New features
Play Halo 3's campaign, alone or in co-op
Choose CAMPAIGN on the main menu to play Halo 3's missions from your installed game.
- Pick a mission from the list, where it starts (Mission Start or one of its rally points) and a difficulty, then choose PLAY SOLO. Each mission shows the difficulties you have finished it on.
- Your progress is saved. The game keeps your last checkpoint, so CONTINUE at the top of the Campaign page picks up where you left off, even after you close the game. Finished missions are remembered per difficulty.
- Missions follow on. When you finish a mission, its screen shows what's next and the next mission starts a few seconds later (or press CONTINUE NOW). After the last mission you're back at the main menu.
- Press Escape during a solo mission to pause it. The game menu can also REVERT TO CHECKPOINT, RESTART MISSION or QUIT MISSION.
- Skip cinematics with Space or A on a controller, wherever Halo 3 lets you. In co-op, the host skips for everyone.
Co-op: choose HOST CO-OP to open a campaign lobby. Co-op missions start from the mission start or a rally point; your saved checkpoint is for solo play. Other players join it from the Server Browser like any game: set Host Settings to ONLINE to list it publicly. In the lobby the host can change the MISSION, where it starts and the DIFFICULTY, then START GAME. Lobbies take up to 16 players, not just Halo 3's four, with up to four players in split screen on each PC. The host can also revert to the last checkpoint or restart the mission for everyone from the game menu. Everyone who finishes a mission has it recorded as finished, and the next mission starts for the whole lobby.
Campaign games don't count toward your multiplayer rank or stats.
Any color for your armor
Your primary, secondary and detail armor colors are no longer limited to Halo 3's thirty. In Customize, pick a color row under Colors and switch its panel from PALETTE to CUSTOM: drag in the color field, use the HUE, SATURATION and BRIGHTNESS sliders (the arrow keys and D-pad step them), or type a hex code such as #1E90FF and press Enter. Pointing at a color tries it on; letting go equips it.
Other players see your custom colors on your Spartan or Elite in game, on your lobby card and on the scoreboard when both they and the server (or the player hosting) run 0.8.9 or later. Otherwise they see the nearest Halo 3 color, which the panel names. In team games your team's color still replaces your primary and secondary colors, as before; your detail color stays your own.
Choose your MCC folder and where the cache goes
Settings > Folders shows the Halo: The Master Chief Collection installation the game runs from and the folder it keeps its cache in: the Forge library of every map's objects and the fonts for HUD text, about 450 MB. Each has CHANGE… to choose another folder and OPEN to show it in Explorer.
- MCC folder: choose the MCC folder, its Steam library or its
halo3folder, for example when you have MCC installed in more than one place. The game restarts to run from it. - Cache folder: choose a folder on another drive to free up space on this one. The game restarts and moves the cache there; MOVE IT BACK returns it to the default folder. A folder that already holds other files gets a
ProjectReclaimerfolder of its own inside it.
Folders change from the main menu, not during a game. Dedicated servers on the same PC use the cache folder you choose too.
Halo 3's menu sounds
The menus now make Halo 3's own sounds, read from your installed game: the cursor tick when you move to another option, the confirm tone when you choose one, and the back tone when you back out. They work with the mouse (point at an option, click it, click BACK), the keyboard (arrow keys or Tab, then Enter or Space, and Escape to go back) and a controller (D-pad or stick, then A, and B to go back), on every menu page, in popups, in the game menu and in Forge's object menu.
They follow the master volume and play at Halo 3's own balance with the pregame countdown. Turning the menu music down or off leaves them as they are.
Changes
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Host Game and Campaign menus redesigned. Host Game now lays the lobby out in three columns:
- On the left, your game's setup: MAP, GAME TYPE, GAME OPTIONS, PLAYLIST, NETWORK and HOST SETTINGS, each showing what is set. Choose a row to change it. NETWORK switches between Local and Online right there with the arrows beside it. START GAME sits under the rows.
- In the middle, the game: the server's name and how players can join (with the address to copy when you are online), the map's picture with the game type and its description, and the lobby chat under it. Press T to chat.
- On the right, the players, with the count against the limit.
Players who join see the same lobby, with the host's choices and WAITING FOR THE HOST where START GAME would be.
Choosing a map or game type shows every map as a card with its picture and every game type with its Halo 3 emblem. Click one to see what it is and its variants on the right, then choose a variant or USE. Double-click a card, or click it again, to use it straight away. Search still finds maps and variants by name.
Host Settings work like Settings: switches and choices, what each one does on the right, a preview of how your server will look to other players, then APPLY CHANGES or DISCARD. Game Options and Playlists match the new look, and each Game Options category shows how many settings you changed in it.
Campaign lists the missions with their pictures and the emblem of the hardest difficulty you have finished each one on. The chosen mission fills the page: its picture and story, where it starts, the difficulty as Halo 3's emblems, then PLAY SOLO or HOST CO-OP. The arrow keys move through the missions (up and down) and change the difficulty (left and right). In a co-op lobby, step START FROM and DIFFICULTY with the arrows beside them, or choose MISSION to pick from the same mission page.
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New default ports for games hosted Online. Games you host with Host Settings: ONLINE now use UDP 11774 for the game and TCP 11775 for discovery by default, instead of 49176 and 49175. Windows and Linux hand out ports in the old range to other programs, so those could sometimes be taken or blocked.
If your router maps ports automatically (UPnP), there is nothing to do. If you forward ports by hand, forward UDP 11774 and TCP 11775, or set your old ports in Host Settings. Dedicated servers keep their configured ports.
Bug fixes
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Host more than one game on the same PC. Hosting failed with a "port 1000" error when another game was already hosted on the same PC. Games now use any free ports on the PC for their internal connections instead of Halo 3's fixed ports, on Windows and Linux alike.
- Several games can be hosted on one PC, and the Server Browser lists each of them under THIS PC, so players on that PC can pick which one to join.
- A game hosted Online on a PC where another game already uses its ports takes the next free ports when your router maps them automatically. The Online status shows the ports it uses.
Install
Requires Halo: The Master Chief Collection with Halo 3 installed; no game files are included.
Double-click project-reclaimer-v0.8.9.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.