ProjectReclaimer/project-reclaimer-releases v0.9.8

on GitHub

New features

Optional filtering for chat and player names

Enable Settings → Communication → Filter chat and player names and apply to mask common English slurs and strong profanity with asterisks. It is off by default and changes only what you see, including existing chat history, player lists, scoreboards and reports. The game's own overhead labels and kill feed keep their original text.

Settings now groups camera, crosshair, visor and weapon placement under Game options, and text chat, voice chat and Discord under Communication. Audio holds sound and menu music, while Online services holds server discovery, ranks and your player ID. Existing preferences are preserved, and the categories scroll on shorter screens while Apply changes stays visible.

Choose your crosshair's size

Settings > Game options > Crosshair size draws the crosshair from 25 % to 200 % of Halo 3's own size, for every weapon, vehicle and the Forge monitor. It stays where it was, centered or lowered, and scope overlays keep their size. Your aim doesn't change, and Apply changes works in the middle of a game.

Reach servers behind routers without port forwarding

When a listed server doesn't answer directly, your game now asks the default master servers to introduce it, and the server opens its router for you. This can reach servers whose router never forwarded the game port, for the server browser, joining and mod downloads alike; the game itself still goes straight between you and the server.

Hosts don't set anything up: a listed public server does it by itself, and its log says Hole punching ready via .... Some routers, strict firewalls and shared mobile or ISP connections still block it, so UPnP or forwarding the game port remains the surest way to host. Hidden servers don't use it.

Fade distant player tags and names

Turn on Settings > Game options > Fade distant player labels to reduce HUD clutter in large games. Choose the distance where fading starts and the opacity of distant labels, down to 0% to hide them. Labels fade gradually and reach the chosen opacity at twice the start distance. Each split-screen view uses its own distance; objective markers keep their usual opacity.

Team voice only

Hosts can turn off voice to everyone while keeping team voice. Switch on Host Settings → Team voice only, or choose TEAM VOICE ONLY in the pause menu while you host a game. Both V and B then reach only your current teammates, and games without teams are silent.

In a playlist, tick TEAM VOICE ONLY on a game to require it for that game alone; the rotation shows "team voice only" next to it. Dedicated servers take voice_team_only = true in their config (or RECLAIMER_DEDICATED_VOICE_TEAM_ONLY=true), and playlist files take "voice_team_only": true on an entry.

Let weapon field of view follow your view

Turn on Settings > Game options > Unlock viewmodel FOV and choose Apply changes to make first-person weapons respond to your Field of view setting. A wider view shows more of the weapon and makes it smaller. The option starts off, keeping the original weapon view, and works alongside weapon placement adjustments.

Changes

• Smoother customization and controller rotation. Use the controller's right stick to rotate your Spartan or Elite in Customize.

  • Your character's emblem now shows correctly.
  • Camera transitions are smoother, with fewer hitches while viewing your character, switching views or zooming.
  • Custom visor and armor light colors have less impact on performance in large games.

• More detail in graphics crash logs. Logs now record rendering stalls, the last rendering step reached, graphics device details and recent video memory usage. This extra detail helps investigate freezes and crashes when the graphics device stops responding.

• Infection scoreboard shows Survivors and Infected. In Infection, the in-game scoreboard now lists Survivors and Infected as two teams, each with its players' total score, and moves players across as they are infected. Everyone's own score and the final standings count as before.

  Forge maps can give each side its own spawn points: Red points are for survivors, Blue points for the infected, and Neutral points for either. A side without its own starting points starts at its respawn points.

• Busy servers answer the server browser faster. When many players refresh the server browser at once, a server now works out its status once and gives everyone the same answer, and players joining still get in while the browsers wait.

• Server names show in full, and new server browser filters. The Server Browser gives server names much more room, so long names show whole instead of being cut off. A name that still doesn't fit shows in full when you point at it, and the server's card always shows all of it.

  • Rows use icons instead of text tags: a cube for the mods a server uses (colored by whether you have them, with their count), a padlock for private servers, and marks for a game on this PC and the server you're playing on. Point at an icon to see what it means.
  • Players shows a player icon and the count. The icon is blue while anyone is playing, orange when the server is almost full (three quarters of its slots taken) and red when it's full. Ping shows the signal bars and the number. The player bar is gone.
  • The Host column moved to the server's card, which still names the host. The search box still finds servers by host.
  • New filters along the top of the list: pick All, Multiplayer, Forge or Campaign to see one kind of game, with a count of each. Hide full and Hide empty sit beside them.
  • Filters opens more: hide private servers, hide servers on another version, show only servers with or without mods, only servers that block VPNs or only those that allow them, and only servers under a ping of 60, 110 or 180. Servers say on their card when they block VPNs; servers from before this version don't say, so the VPN choices leave them out. The button counts the filters that are on, and Clear all filters turns everything off. When filters leave no server to show, Clear filters appears in the list.

