ProjectReclaimer/project-reclaimer-releases v0.9.19

on GitHub

New features

Halo 3: ODST campaign and Firefight

With Halo 3: ODST installed in MCC, the Campaign page's campaign list (the dropdown at the top) has Halo 3: ODST, with its eleven missions, their rally points and Continue from your last checkpoint, and the main menu has Firefight, a page of its own with ODST's ten Firefight maps and every Firefight game type MCC has. Choose a mission or map and Play solo: ODST's own engine starts in the same window, without restarting the game, with its loading screen, its intro videos and your display settings. Joining a game of ODST from the server browser, restarting Firefight, moving on to the next mission and leaving all stay in that window too, and leaving takes you back to the page you came from. Escape (or Start) opens the same Game Menu as Halo 3's: resume, revert to your last checkpoint, restart, Settings, or go back to the main menu, which returns you to the same page. A finished mission or game ends on the same card as a Halo 3 mission, with what comes next. Cinematics ODST lets you skip are skipped with Space or A, with the same hint in the corner as Halo 3's (in co-op, the host skips). ODST's campaign has Halo 3's Campaign modifiers too (enemy health and damage, scaled per player), on the Campaign page and in the co-op lobby, and the host's Friendly fire setting. ODST is optional: without it, nothing changes.

Host co-op opens a lobby for up to 16 players, as Halo 3's campaign does (your Host Game player limit applies, split-screen players counted; a PC whose players don't all fit is told so). Split-screen players from Settings → Split screen play in ODST too, solo and in co-op, as in Halo 3: with their own controller or keyboard and mouse settings (move dead zone and toggle crouch included), a keyboard and mouse of their own, their names in every lobby, and with three or four players each sees the whole HUD, which ODST never drew for more than two. Two players share the display as chosen there: one above the other, with or without side bars, or side by side, where each tall view has ODST's own full HUD, the visor's top and bottom at the view's top and bottom. It shows in the Server Browser with the map's art, and the host's and players' names. The lobby opens at once, and is Halo 3's lobby: the players with their emblems and ranks, the server, the map's card and the chat. Joining it and leaving it are as quick as in Halo 3; when the host presses Start game, everyone in the lobby moves onto ODST's engine together, behind the loading screen, and the game starts once they are all in. The host picks the mission (or Firefight map), start point, game type and difficulty there, with the same pages as the Campaign and Firefight pages, steps Network between Local and Online, changes the Host Settings (server name, password, player limit, joins in progress, voice and text chat, and Online's connection), and presses Start game; players see each change as it is made. A server password applies to ODST's games too, from this PC and network as over the internet. Players can join a game in progress (unless the host turned off Join missions in progress). In a campaign mission they catch up with the host's game while everyone keeps playing, as in Halo 3's campaign; in Firefight they spawn at once, without costing the team a life. Every player keeps a score, all sixteen of them (ODST kept eight), and each sees their own in the HUD. A player who drops out can join again, and a revert to a checkpoint saved before someone joined or left keeps the game's players as they are. In co-op, only the host can revert or restart, the game keeps running while a player has the menu open, and when a mission ends everyone moves on to the next one together. Only solo games keep a checkpoint to continue from. A player who doesn't have ODST is told how to enable it and stays where they are. If the host leaves, everyone else goes back to the menu with a note that says why. Text chat works in the lobby and in play (T), and the host can turn voice chat on and off from the Game Menu. A player's card opens the same details window as in Halo 3's lobby and game menu (rank, stats, their Spartan), where the host can mute, kick or ban them; a kicked player goes back to the menu with the reason, and votes to kick show as they do in Halo 3. Discord shows what you're playing in ODST. In the Server Browser, a player without ODST sees NEEDS ODST on its games. Co-op works over the internet too: step the lobby's Network row to Online, as in Halo 3's lobby. Players on versions without ODST support are turned away from ODST games with a note to update.

In Customize, the Looks button lists Halo 3: ODST beside Halo 3. Open it to choose which of Alpha-Nine you are (the Rookie, Buck, Dutch, Mickey, Romeo, Sergeant Johnson, Bug Splattered Buck or Injured Romeo) and whether your helmet is on. You play as that trooper in ODST's campaign and Firefight, and everyone else in the game sees it. Split-screen players choose their own.

