ProjectReclaimer/project-reclaimer-releases v0.9.22 on GitHub

New features

Save films as MP4 videos

On the THEATER page, EXPORT MP4 plays the chosen film from its start and saves it as a video with the game's sound in your Videos\Project Reclaimer folder, then brings you back to the Theater page when the film ends. Before it starts, the Game HUD switch chooses whether the game's HUD shows in the video. Leave the film to stop early and keep what was recorded.

While you watch a film, press R (or RECORD VIDEO in the game menu) to record what you see, with your own camera, player and speed, and press it again to stop. The theater bar, the menus and the chat never show in the video.

Videos are 60 frames a second, at the size of the game's window. Sound needs Windows 10 version 2004 or later; elsewhere the video is saved without sound. Films of Halo 3: ODST's games can't be saved as videos yet.

Random looks and two-word names for new players, and dice to roll them

A dice button sits beside the heading of these pages in Customize:

Identity: rolls a whole new look: armor, armor colors (visor and armor lights too), emblem and emblem colors.
Identity on the Halo 3: ODST look: rolls which of Alpha-Nine you are, with the helmet on or off. On a customization mod's look, it rolls the emblem and its colors, and the mod's armor and colors stay as you picked them.
Helmet, Left shoulder, Right shoulder or Chest: rolls all four armor pieces.
Primary, Secondary, Detail, Visor or Armor lights: rolls all five armor colors, the visor and lights from the same palette.
Emblem Foreground or Background: rolls a new emblem design, keeping its colors.
Emblem Colors: rolls the emblem's three colors.

Left-click for another roll; right-click undoes it, back to the one before. On a controller, Y rolls and X undoes. The dice only picks armor you have unlocked, and never changes your name or service tag. Helmet fire you have unlocked rolls with the armor and the whole look: off, or one of your granted colors; locked flames are never touched.

New players, including new split-screen players, now start with random primary, secondary and detail colors and a random emblem (the visor and lights stay the armor's own) instead of everyone wearing the same default look. Players who already have a look keep it.

New players start with a two-word name in the OG Xbox Live style, such as "Crimson Jackal", "CrimsonJackal42", "Gh05tR3bel", "RogueFox" or "xXIronFoxXx"; the old one-word starting names, such as "Caboose" or "Penguin", now come as the second word ("Cobalt Caboose"). On Customize > Identity, a dice button beside your name rolls one with a matching service tag, such as "CJ7"; right-click goes back to the one before, and APPLY CHANGES keeps it. In Settings > Split screen, a new player's name starts as player 1's name and their number, such as "Spartan 117-2", already selected so typing replaces it, with a dice beside it. Players still named "Player" from before random starting names (player 1's profile, or the saved player playing as player 1) get a new two-word name once, the next time they start the game, and are told; their player ID, stats and look stay the same, and anyone who picks "Player" again afterwards keeps it. Any other name, the one-word starting names included, is never changed.

Hide the HUD

Hide HUD in Settings → Game hides Halo 3's whole HUD in campaign and multiplayer games, as the Blind skull does: shields, health, ammo, grenades, the motion sensor, the crosshair, players' names and markers, the game's messages and the sprint meter. The weapon in your hands stays. It works in Halo 3: ODST's games too. Films aren't affected: they have their own HUD switch.

A hidden easter egg in Customize

Somewhere in Customize, your Lower weapon key does more than you would expect. Find it, and your player card joins in.

Player cards also show an Elite's taunt in the pose Customize holds it in, and developer helmet flames on a card are sized to the helmet and burn from its top, as they do in game.

Block VPNs by hosting network, not only by address list

Servers with block_vpn can now refuse whole hosting networks (by ASN) as well as address ranges. Matching happens on the server; nothing is sent about players.

Refuse a network or range at once by writing AS64500 or 203.0.113.0/24 into vpn-local.txt beside the configuration: it applies within a minute, no restart. [vpn] asns names networks in the configuration, and lists may name networks too.
dedicated vpn check <IP> names the network announcing an address and whether it is on the list. dedicated vpn and the console's vpn show each list's size and age.
Stale lists (over a week old) are reported, and [vpn] fail_closed = true makes a server that has no list yet refuse everyone but admins and allowed players.
Server logs name the list or network behind each refusal, once a minute per address, with a summary every hour.

