

• Player sizes in game modes now show for players who joined mid-game. In Growth and other game modes that change player size, a player who joined a game already in progress saw everyone at normal size, and aimed at bodies that were really bigger or smaller on the host. Every player now sees everyone's size.

• Fix joining a game on the same PC failing while the PC is busy. Joining a game hosted on the same PC could fail with "An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host" when the PC was under load, such as while several game windows were running.

• Servers hosted on your own PC show in the server browser. A dedicated server or online game hosted on the PC you play on was missing from your server browser when your router does not pass its own internet address back into your home. The browser now also looks for it on your PC, and joins it there.

• Players who left no longer stay on the in-game scoreboard. A player who left a game kept their row on the scoreboard (Tab) until the game ended, so it looked like they were still playing. They now drop off it as soon as they leave, along with a team none of whose players are left. The carnage report after the game still lists them with their score.

• Starting grenades: "None" and "Map default" were swapped. In Game Options, the player traits' Starting grenades choice labelled None gave players the map's grenades, and Map default gave them none. The labels now match what happens. One in the Chamber was affected too: it meant to give no grenades but gave the map's. It now gives none, and an installed copy you never changed updates by itself the next time you open Host Game. Game types you saved keep the value they had, so check their starting grenades if you picked either choice.

Install

The game client requires Halo: The Master Chief Collection with Halo 3 installed; no game files are included.

Double-click project-reclaimer-v0.8.12.exe to start the game. It finds Halo 3 in any Steam library and opens without a console window; its log is Documents\My Games\Project Reclaimer\Logs\client.log.

For remote server administration, double-click reclaimer-rcon-v0.8.12.exe, enter the host, RCON port and password, and connect. The RCON client needs no game installation. See the attached RCON.md for setup and commands.