The in-game list of who talks colours each name as the names above players' heads are (hud_player_name_color, now shared): allies in the HUD's blue, enemies red, this machine's own players white; in co-op every other player is an ally.
Voice chat's speaker and muted speaker are Lucide's volume-2 and volume-x (1.53.0, ISC: port/assets/icons/lucide, credited in AUTHORS.md, its licence shipped beside the game), drawn white into the menus' bitmap voice/speaker by tools/ce_menus.py and tinted, in place of the speaker made of rectangles. In the lobby, on the scoreboard and in the list of who talks, the icon is centred on the middle of the text's capitals (draw_unicode_string_capital_middle).
Opus voice chat (port/third_party/opus 1.5.2, port/linux/src/voice_audio.c, port/linux/game/network_voice.c), relayed by the host, in the lobby too. The host decides in Server Setup > Teamplay Options: lobby voice (on by default), the game's mode (off, team near, anyone near, team, team and enemies near: the default), the near distance, and the quality, 8 to 64 kbps (24). Each player picks push to talk (V), open mic or off, the voices' volume, and the output and input devices in Settings > Audio, and mutes others from the scoreboard's menu. A speaker icon marks who talks in the lobby, on the scoreboard and in a list in game. The host takes a machine's frames only with the key it gave it over its stream, within the quality's size, 50 a second and 8 talkers at once, and sends voices only to machines that asked for them, so the network version stays.
Any player of a network game can start a vote to kick another, on any team, by picking their name on the scoreboard (right-click while it is open frees the mouse) or with the console's votekick; the host's own scoreboard also has Kick and Ban (Ban picked twice). The host alone counts (port/linux/game/network_votekick.c): votes only from each voter's stream, one per real address and again per hardware id (which only removes votes), time played on the host before starting (network.votekick_minutes) and voting, more than half of everyone with the target counted and at least two, one vote at a time with cooldowns for a failed vote's starter and target, and a passed vote keeps the player out for network.votekick_ban_minutes. Builds without it drop the new messages, so the network version stays.
Fixed: Weapons whose trigger had flag "analog rate of fire" now read how far the trigger is pulled: fully for mouse/keyboard, the actual pressure for a controller trigger. Before they never fired.
source/input/input_abstraction.c
source/input/input_abstraction.h
source/game/player_control.c
Fixed: Weapon spawn orientation on Custom Edition maps. Multiplayer weapons and items now spawn facing the way the map places them, as in Halo PC.
source/game/game_engine.c
Added: PC vehicle set. There's a new PC option in the vehicle set list, between Gun Turrets and Custom. A team set to PC gets every vehicle the map places, as in Halo PC. On Custom Edition maps that means every placement whose spawn flags name the gametype.
port/assets/menus/ce/strings.xml
port/linux/game/menu_functions.c
source/game/game_engine.h
source/game/game_engine.c
Added: Start LAN, internet and split screen games alone. A game with one machine and one player can now start. Pressing start alone begins the countdown, others can join while the game is in progress, and the lobby no longer says it's waiting for another machine or player.
source/networking/network_server_manager.c
source/interface/ui_widget_game_data_input_functions.c
The co-op host's console command bringto teleports every other player
beside the host's player, or beside one who already came when there is
no room there, and says how many came. A client is told it is the host's
command.
The gametype's vehicle respawn time put back only the first 64 vehicles a
map placed (MAXIMUM_VEHICLE_HOMES): a map places up to 80, and a Custom
Edition map more, and those past the 64th, destroyed or left empty, never
came back. It now keeps up to 1024.
find_position_for_ball returned an uninitialized point when the map has no
oddball ball spawn flag, as a Custom Edition map may not: the original's
assertion there is fatal, but a release build carries on past it, so the
host created the ball wherever the stack left it. It now goes to the
map's first player starting location, or the origin when there is none.
A player who quits gives up their slot once their body is gone, and the next player to join takes it (network_game_spawn_player). The game types keep scores by slot, and nothing cleared them, so the new player started with the quitter's score (in free for all also the team's, as the team is the slot), and one who left and came back could find their old score again. Each game type's player_added now clears the slot: slayer's and oddball's scores, king's time and hill, race's laps and flags.
Any player crossing a loading zone used to pull the whole team to them, with a two-thirds vote to go back to a BSP already visited: one player running ahead or doubling back teleported everyone, and teams ended up several BSPs back. Now only the host's players switch the BSP (anyone's while none of the host's are alive), the team is brought to the host who crossed (not to a client waiting on the trigger), the stranded and the respawning come back beside the host first, and a client standing on a loading zone is told it waits for the host. Clients still never switch on their own, and the host still waits for every machine to load the new BSP.
