FH2MP

Added

•A setup wizard for new and existing installs, covering game-folder selection, Azimuth installation or update, required mods, Linux support, and account registration or recovery.

•Browser sign-in to itch.io for downloading Azimuth through the launcher, alongside manual ZIP installation.

•Verified installation backups and rollback during Azimuth updates.

•Automatic Proton prefix setup and native Microsoft shader compiler installation on Linux.

Changed

•Require the supplied combination of Azimuth 1.0.2, FH2 Extra Options 0.3.2, FH2 Mod Platform 2.7.3 and FH2MP 1.1.1.

•Download the signed shim matching the launcher's release instead of following a different release's dependency pins.

•Replace the account ID's Copy text with a copy icon.

Fixed

•Azimuth 1.0.2's relocated command-line hook preventing multiplayer launch options from being applied.

•Concurrent startup HTTP requests using the default endpoint before the launcher's server settings finish loading.

•Obsolete Extra Options downloads, incomplete plugin updates, and old Azimuth TLS helpers blocking the supported installation.

•Linux game-folder detection missing an existing Steam prefix and using Wine's unsupported shader compiler.

•Duplicate launcher windows and background sign-in retries repeatedly replacing an account's active session.

•Old crash dumps triggering a crash report after a later healthy launch.

•Bonus-board leaderboards showing accumulated XP instead of boards smashed.

•Bonus-board and road-discovery leaderboards retaining totals from an older save instead of updating from the current save.

•Clipped cards at the main window's minimum height, setup spacing, redundant installation clicks, and delayed ZIP validation.

Added

•Friends, online presence, direct messages and club chat in the launcher, with unread badges and notification sounds.

•A lobby browser with five-minute seat reservations for the next normal Free Roam or Road Trip matchmaking request.

•Azimuth 1.0/1.0.1 shim hook layouts, FH2-only startup checks for shared multi-game installations, and native account-picture sync.

Changed

•Update the upstream FH2 Mod Platform dependency to 2.7.3.

•Restore mismatched Azimuth TLS helpers only from a local backup verified against the installed executable.

•Show readable diagnostic attachment names and omit Infinity logs from crash reports.

Fixed

•Relay owner IDs exceeding the game's 128-entry table after repeated joins, causing lobby-wide crashes. IDs are now bounded and quarantined before reuse. Addresses #97, #98, #102, #103 and #104.

•FH2MP's XSAPI scanner directly reading memory that was unmapped during inspection, as reported in #155. Header reads now use the safe memory-copy helper.

•Event settings from a returning host being discarded, and mixed partial car-selection updates leaving the server with an outdated class or PI. Restrictions are delivered before invitations and checked throughout event setup.

•Azimuth 1.0.1 being identified as 0.9.10 because its executable retains an older settings-migration message.

•FH2 folder discovery selecting another title's folder in a shared Azimuth installation.

•Malformed player updates and invalid part combinations being relayed to other players. Player setups are now decoded before relay, with invalid combinations repaired according to server policy. Addresses the captured setups from #84, #85, #86 and #88.

•Invalid torque-curve counts reaching native physics construction. The game now uses its unavailable-car fallback for rejected curves, addressing that failure path in #88, #106, #128 and #145.

•Native receive handlers passing oversized or truncated strings to the game's decoder, causing the string-reader bounds failure in #144.

•Speed traps and speed zones announcing a new personal best on slower passes when the online result was missing or lower than the saved record.

Added

•More diagnostic logs and matching Mod Platform dumps in crash reports.

•Detected Redline and NitroSystem clients are matched into the existing flagged pool, including tools started during a session.

Changed

•Online play uses the server's car database again. Existing car-pack overrides are backed up before replacement and restored for offline play; original game files and car-pack assets are retained.

•Crash reports accept up to 32 MiB of dumps and 8 MiB

•Crash issues use the first recorded failure and show attachment links without a missing-dump status row.