Changes

Characters use their own third-person cameras. In third person (the Switch camera key, a server's third-person camera, or campaign's forced third person), a character now uses the camera its model was made with: Halo 3's Spartans and Elites their own, and a character pack's characters the camera their maker built in the mod tools. A pack character without a camera of its own uses the Spartan's. Game modes' characters, such as UNSC vs Covenant's, keep the shoulder camera.
New installs limit the frame rate to 60 FPS. Fresh settings now start with the Frame-rate limit graphics setting at 60 instead of no limit. Players who already saved their settings keep their limit.
Seated passengers' view turns with their vehicle. Seated in a Pelican's troop bay, or in a passenger seat of any vehicle you see in first person (the Phantom's, a mod's dropship or gunship), your view and aim now turn, bank and climb with the vehicle, as if you were sitting in it. Before, your view stayed fixed to the map while the vehicle turned under you, until the seat's limits dragged it along. Drivers, turret gunners and the passengers of the Warthog, Mongoose, Scorpion and Hornet look around as before, and so do players standing on a vehicle.
Everyone in a game needs 0.9.22. Servers admit only players on exactly their own version, so players and servers on 0.9.22 can't play with those on 0.9.21 or older. The server browser's Version column shows a server on another version in red. Update dedicated servers and players together.

Bug fixes

Fly down at full speed as the Forge monitor when Fly down is on Left Ctrl. The monitor crouched on Left Ctrl (and on the left stick click) as well, and a crouched monitor flies slowly, Move faster or not. Players who put Fly down on Left Ctrl flew down at crouch speed. The monitor no longer crouches on a key or button that a Forge action is bound to, so Fly down with Move faster descends as fast as Fly up does.
Start co-op after switching a Host Game lobby to the campaign. Choosing CAMPAIGN in a multiplayer Host Game lobby and picking a mission switched the lobby to co-op, but START GAME then stayed on "Preparing engine" for a minute and the game stopped with an error. The lobby now becomes a co-op lobby exactly as one hosted from the Campaign page, and switching back to a multiplayer game works the same way.
The host of a Halo 3 co-op lobby can now always go back to multiplayer with MULTIPLAYER next to the mission, even in a lobby that opened as co-op, and Host Game opens in multiplayer again after switching back.
Big servers no longer drop every player after a game. A dedicated server could send all its players away 30 to 40 seconds after a game ended, most often with 90 or more players, and then accept no one until it was restarted. The game sometimes judged a player's connection better than the server's and tried to hand the session to them; the server now keeps hosting instead.
Voice chat's default microphone is named for Linux, and follows a new default. On Linux (Wine or Proton), Settings → Communication → Microphone device now calls the default choice Linux default instead of Windows default, and its details name the microphone it records from, the default input in your Linux sound settings, instead of "PulseAudio Input". It already followed that setting, and still does when you change it while playing.
On Windows, choosing another default microphone or playback device in the Windows sound settings while playing now moves voice chat to it straight away, instead of staying on the old device until voice chat restarted.
The menu comes back after a game of Halo 3: ODST. Leaving a game of ODST, or finishing its Epilogue, returns to the menu again, instead of staying on the loading screen with the menu showing only now and then.
ODST's loading screens and films name the right mission. Moving on to the next mission of Halo 3: ODST's campaign, such as from Mombasa Streets to Tayari Plaza, the loading screen now names the mission that loads instead of the one just played, and the mission's film is named after it too. The Theater shows every ODST campaign film with its mission's picture and name, films recorded before this fix included.
Player cards show armor colors as they are. The character on a player's card, in lobbies and in a player's details window, drew every armor color darker than in game, and dark colors nearly black. Cards now show the colors players see in Customize and in game. A turret on a card is also held by its handle, instead of the top hand floating at the chest.
Dedicated servers restart by themselves when their game session is lost. When a server's game session ended under it and sent every player away, the server stayed listed but nobody could join until its host restarted it. It now restarts at once when the session is known to have ended (disbanded). When every player leaves at once otherwise, the server only watches, and says so in its log: it restarts if a player then connects and cannot get into the game within a minute, never while it is simply empty or because a player backed out of joining. The restart notice says why.
Servers behind NAT show up in the server browser for players far away. Players far from the discovery masters saw none of the servers hosted without forwarded ports in the server browser, and missed some others, even though joining them by address worked. The browser now waits long enough for their answers, and loses fewer answers when hundreds of servers answer at once.
Films no longer stop with "The game stopped the film". After some games, every film in the Theater stopped with The game stopped the film as soon as its map had loaded, and kept stopping until the game was restarted. Films now play whatever games came before them in the same session. If the game does stop a film, the message now says why.
Vehicle controls are named for what they do, and the Hornet's climb and descent can be rebound. Under Settings → Keyboard & Mouse → Vehicles, Vehicle trick is now Fly up / vehicle trick: it makes Pelicans, Phantoms and other flyers built like them climb. Second vehicle trick is now Banshee trick: push the move stick and press it to loop or roll. The Hornet's climb and descent, which were stuck on Space and Left Ctrl, are listed as Fly up (Hornet) and Fly down (Hornet) and can be rebound; with a controller the Hornet still climbs and descends as you aim. Every vehicle action's description lists the vehicles it works on. Defaults and saved bindings are 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-v0.9.22.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-v0.9.22.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-v0.9.22.exe, open the mod's folder and pick each player character's armor, colors and camera bones. It writes the mod's customization.json.