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
A client joining a game on a Custom Edition map checked only that it had a
file of that name. With another version of the map (an older release, a
re-edit), its tags are not the host's: the objects, weapons and vehicles the
host sends are other things there, and the game desyncs or crashes.
The host now sends its map file's header checksum as the game record's map
version, which the Xbox game always left 0, and a client whose copy has
another checksum leaves with an error saying so and where to copy the
host's. The record's layout is unchanged: a host that sends 0 (an older
one, or the game's own maps, whose builds of other regions play together)
is not checked, and older clients ignore the field.
A client joining a game on a map it does not have (a Custom Edition map
not in custom_maps, or one of the game's own not in maps) now leaves with
an error naming the map and where to copy it, instead of the damaged disc
error. It also says when the map cannot run there or the host names a
Custom Edition map as other versions do. The port's error texts wrap to
their dialog, in the smaller font when they would not fit.
Network version 22: hosts now name Custom Edition maps custom_maps\<name>,
which older clients cannot load or explain; they are told to update.
- AI units' teams go with their states, so friendlies aren't red on
clients' reticles.
- A skipped cutscene's music and dialogue stop on the clients.
- Winning a level returns every machine to the lobby with the next level
set up, instead of leaving them on its last screen.
- Help text carries whether the host shows it, so no prompt is dropped.
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.
The server browser cleans each game's name as a host cleans the names
of the players and machines that join it, and leaves out a game whose
name has nothing left that names it. A host lists a Latin letter with
a mark as its plain letter, as player names are read.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Import only independently reviewed production changes. Preserve canonical physics and virtual-keyboard repairs; keep B3 and all unresolved holds out.
Record exactly four approved canary debits (6987 meaningful bytes), six Halo admissions and two revocations. Keep vendor ioinit/storage work separate. Full build, 8252-row sweep, 1318 tests, park/admission/fake audits and 621-object binding pass within approved debit bounds.
Do not publish donor research dumps or private assets. README and unrelated user research remain untouched. See frontier_publication_reconciliation_20260927.md for complete evidence limits and accounting.
Independently gate storage + K, OQ-4 P-a/P-b1, four static-local packets and comment-only disclosures. Preserve all 7641 exact owner rows, 71 valid parks and 1161 passing tests; code/data credit unchanged. G and game_engine admission remain held because current canonical loses populate_statistic_buffer. Existing collision static-local repair is not duplicated. No donor tree, held candidate, scorer or private asset imported.
Found by running a 128-machine session with tools/system_link_bots.py:
- The listen backlog was 32 connections, so machines joining at once were
refused; it is now the machine limit.
- Socket buffers are at least 1 MB. A host's connection to a machine must
hold every update the machine has not acknowledged, up to 128 ticks of
3.9 KB with 128 players; a full buffer blocked the host for the write
timeout. The host's connection to its own client must also hold all it
sends in one frame.
- Each machine that finished loading logged a line for every machine
still loading, 8,000 lines as 128 machines load; it now logs a count.
- Removing a machine dumped the whole server state to the log; when many
machines left at once the host wrote dumps for minutes.
- Machines that had loaded heard nothing while the others loaded, and a
client drops a connection that is silent for 15 seconds, less than the
60 seconds the host waits for slow machines. The host now sends its
pregame keep-alive every 5 seconds while machines load; a client in game
ignores it.
All under HALO_LINUX; the MSVC build is unchanged.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The Xbox game allows 16 players on 4 machines (4 split screen players
each). The native builds raise both limits to 128, keeping 4 players per
machine, and leave the byte-matching build unchanged: every change is
under HALO_LINUX (the MSVC objects compare identical).
- Limits: every local copy of the player and machine limits, and the
bare 4s and 16s that stood for them, follow halo_port_limits.h. The
player data array, the machine-to-player table (and its reset) and the
per-tick update arrays grow with them.
- Records: the copies of struct network_game agree on the larger layout
and check it against halo_port_limits.h; maximum_player_count becomes
a byte (128 does not fit a signed char); network_player_is_valid
checks the machine against the machine limit, not the split screen
one; a machine's input carries MAXIMUM_LOCAL_PLAYERS actions (16/4
would have become 128/128).
- Protocol: a message holds at most 4095 bytes (its header has a 12-bit
length), so the 13 KB game settings record is sent in 3.5 KB pieces
that clients reassemble; the per-tick update of 128 players (3,857
bytes) fits. Buffers and the packet codec's limits grow to match, and
the game search uses protocol version 2 so these builds and the Xbox
game never see each other's games.
- Connections: the host accepts a client connection per machine (the
split screen count stood in for it), FD_SETSIZE is 256, stream writes
send all of a message or drop a peer that stops reading instead of
corrupting the stream, and the input and update queues are larger.
- Host: lobby changes are sent at most every 250 ms instead of on every
change (a full lobby would otherwise send ~650 MB), in-game joins wait
in a queue instead of being dropped, the random name and colour
pickers stop looping forever once names or colours run out, machines
get 60 s to load a map, and the debug dump lists only the slots in
use (128 empty slots took seconds to log).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>