Fixed

•A joining car crashing other players when an unsupported engine swap was replaced with stock but incompatible engine sub-parts were retained.

•Missing or wrong-table tire parts reaching other players' car physics.

•Rental class corrections reaching other players but leaving the driver's own grid at R 999.

•Specific crashes while probing a game image during startup, reading missing upgrade torque rows, or opening a missing optional Cinematics directory.

•Windows mod installation failing before loaded DLLs could be replaced, and failure to restore the previous file when replacement failed.

•Race class restrictions being lost across partial settings updates, allowing a C-class car into a B-only grid.

•Live opponent updates being discarded against a timestamp cached before a scene transition, and stale cached physics being replayed afterward.

•Race scores leaking between participants and players outside the event.

•Server race logs showing a lap time as the total race time.

Added

•Offline mode for solo play, using the same account save as online play. (Fixes #17)

•A save manager in Settings: import an Azimuth save into FH2MP or export your FH2MP save back to Azimuth. Every transfer backs up both saves first; you can also select another profile or restore a backup. (Fixes #27)

•Photo sharing, photo search, and popular and featured photo lists.

•Optional crash reports with a preview of what will be sent and redaction of sensitive log data. Detailed logs and dumps stay private; summaries can be published as GitHub issues when the server is configured for it.

•Website support for browsing lobbies and reporting leaderboard entries. (Fixes #14 #22)

Changed

•Save setup now blocks launch when an existing save cannot be copied. Permission failures offer a retry with administrator access. (Fixes #26)

•The save manager clearly distinguishes Azimuth's default profile from the FH2MP account save shared by online and offline play.

•The launcher installs FH2 Mod Platform 2.7.2 and repairs missing Extra Options settings and legacy TLS-helper installations.

•New gamertags follow Azimuth's naming rules. Older names are adapted for display so they no longer fall back to “Player 1.” (Fixes #3)

•Name moderation uses configurable administrator blocklists.

•The server preserves the game's built-in economy values by default.

•Stronger connection authentication, session limits, score validation, and release verification.

Fixed

•Saves not carrying over from some existing Azimuth installations, including permission errors during setup. (Fixes #26)

•Photo title and description validation returning the wrong number of results and blocking sharing.

•Offline play skipping restoration of a modded car database preserved during online play.

•More lobby crashes caused by invalid or unsupported modded car parts.

•Cars outside a race sharing its collision space, including players who have finished or left the event.

•Free Roam lap-count handling and lap-based race completion.

•Rental cars displaying an incorrect R 999 class on the grid.

•Incorrect leaderboard career levels and Monthly Rivals accepting or offering cars outside the required class.

•Linux file-picker lockups and mod-loader conflicts caused by DLL filename casing.

•Windows updates failing when a running process has loaded a DLL.

•Dev requests reaching the production HTTP host.

•Connection-ticket replay protection failing when its nonce table is full.

•Fixed easter egg.

FH2MP 1.0.0. Please report bugs and feedback in Issues.

1.0.0 is required. Older launchers and shims are turned away; the launcher updates itself, or download it again from the release page.

What's new in 1.0.0

Added

•FH2MP works alongside other FH2 mods: it now runs on the FH2 Mod Platform by Trinculo54, and mods built on it load next to it.

•The launcher downloads the FH2 Mod Platform and FH2 Extra Options from their authors' GitHub releases when your Azimuth folder doesn't have them.

•"Teams: On" in Free Roam events splits players into red and blue.

•Road Trip team races when 4 or more players are in the lobby.

•More rental cars: every Monthly Rivals event offers at least two.

•Experimental "Connect over TCP" setting for networks that block UDP (Settings, off by default).

Changed

•Online races give 10 times as much race XP as before.

•Everyone races with the server's car database, so a car pack only one player has can't crash the others. Cars the server doesn't know show up as a stand-in.

•Free Roam lobbies fill up before new ones open.

•Road Trip: a new lobby's first drive starts at the festival, and drives start where the last event finished.