Holding BACK (or Tab) in network co-op shows the multiplayer scoreboard as it is, with its panel, columns and scrolling, but with no game engine it lists the players as they joined, with only their names and pings: no places, kills or scores.
A network co-op respawn spawned the player at the level's starting location and then teleported them beside a living teammate. When the teleport found no room (a teammate in or by a vehicle), the player was left at the start, outside the loaded BSP in later parts of a level, and the stranded rescue took them to the last checkpoint: the host, who can only respawn beside a client, came back there. The respawn now spawns the player behind the teammate it is for (on the teammate where behind them is outside the BSP), and the teleport places them beside them as before.
Going back to a BSP the team has been in waits for two thirds of the team,
and a player on the trigger was never told so. They now see "Waiting for
your team to go back: 1 of 2 here", at once and every three seconds while
they wait. Each machine works it out for its own players with the count the
host decides by, now one function, so nothing new goes over the network.
Two thirds of the players had to be in the loading zone or within 4 world
units of whoever was in it. A team walking back through a doorway in a line
is longer than that, so going back almost never switched: the first player
walked on past the loaded level, fell and was brought back to the team.
15 world units fits a team moving together and still not a player who ran
back alone.
Players in big sessions ended up on different BSPs:
- The host told clients about a switch only every half second, and not
reliably, so a client could predict its player for a while in a BSP it
hadn't loaded. A switch is now sent at once, reliably, ahead of the
players' new positions.
- A client still loading reports so: its input carries the BSP it has
loaded. Until it has the host's, the host takes none of its movement
(which falls there with no floor) and none of its loading zones.
- After a switch, by a trigger, a script or a skipped cutscene, no trigger
can switch again until every machine has loaded the new BSP (at most
ten seconds), so no client falls two switches behind.
- A player the host can't place beside whoever crossed, when a big team
runs out of room there, is placed beside another teammate instead of
being left where they were.
A loading zone brings the whole team to whoever crosses it. Into a new part
of the level that's what you want, but it let one player drag everyone
back. A switch back to a BSP the team has been in now waits until every
living player is in the trigger or near the player in it.
The scripts make allegiances (ai_allegiance player human) and only the host
runs them, so on clients marines stayed enemies of the players: red reticles
and the wrong team. The host sends its ally and friend tables with the
presentation each tick.
- Crossing a BSP loading zone moves every other player to whoever crossed,
as split screen does. Moving only some players left the rest where the
next switch threw them back to a hallway, or under a floor.
- The rescue for a player outside the loaded BSP waits two seconds and
only takes someone falling: a player riding an elevator through its
shaft is left alone.
Hosting a co-op level from the Map screen (CO-OP CAMPAIGN, a level and its
difficulty, then Server Setup) makes a network game on the campaign map
with no game engine, which is what co-op is. Only the host runs the
scripts and the AI; port/linux/game/network_coop.c sends clients what the
scripts do (cutscenes, camera, fades, HUD, sounds, devices, named objects,
animations), and network_actors.c drives the host's AI units on every
machine. Players spawn beside each other, respawn beside a safe teammate,
and spectate while dead or waiting. Skipping a cutscene is a vote.
Players can join a game in progress at any time.
An antenna's chain is a simulation of the Xbox's own step, an update a tick,
and the port was stepping it once a frame with the frame's own time. Its
springs, its carry and the points' physics then acted against the frames'
movement of it, so how far the chain moved per update depended on the frame
rate, and a vehicle at speed swung it far wider than a tick's step does.
- game.c steps the chain in the tick, beside the effects, which are already
stepped there.
- antenna.c records the shape each tick leaves, relative to the point the
vehicle's marker carries the base by. A frame drawn between two ticks is the
part of the way between those two shapes that it is, carried to where the
marker is now, so the chain stays on the vehicle it hangs from instead of
lagging a tick behind it. The gate that left a chain that had not been drawn
for five updates unstepped counted frames; it counts ticks now, which is
what it counted on the Xbox.
- widgets.c no longer steps the chain from the widget update, which ran once a
frame.
- game_time.c draws the per-frame effects and widgets that hang off objects
(game_frame) with the pose between the last two ticks, the pose the renderer
draws with, so what they place on an object is drawn where they put it.
- objects.c hands markers the matrices the renderer draws with, so an effect,
a particle system or a contrail attached to a moving object follows it
between the ticks too.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
In multiplayer a second weapon is picked up into the empty slot on
walking over it and readied, as in campaign; a client readies the
weapon the host says it picked up once it has it. A swap drops the
weapon the player selected, not the one still in hand mid-switch.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
MrBruh