ODST plays with your settings: your key bindings, controller buttons, look sensitivity and dead zones, inverted look, toggle crouch, field of view (the weapon's too, when you unlock it) and crosshair position, subtitles, the Advanced graphics settings (detail levels, texture filtering, motion blur and antialiasing), and the game volume. Actions only ODST has keep ODST's own keys.

Dedicated servers host ODST too: set odst = { … } in a server's configuration instead of a playlist or map, for a campaign mission or a Firefight map and game type (dedicated content odst lists them, with the setting for each, and dedicated init --maps odst copies ODST's files into a server folder). An ODST server waits in its lobby for its players, counts down and starts; players join its game in progress, and in a campaign everyone moves on to the next mission together. When the game is over or its last player leaves, the server opens a new lobby within seconds, and the players still in the game follow it there by themselves. Passwords, chat, kicks, bans, votes to kick and friendly fire work as on Halo 3's servers, and a campaign server whose game drifts from its players' takes theirs, as Halo 3's do.

Your ODST trooper in Customize

The Halo 3: ODST look in Customize shows your trooper standing on the stage, where your Spartan or Elite stands, drawn by the game itself in the same scenery and light: each of Alpha-Nine in their own armor, gear and colors, with or without the helmet. ODST's armor and skin are drawn with Halo 3's closest materials, so they look a little different from ODST. Drag to turn them and scroll to zoom, as with Halo 3's characters. Switching between the Halo 3 and Halo 3: ODST looks, or trying on another trooper, changes the character without the camera leaving the stage.

Theater: watch your games again

Every game you play is now recorded as a film: multiplayer games (Forge's sessions aside) and campaign missions, alone or in co-op, whatever the number of players. Open THEATER on the main menu: your latest 25 games are under Recent games, each with its map, game type, length and players. WATCH plays a film back; SAVE FILM keeps it under Saved films until you delete it, and RENAME, DELETE and OPEN FOLDER do what they say. Films are in Documents\My Games\Project Reclaimer\Films, where films copied in show up too.

While a film plays, a bar at the bottom shows where you are in it. Press Escape for the theater's controls: play and pause, back and on 10 seconds, a timeline to jump anywhere, the speed (¼× to 4×), first person, third person or a free camera, and the player to watch. The keys work too: Enter pauses, comma and period change the speed, up and down switch players, Space toggles the free camera (move it with your movement keys and the mouse), C switches first and third person, and Z hides the HUD.

A film brings its map along the way joining a game does, mod maps and merged objects included, and names any mods it needs, with GET MODS for those on Steam's Workshop. A game on a map built in Forge keeps its frozen objects too, and plays in later versions of Project Reclaimer as long as they play games the same way. Recording costs your game next to nothing, however many play. Campaign films only go forward, as in Halo 3. Turn recording off under Settings → Game options → Theater.

Campaign skulls and sprint

Campaign → Modifiers now has all of Halo 3's skulls, the nine gold and the five silver ones, each with what it does, and Sprint: every player can sprint by holding Sprint while running forward. Set Sprint speed from 110% to 200% and Stamina duration from 1 to 30 seconds, or unlimited. The Blind skull hides the sprint meter too.

Modifiers and Customization mods are now pages like Game options, with RESET ALL and DONE, and Modifiers ends with a shortcut to Customization mods.

Download the customization editor with each release

Releases now include reclaimer-customization-editor-<version>.exe next to the game client. To make a customization mod, open the editor, open the mod's folder, and pick each player character's armor, colors and camera bones. The editor writes the mod's customization.json.

Changes

• Spartan or Elite in a Character section, Looks above the character. Customize now lists Halo 3's own Spartan and Elite in a Character section on the left, the same way it lists a customization mod's characters. With customization mods installed, the Looks button (your looks in order, and which one you edit) moved to the top middle above the character, where the Spartan and Elite tabs used to be. A long mod name ends in an ellipsis; point at the button to read all of it. Halo 3's own characters are called Halo 3 in the looks, the host settings (No Halo 3 characters) and the game options' character sets, where they were "vanilla characters".

• Host character mods you have only as packs. Character mods you have only as character packs, such as ones downloaded from a server, can now be picked in Host Settings → Customization and in the campaign's Customization mods. Players get exactly your packs. They appear to everyone as a mod of their own, apart from the mod they were made from, so a player who has that mod still downloads your copy.

