New features
Add admins and lift kicks from the remote console, without a restart
admin add <player | player ID>makes a player an admin on every server sharing the ban list straight away: they can kick and ban from the game and can't be vote-kicked.admin remove <player | player ID | name>takes it back, andadminlists every admin. Admins indedicated.tomlstay as they are and still change there, with a restart.pardon <name | player ID | IP>lets a kicked player rejoin the server now instead of waiting out their 10, 30, 60 or 120 minutes, and their next kick starts at 10 minutes again. Bans still needunban.
The desktop RCON client has an Admins button, an admin add action for the selected player, and Pardon a kick and Remove an admin in its Manage menu.
Split screen: tell players apart, give each their own controls, and choose who is player 1
Settings → Split screen got several improvements:
- Tell players with the same name apart. Every player card and saved player now shows their emblem on their armour colour, their service tag and the start of their player ID. The name choices show the tag or the ID after the name.
- Sort and delete saved players. The new Saved players list shows everyone who has played on this PC and when they last played. Sort by orders them, and every name choice, by name, last played, newest or oldest. Delete moves a saved player to the Recycle Bin, so you can restore them from there.
- Change player 1's profile. Step through player 1's name to play as a saved player. The game restarts as them, with their name, player ID, armour and controls, and everyone else stays seated. Step back to the main profile the same way.
- Bring back the side bars. Screen → Side bars restores Halo 3's black bars beside the two-player views and the top three-player view. It's off by default and takes effect at once, even during a game.
Players 2 to 4 can now use the menus with their own controllers (D-pad or stick, A, B, the bumpers and START). Customize opens for whoever's controller opened it and switches to the next player who steers it with their controller, so each player edits their own look.
Settings → Controller gives every player their own controller settings. Use Settings of to pick a player, or let the page follow whoever's controller steers it. Turn on Own settings to change that player's look speed, sticks, dead zones, inversion, vibration and buttons, then Apply changes. Players without their own settings keep using the main profile's.
Settings → Keyboard & mouse does the same for players on a keyboard and mouse: pick them under Settings of, turn on Own settings, and change their mouse sensitivity, aim acceleration, smoothing, invert flight, toggle crouch and keys. Sprint and Lower weapon follow each player's own keys and buttons too.
Play two-player split screen side by side
Settings → Split screen → Screen → Two players now offers Side by side next to Top and bottom. Each view is as tall as the display, its HUD keeps Halo 3's proportions, and the crosshair stays in the middle of the view where your shots go. The change takes effect at once, even during a game. Three and four players keep their usual layouts.
Changes
- Everyone in a game needs 0.9.16. Servers admit only players on exactly their own version, so players and servers on 0.9.16 can't play with those on 0.9.15 or older. The server browser's Version column shows a server on another version in red. Update dedicated servers and players together.
Bug fixes
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UNSC vs Covenant's class menu reaches players on internet servers again. Joining UNSC vs Covenant on a server over the internet could leave you on "Synchronizing players" or behind the scoreboard without ever seeing the class menu, even when you were the only player. Large messages from a server, such as a mode's class menu or a vote with long map previews, were lost on the way. They now travel on a connection that resends whatever is lost, so they arrive whole however busy the network is. Servers also send a game mode's on-screen widgets as changes, so a ticking timer no longer resends the whole menu, which saves a busy server a lot of upload.
Joining a busy game in progress no longer leaves you without the class picker either: the picker and script menus now always reach you, and your clicks count. Script modes that resize players also size them correctly for you after you join.
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Co-op moves on to the next mission. When a co-op mission ended while a player's game was getting back in step with the host's, which happens most often during the mission's closing cutscene, that catch-up carried over into the next mission and was packed in its very first moments. The host could then freeze on the next mission's loading screen at Starting game, and the lobby had to be made again. Finishing Sierra 117 and moving on to Crow's Nest hit this most. Every mission now starts in step for everyone, and the loading screen no longer reads Starting game while the next mission still waits for every player's map.
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Dedicated co-op servers get back in step with their players. A dedicated campaign server's game could drift out of step with every player's at once, and then every player had to load the server's game and saw Getting back in step with the host. Now the server checks one player's game and takes it instead, and play goes on after a short pause. Hosts can keep the old way with
trust_player_games = false. -
Controls on every keyboard layout. Keys are now bound by where they are on the keyboard rather than by the letter they type, so AZERTY, QWERTZ, Dvorak and other layouts play like a US keyboard: on AZERTY you move with Z/Q/S/D out of the box. Settings > Keyboard & Mouse shows each key as your layout prints it, and keys you had already rebound stay on the same keys. Chat and other typing follow your layout as before.
Z no longer zooms in whatever Zoom is bound to, which got in the way on AZERTY, where Z moves forward. Zooming one step in or out at a time is now Zoom in and Zoom out under Combat, unbound until you pick a key or button.
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The game starts from a folder named in any language. With Halo: The Master Chief Collection in a folder whose name has letters outside plain English, such as
D:\ИгрыorD:\Spiele für PC, the game either stopped at once with "Engine probe worker failed: exit code: 1" or showed a menu that never started a game. Moving the game to the C drive only helped because Steam's default folder there is in plain English. The game now starts and plays from any folder name. -
The game starts with MCC on a mapped network drive. With Halo: The Master Chief Collection on a mapped network drive, such as a NAS share or a virtual machine's shared folder given a drive letter, the game stopped at once with "Engine probe worker failed: exit code: 1". It now starts from there, as from any other drive.
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Split-screen HUDs keep their shape. Since split-screen views fill the display, the two-player HUD and the top three-player HUD were stretched sideways by about a fifth. They now keep Halo 3's own proportions and still reach the edges of the view.
Install
The game client requires Halo: The Master Chief Collection with Halo 3 installed; no game files are included.
Double-click project-reclaimer-v0.9.16.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-v0.9.16.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.