ProjectReclaimer/project-reclaimer-releases v0.8.16

on GitHub

New features

Flood Infection game mode

Choose Host Game > Game type > Slayer > Flood Infection to play Infection with Halo 3's campaign Flood. After a ten-second countdown one random player becomes the Flood; each infected life is a random Human, Elite or Brute combat form or a Carrier form, and pressing melee as a Carrier makes it explode. Survivors start with a Shotgun and Magnum and turn into Flood only when an Infection Form's bite kills them. Survivors win by lasting three minutes, the Flood win when no survivors are left, and a game is three rounds.

Change the starting number of Flood, the round length and the countdown in Game options > Slayer rules > Custom mode options. The mode needs Halo 3's campaign installed. Its Megalo source comes with the website's scripting guide, so you can edit and rebuild it with mode-compile.

Edit frozen Forge objects in place

Aim at a frozen object in Forge: the monitor's reticle turns green. Press the Forge menu key (1 by default) to open its Properties, as for any other object. Material, texture, passthrough, primitive size and Fixed/Phased physics can change while it stays frozen; the changes reach every player and are saved with the map. Unfreeze still turns it back into an ordinary placement where it stands, and grabbing it still lets you move or rotate it.

Hide the helmet visor

Turn on Settings > Graphics > Hide helmet visor to leave out the frame Halo 3 draws along the top and bottom of the screen for the inside of your helmet, including an Elite's visor and the Forge monitor's lens. The rest of the HUD stays. Choose Apply changes; it takes effect right away.

Choose where downloaded mods go

Settings > Mods > Downloaded mods directory (also under Settings > Folders) picks where new mod downloads are installed: Reclaimer default (Mods\Downloaded in your Project Reclaimer folder), MCC Workshop (a Reclaimer folder in MCC's Steam Workshop library) or Custom folder, chosen with the Windows folder picker. The change applies at once, with no restart. Mods you already downloaded stay where they are and keep working; choose a folder that already holds downloads to use them.

The scoreboard shows who is dead

While a player is dead and waiting to respawn, the in-game scoreboard (hold Tab) shows Halo 3's own dead icon, a red cross in a red frame, in place of their emblem. Their emblem returns as soon as they respawn.

Weapon viewmodel offsets and aim acceleration

Move your first-person weapons horizontally, vertically and forward or backward in Settings > Graphics > Weapon viewmodel. Offsets work with both crosshair positions and dual wielding; zero restores the original placement.

Settings > Controller > Aim acceleration adjusts how quickly turning builds to full speed near the edge of the look stick, with an Off option. The default keeps the original acceleration. Settings > Keyboard & Mouse > Aim acceleration adds optional, capped acceleration based on mouse speed and starts Off. Both apply to split-screen players too. Choose Apply changes to save and use them.

Changes

• /help lists every chat command. Typing /help (or /?) in chat now lists every command and its aliases, and says whether the server takes votes and whether you are one of its admins. Scroll up in chat to read the whole list. New aliases: /votekick <player> [reason], /vote round, /vote game, /vote shuffleteams, /vote yes and /vote no.
• Crash logs are no longer overwritten. When the game crashes, stops with an error or is ended from Task Manager, its log is now kept in Documents\My Games\Project Reclaimer\Logs as crash followed by the date and time that game started, for example crash 2026-10-02 14-47-02.log. Before, starting the game twice more overwrote it. The 10 newest crash logs are kept. Send the crash log along when you report a crash.

Bug fixes

• Servers list and show up when a PC's clock is wrong. On a PC whose Windows date or time was off, the server browser showed few servers or none at all (about half a minute behind or three minutes ahead was enough). Games hosted from such a PC, dedicated servers included, could also be missing from everyone's server browser (a few seconds ahead or three minutes behind was enough). Server listings now go by the master servers' clocks instead of the PC's, so browsing and hosting work however your clock is set.

• Switch grenade can be moved off LB on a controller. Moving Switch grenade to another button in Settings > Controller now moves it completely. Before, LB kept switching grenades even after you rebound it, so anything else you put on LB also switched your grenade.

• Forge edits sync more reliably. Placing, deleting and freezing objects with several editors in Forge is more dependable. When two editors place the same kind of object, each one's placement is confirmed as their own; several quick Delete presses delete each object; deleting objects the map came with is confirmed; and saving waits until freezing has finished and every player has the frozen list, so the saved map matches what everyone sees. Most edits are confirmed within a second.

• Retry scenery that was unavailable when joining. Frozen scenery, including static pieces in converted maps, now retries missing object lookups instead of keeping the first failed lookup for the entire map. Client logs also distinguish scenery downloads, missing objects and failed object creation to help diagnose incomplete maps.

• HUD keeps its shape on ultrawide, 16:10 and 4:3 displays. On displays that are not 16:9 every HUD element (shield, motion sensor, grenades, ammo, crosshair) was squeezed: across on ultrawide displays and down on 16:10 and 4:3 ones. Elements now keep their original proportions and stay where they were.

• Workshop maps show their picture in the lobby and in playlist votes. A game on a Workshop map showed an empty picture in Host Game's lobby and in a playlist vote's rows. They now show the map's own picture, as the map list does, for every player who has the mod.

• Forge variants play on the mod map they were made on. A Forge variant (.mvar or .bin) built on a Workshop map could load on a different map when a playlist or a server picked it, if the mod reused that map's number: MLG Warlock played on Icebox, for example. Add lobby game also refused such a game with "This map/game combination cannot be written as a playlist entry".

  • A variant picked in Host Game plays on the map whose list you picked it from, and a Forge map you saved plays on the map you saved it on. Before, either could load on another map with the same number unless the lobby was already on the right one.
  • Add lobby game accepts Forge maps you saved on a Workshop map. It asked you to save them first, or wrote another save with the same objects.
  • A variant that comes in its map's own Workshop package now plays on that map with nothing to set.
  • Picking a variant under its map in the playlist editor, or adding the lobby's game, records the map it plays on.
  • Playlist files and dedicated servers' map/game settings can name it with base_map = "workshop:<item ID>/<map file stem>".
  • When another map shares a variant's number, dedicated check, the server's start, the playlist editor and client.log say which map it plays on and how to choose another.

• "Players need" lists only the mods a playlist's games use. After switching a lobby to a playlist, Players need still named the mods of the map you had picked before, which no game of the playlist plays, and joining players were asked to have them. It now lists only the playlist's mods until the playlist picks a game.

• Scripted game modes start as a single game. Picking Gun Game, Growth or another scripted Slayer mode with Playlist > Off in Host Game failed with "Native engine rejected game options". They now start as a single game with the weapon and vehicle sets you chose.

Install

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

Double-click project-reclaimer-v0.8.16.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-v0.8.16.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.