•Your existing save is carried over in more cases: older Azimuth versions, Azimuth's backup folder, and your other Azimuth folders.

•Rivals: you race the rival you picked, and an empty board races the world record (#12).

•Linux: Azimuth starts with WINEDLLOVERRIDES="winmm,d3dcompiler_47=n,b". Starting it from Steam? Put WINEDLLOVERRIDES="winmm,d3dcompiler_47=n,b" %command% in its launch options.

Fixed

•Starting a Rival from inside an online lobby loaded forever. You now leave the lobby first.

•A 13th player joining crashed the lobby.

•Whole groups kicked from "Setting Up Event".

•Races ending for everyone when a player in the wrong class sat at the finish line.

•Players who left an event staying on the track for everyone else.

•Cars overlapping on the Road Trip arrival screen.

•Rental cars showing "R 999" on the grid.

•Road Trip lobbies breaking when everyone left between events.

•Cars changed after joining a lobby skipping the car checks.

•Offline Drivatars all showing level 4.

•Impossible career levels and speed records on the leaderboards.

Release candidate 5. Please report bugs and feedback in Issues.

rc5 is required. Older launchers and shims are turned away; the launcher updates itself, or download it again from the release page.

What's new in rc5

Added

•The launcher tells you what to do when Azimuth stops at "Your graphics card or driver is not supported".

•XP awards are checked: impossible amounts no longer count toward your total or the XP board.

Changed

•One event at a time per Free Roam lobby: a new race request waits until the running event is over.

•Players who have not loaded an event after 60 seconds are dropped from it, so everyone else can start.

•Cars with parts the game doesn't have appear to other players with stock parts instead of crashing them.

•Class X and R cars no longer appear on Rivals leaderboards.

•Linux: Settings accepts the Proton folder as well as the proton script; the launcher no longer falls back to the system Wine.

Fixed

•Linux AppImage/.deb: "Your graphics card or driver is not supported" on AMD GPUs (#10).

•Linux: "could not start the game: Permission denied" when Proton was set to a folder.

•Rubberbanding in races on busy servers.

•Free Roam events stuck on loading when the host left during the invite, or when two events overlapped.

•Rivals: the n1 player can race again, against their own ghost (no bounty for it).

•Team Forza cars getting their owners kicked.

Release candidate 4. Please report bugs and feedback in Issues.

rc4 is required. Older launchers and shims are turned away; the launcher updates itself, or download it again from the release page.

What's new in rc4

Added

•Outdated launchers and shims are refused with a message that says to update.

•The Windows portable build updates itself from the launcher; the AppImage carries update info for AppImageUpdate.

Changed

•The launcher sets your in-game name and picture on every start (#3).

•Leaderboards show real players only; made-up rivals are off (#1).

Fixed

•The game closing for everyone in a lobby when a player's car has an engine part the game doesn't know.

•Monthly Rivals events ignoring their class in the car selector, including events already running (#2).

•"Player 1" instead of your gamertag, and the mod's default picture (#3).

•Update checks and update downloads failing on some Linux setups (certificate error).

Release candidate 3. Please report bugs and feedback in Issues.

What's new in rc3

Added

•Cars that can't be obtained in the game (traffic vehicles, hidden variants) are blocked online.

Changed

•Speed trap leaderboards are separate per trap.

•Rival times can no longer beat the posted world records.

•King and Infection pick the first infected player or the King while the starting grid is up.

Fixed

•The game closing for everyone in a lobby when a player with a custom design joined.

•"Finding session" never ending after a disconnect.

•Custom liveries not showing on other players' cars.

•King and Infection: wrong mode, "Setting Up Event" hangs, and the event not ending.

•"Leave Club" did nothing. A leader who leaves disbands the club.

•The Online Road Trip tile on the Home screen was locked.

•Dev-channel players ending up on the live game server.

Release candidate 2. Fixes the Windows "searching forever" bug and adds launcher diagnostics. Please report bugs and feedback in Issues.