• Characters from many more mods in one game. A game can now take characters from up to 128 character packs, up from 24, so every character in it can come from a different mod. Players joining such a game get them all, on Windows, Linux and Steam Deck alike.

• Halo 3's own third-person camera. Characters in third person on foot now use the camera Halo 3 gives its multiplayer Spartan in third person, worked out the same way on every player's game, which ends the camera wobble some players saw online. Character mods with a third-person camera of their own keep it.

  • Weapons that put Halo 3 itself in third person now use Settings → Game options → Camera → Third-person field of view too.
  • Campaign games zoom in third person, as multiplayer games do.

• Everyone in a game needs 0.9.19. Servers admit only players on exactly their own version, so players and servers on 0.9.19 can't play with those on 0.9.18 or older. The server browser's Version column shows a server on another version in red. Update dedicated servers and players together.

Bug fixes

• Armor picks of characters with long names. The armor and colors you pick for a mod's character now always reach the other players. Before, characters whose armor regions and pieces had long names dropped your armor picks for everyone else, and mods had to keep those names short.
• Character mods' own colors. A mod character's own default colors now show when you haven't picked colors for it, instead of Halo 3's. An installed character mod now always wins over character packs of it downloaded from servers, and a mod downloaded in several versions is listed once, as its newest.
• Hitches when players join games with character mods. Games no longer stall for a moment while looking through installed mods after a player joins, and two games on one PC making or downloading the same character packs at once no longer overwrite each other's files.
• Co-op missions with character mods stay in step. In co-op games with the players' own characters, the host now builds each mission from the same character packs its players download, so every player's mission is the host's. While the packs are made, the host's lobby waits on GETTING THE MAP READY. A player whose mission still comes out different, for example because their Halo 3 multiplayer maps are another version, now leaves before it plays with a message saying why, instead of falling out of step with the host later.
• Joining a co-op mission in progress. Players joining a co-op mission that is already under way no longer stay stuck on Joining the game in progress. Their character choice reaches the host before the mission loads, so they spawn as the character they picked, and their sprint stamina matches the host's.
• Game types that make players Spartans or Elites. When a game type's traits make players Halo 3's Spartan or Elite, players now spawn as it, and a body that was already alive no longer shows the other model's arms or HUD.
• Big vehicles no longer crash big Forge maps. Placing one of the biggest vehicles on a large Forge map could crash its server and players' games.
• Fast monitors in Forge are no longer pulled back. On someone else's server, flying the monitor at a high speed (or holding Move faster) often pulled you back to where you had been a moment before. Your monitor now stays where you fly it at every speed.
• Faster restarts for new maps and updates. Restarting the game for new maps or an update waited five seconds for nothing before the game started again.
• Menus no longer flicker on laptops with two graphics cards. On some laptops whose screen is driven by another graphics card than the one drawing the game, parts of the menus flickered on and off, more so while the laptop was busy. The game now hands Windows each frame only once it is finished, menus included.
• Higher frame rates while a menu is open. Menus redrew themselves up to 125 times a second even when nothing on them changed, and each redraw was copied whole to the graphics card on the thread that draws the game, so the frame rate dropped while a menu was open. Menus now redraw only when something on them changes, and only the part that changed is copied.
• Servers no longer crash when a player gets a kill from a gun mounted on map scenery. On some modded maps, such as the Battlefront Pack's Scarif, guns are mounted on scenery like the Covenant watchtowers rather than on a vehicle. In team games, a kill made from one of those guns could crash the whole server, ending the match for everyone. Those kills now count like any other.
• Menus no longer blink after the game pauses. When the game stopped drawing for a second or so (loading, or a busy processor or graphics card), the menus, chat and loading screen could blink off for a moment once it went on. They now stay on screen.
• Vehicles turn at your full look sensitivity again. Since 0.9.18, pressing Zoom while driving or riding in a vehicle's third-person seat (a Ghost, Banshee, Scorpion or Warthog, for example) zoomed in without showing it, which made looking and turning feel sluggish until you zoomed back out. Vehicle seats with a third-person view no longer zoom, as in Halo 3; zooming on foot, in first or third person, is unchanged.

Install

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

Double-click project-reclaimer-client-v0.9.19.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-v0.9.19.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.

To make a customization mod, double-click reclaimer-customization-editor-v0.9.19.exe, open the mod's folder and pick each player character's armor, colors and camera bones. It writes the mod's customization.json.