• Split-screen views fill the display. Removed the black side bars in two-player split screen and the top view in three-player split screen. Each view now uses all of its part of the display.

• Sprint with a clearer stamina meter and adjustable weapon sway. The sprint meter now sits low in the middle of your view, uses your HUD's colors and fades to faint while full. Your arms and weapon sway with your stride, ease in and out, and settle while airborne; dual-wielded weapons sway only side to side. Your view stays steady.

  Settings → Game options → Weapon viewmodel → Sprint sway controls the strength, from 0% to 100%, with 50% as the default.

  Sprint now works for every player slot in games of up to 128 players. On a controller, running out of stamina ends the sprint until you click again.

• Everyone in a game needs 0.9.8. Servers admit only players on exactly their own version, so players and servers on 0.9.8 can't play with those on 0.9.7 or older. The server browser's Version column shows a server on another version in red. Update dedicated servers and players together.

• Kick votes can pass on big servers. On servers with more than 16 players, a kick vote no longer needs a majority of everyone. The yes votes it needs grow more slowly with the player count, such as 9 of 17, 12 of 32 and 19 of 64, down to a quarter of the players at 120 or more. Games of 16 or fewer, and votes to end the round, end the game or shuffle teams, still need a majority.

Bug fixes

• Big servers no longer crash partway through a game. On servers with around 90 or more players, the game could crash a few minutes in, most often soon after someone changed teams or while the server was falling behind, which sent everyone back to the main menu. It happened most on maps with scripts, such as Hugegrass. Dedicated servers also skip some work they never needed, since they draw nothing.

• Campaign foliage with your own Spartan or Elite. Fixed missing or black foliage and severe frame-rate drops when playing campaign missions with your own Spartan or Elite.

• Prevent crashes when leaving a server and during scripted matches. Fixed a crash while loading the main menu after leaving a server or losing the connection. Also fixed a crash when a map script refers to an object that has been deleted.

• Players keep their own name, even when someone else in the game has it. A player who joined with a name someone in the game already had, such as the default "Player", was given a random name like "Bunk" instead, and the renaming could leave stray letters behind it that no other player's game could match. On 0.9.6 and older that sent everyone back to the main menu with "The host left the game"; on 0.9.7 every player kept getting the whole player list again, which lagged big servers. Now everyone keeps the name they chose, so the scoreboard, votes and the server console all show the same name. Players with the same name are still told apart: chat adds their service tag, and admins can use a player's number or ID.

• Keep gamemode objects visible when reopening Forge maps. Flag spawns, bomb spawns and other objective markers stay available in Forge after saving and reopening a map. Editing no longer removes objects because they belong to a different gamemode. Their selected game types still apply when playing the saved map in a custom game.

  In Forge's pause screen, click Game Mode Filter to cycle through All and individual gamemodes, or use Left/Right on the selected row. The filter changes your own view while editing. Hidden objects are still saved, and each new session starts with All.

• Held Forge objects stay still. An object you hold in Forge no longer drifts, turns or gets pushed away by nearby walls and objects while you stand still. It keeps its place and rotation until you move it, and goes back to the physics chosen in Properties when you let go.

• Scores count up during the game again. In 0.9.6 and 0.9.7, players who joined a game could see every player's and team's score stay at zero until the game ended, although the carnage report afterwards had the right scores. Scores now update live again.

• Load MCC Forge variants that identify their mod map by GUID. MCC .mvar files added to Maps now find their required map when Steam has it only in a temporary Workshop download cache. This works in the client and on dedicated servers, and keeps unrelated cached maps hidden, installed copies preferred and disabled mods disabled. Variants that identify a mod by GUID also keep that identity when another map uses the same map number.

• Select MCC map variants on Workshop maps. Fixed an "Unexpected packed map variant layout" error when choosing some Forge map variants saved in MCC on Workshop maps.

• Custom UI missing from game capture. Menus, chat and loading screens now draw into the game's frame on Windows as well as Proton, so game capture can include them in recordings and streams.

Install

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

Double-click project-reclaimer-v0.9.8.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-v0.9.8.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.