POLF 3D 1.3.1

The game fetches this one itself: [U] on the title screen. Or download polf3d.zip below, unpack it and start
Play.cmd (Windows, PowerShell 7.2 or newer – nothing else).

Changed:

• The weapons are drawn in perspective. Each one is a small model of boxes in metres from the eye, projected with
  the game's own lens: the barrel runs towards the crosshair, the top shows as a narrow lit strip, round parts are
  shaded, and the recoil is the model moving back. No more weapons aimed at the ceiling that hide half the view.
• The game runs without a console window. Play.cmd starts it under a headless console host and is gone at once;
  should the game not start, the reason comes up in a dialog. -Terminal keeps its console, it plays there.
• The window comes first and shows the start-up: every step with a percentage of its own and a bar with the total.
  Only the modules the window needs load before it, so it is up after half a second instead of two.
• A crossed-out speaker under the noise bars and on the title screen says when the music (F4) or the sound is off.
  A track that fails to start says why in the game and is tried again, instead of silencing the music for good.
• The noise bars moved to the top left, under the policy label, out of the weapon's way.

Fixed:

• A rocket that hit a wall lost half its explosion to the wall behind it; explosions and sparks stay whole now, and
  the flamethrower no longer burns behind a wall it is pointed at.
• A locked door is locked for the enemies too: nobody opens the silver door from the far side any more. A thrown
  knife goes through the bars of a window, as a bullet does.
• After an update the old builds of the C# helpers and the music of an older composer stayed in bin/; every start
  sweeps them once the current ones are loaded, and the restart waits for the old game to close first.

SHA256 of polf3d.zip: a725d852527d50f3e49a8dc6dcfa749e0b2a8e2474416d6d18d52a06a00747d2

POLF 3D 1.3.0

Download polf3d.zip below, unpack it and start Play.cmd (Windows, PowerShell 7.2 or newer – nothing else).
This is the last version you have to fetch by hand: from now on the game updates itself.

New:

• The game updates itself. Once a day the title screen asks GitHub for a newer release – one request, in the
  background, and the options menu or -NoUpdateCheck turns it off. When there is one, a line on the title screen says
  so, U shows what is new, and Enter downloads polf3d.zip, checks its SHA256 against the release notes, keeps the
  files it replaces in polf3d-backup-<version>.zip next to the game, installs and restarts. Saved games, settings and
  your own mods stay. ./Start-Polf3D.ps1 -Update does the same from the command line, and Update-Module polf3d
  asks the console.
• Play.cmd is now a launcher that is gone the moment the game runs, so that an update may replace it too. Should
  the game not start, PowerShell keeps the window and the reason on the screen.
• The keys of the title menu stand in brackets: [Enter], [G], [U] ...
• The story of the project, and what it is really about: HOW-IT-WAS-BUILT.md.

Fixed – the first three by Ben Richards (@The-Running-Dev), thank you:

• A map row with an odd number of characters is rejected instead of silently losing its last one.
• A mod whose later section is malformed no longer leaves its earlier sections half installed.
• A saved game is checked in full before a single thing of the running game is replaced: a damaged or foreign file is
  refused and the game goes on.
• The pause menu let you save in the arena and in the onboarding; such a game could never be loaded. There is no
  saving there now.
• Demos and dungeon records name the version that made them. A demo from an older version is reported as such –
  "recorded with POLF 3D 1.2.0, this is 1.3.0" – instead of as doctored.
• A machine managed by an organisation gets a plain answer: the start script checks PowerShell's language mode
  (AppLocker, WDAC) and says what that means, and Play.cmd explains an execution policy set by Group Policy.
• A guest takes the host's bonus map as a name, never as a path.

SHA256 of polf3d.zip: e4c26c3b719bd1a0aa9875bb3b451af7139da4093814f96f730edabe07c5efde

POLF 3D 1.2.0

Download polf3d.zip below, unpack it and start Play.cmd (Windows, PowerShell 7.2 or newer – nothing else).

All three points come from a first player's feedback – thank you.