What's new in rc2

Added

•The launcher shows the real reason when it can't reach the server (for example "certificate has expired" or "timed out") and writes failures to %LOCALAPPDATA%\FH2MP\cache\launcher.log (Linux: ~/.cache/fh2mp/launcher.log).

•King events started from a Free Roam map icon now assign the crown. Infection is told apart from King by the first hit.

Changed

•Launcher connections to the server use IPv4 only.

•If the Windows certificate store causes a certificate error, the launcher retries with its own built-in list of trusted certificates.

•If a system proxy (often set by a VPN or security software) fails, the launcher retries once without it.

•If the reply to registration is lost, the launcher checks whether the account was created before discarding your key.

•A Free Roam circuit race now ends when every player has finished or been cut off, or 30 seconds after the first finisher.

•FH2 Extra Options 0.2.98 is the only supported build. The launcher can install it for you if it is missing (Settings; your own copy is never replaced).

•Linux: the launcher picks the newest Proton it finds and makes its own prefix when no Steam prefix has the game, instead of falling back to the system Wine.

Fixed

•Windows: Free Roam stuck on "searching" or "Unable to join session". The game never binds its UDP socket and relied on the first receive doing it, which Linux allows and Windows rejects, so no packet left the PC.

•Social, Clubs, Rivals and online tiles locked on some PCs: the shim now finds a place to attach on machines where its first choice is taken.

•Free Roam circuit race: the results screen never let you out.

•Free Roam: a player who isn't the party leader got stuck when picking an event.

Website: https://forza.scuffed.af

Very early release candidate. Please report bugs and feedback in Issues.

FH2MP is an open, community-run replacement for the retired Forza Horizon 2 online services. No lobbies to host, no addresses to share: matchmaking finds players for you.

What works

•Car Meets: meet players in the same car park and start Free Roam together.

•Free Roam: match into the first available party and start race events.

•Road Trip: vote for destinations and drive to events together, including the "fun" modes (Infection, King; experimental).

•Paint jobs and tunes: share them with other players.

•Car Clubs.

•Rivals: speed-trap leaderboards and monthly challenges. Challenges are randomised: car restrictions, weather, circuit and time of day.

Requirements

•Your own copy of Forza Horizon 2 (Xbox One build 1.0.0.64), run through [Azimuth 0.9.10](https://almost-there-games.itch.io/azimuth). Other Azimuth versions are untested.

•Windows, or Linux with Proton/Wine (the launcher finds your Steam prefix on its own).

Install

Download one file below:

| System | File |

|---|---|

| Windows | FH2MP-Launcher-…-windows-x64-setup.exe (installer) or …-portable.zip |

| Linux, Debian/Ubuntu | fh2mp-launcher_…_amd64.deb |

| Linux, anything else | FH2MP-Launcher-…-x86_64.AppImage (chmod +x, run) |

fh2mp-shim-….zip is the in-game part; the launcher installs and updates it for you, you don't need to download it.

First run

1. Pick your Azimuth folder.

2. Choose a gamertag (and a picture if you like).

3. Save your recovery code. There is no email and no password: your account is a key on your computer, and the recovery code is the only way to get it back on another PC or after a reinstall.

4. Press Play.

Existing Azimuth progress is picked up automatically. The launcher also keeps the shim up to date (every update is signed and verified) and has an Azimuth settings button for Azimuth's own options. This is a pre-release: the update check only offers pre-releases to pre-release launchers.

Known issues

•No packet-loss recovery yet: fine on a good connection, rough on a bad one.

•Traffic is only partly synced between players. Bucket List cars don't show online yet.

•Not done: friends and presence, Storm Island / Porsche DLC online.

•Windows and Debian-based Linux have had very little testing.

•The very first load in a fresh Azimuth folder can be slow while it builds its caches.

•One small server: comfortable for roughly 60–100 players.

Website: https://forza.scuffed.af