New:

• The onboarding (N on the title screen, or -Tutorial): a floor of ten rooms, each explaining one mechanism and
  offering what it takes to try it – from doors and sneaking to the powers, the console, sentry guns, darkness and
  loot. The explaining is done by hints, which any map can use: @hint <x> <y> <width> <height> <text>.
• Tab completion in the console: commands, aliases and parameters – and what only the game can know: the kinds of
  enemies on the floor, the files of the terminal, the properties of whatever comes down the pipeline. Tab again takes
  the next candidate. Tab therefore no longer closes the console; Esc does.
• The commands people type by instinct: Get-Door | Set-Door -Open $true and Get-Process | Stop-Process now do
  what one would guess.

POLF 3D 1.1.1

Download polf3d.zip below, unpack it and start Play.cmd (Windows, PowerShell 7.2 or newer – nothing else).

Fixed:

• The window could go "not responding" while a floor was loading (reported on r/PowerShell – thank you). The music of
  a floor used to be composed when the lift arrived, which takes seconds on a slower machine. The whole soundtrack is
  now composed in the background as soon as the game is up, and loading a floor shows what it is doing and keeps the
  window responsive.

POLF 3D 1.1.0

Download polf3d.zip below, unpack it and start Play.cmd (Windows, PowerShell 7.2 or newer – nothing else).

New:

• Three enemies. The bug – small, quick, leaps at you; blow it up and two smaller ones crawl out ("fix one,
  get two"). The engineer – takes hacked sentry guns back, repairs destroyed sentry guns and cameras, patches up
  whoever stands near him. The auditor – unarmed, runs for the nearest terminal, and if he gets there his report
  raises the building's execution policy by a level.
• Two weapons. The taser (0): silent, short of reach, stuns people and switches machines off for good; its
  battery recharges. Mines (Q): put one down, press again – or Invoke-Command in the console – to set it off.
• Loot. Loot tables per enemy, armour (takes half of every hit), keycards (open a locked door for good),
  scrap, rare signed drops that import a module for the rest of the floor, and the silent streak: unnoticed
  kills in a row make them leave more behind.
• A new title screen: left-aligned, the menu as a command line, the controls in three columns showing the keys as
  they are bound, the achievements with a bar.

Fixed:

• The commander dropped a gold key on floors that have no gold door (floor 2) or where he stands behind it (floor 3).
  He now only drops it where it opens something – otherwise his strongbox.

Balance:

• Floors 3 and 5 were too hard on the two easier difficulties: a less crowded entrance to the citadel, an armoured
  vest at the start of both, fewer ambushers in the pillar crypt.
• The arena's waves can bring bugs and engineers; its supply drops include vests, mines and a taser.

Saved games of 1.0.0 still load. Demos recorded with 1.0.0 do not replay: the floors and their loot have changed.

POLF 3D 1.0.0

The first release: the whole game.

Download polf3d.zip below, unpack it and start Play.cmd. Windows and PowerShell 7.2 or newer are all it needs –
no modules, no asset files, no installation. (Play.cmd starts the game with -ExecutionPolicy Bypass for that one
process, because Windows marks scripts from a downloaded ZIP as "from the internet". With git clone you can start
./Start-Polf3D.ps1 directly.)

What is in it:

• A campaign of ten floors and a secret one, four difficulties that really differ, a dozen kinds of enemies
  plus security cameras and sentry guns, three bosses, nine weapons – and an ending that is worth playing for.
• PowerShell is the theme, not just the language: a real, sandboxed PowerShell console in the game with
  pipelines, a $PROFILE, hotkeys and background jobs (a drone); -WhatIf, -Confirm, -Verbose, -Force and
  Undo as powers; files to read on the terminals of every floor; an execution policy for the whole building;
  Install-Module in the lift; a Pester report at the end of every floor.
• Stealth, light and time: noise and sight matter, dark rooms and a flashlight, lockdowns, power failures and
  Patch Tuesday on the floors' schedules.
• More ways to play: the daily dungeon with runs that can be verified, the arena with endless waves (alone or
  in co-op), co-op and deathmatch for up to four over the network with an admin panel for the host, a terminal mode
  that draws the game with half-block characters.
• Everything is generated: textures, about 400 sprites, 47 sounds, the enemies' spoken lines and the music
  (a track per floor) – no asset files at all, and 380 lines of C# next to some 12,000 of PowerShell.
• Around the game: saved games, demos (and demos as animated GIFs), speedrun clock, options with free key
  bindings, game pad, mods as data files, a level editor, a level generator and a headless self-test.