Adds the guestbook functionality.

[rbdr/r.bdr.sh] / jekyll / _posts / 2014-04-13-from-the-journal-polarity-and-cows-updates.md

---
layout: post
title: "From the Journal: Polarity and Cows updates!"
tags: english gamedev cows polarity
color: green
header_image: from-the-journal.png
description: "A quick update of what's been going on with my game
projects. There's some updates on polarity, the magnetic arena shooter;
and a brief overview of what's been going down with cows, the bovine
platform game."
---

I stopped uploading videos of cows development because my computer died a while ago because of water damage, now I'm finally in the land of the living with some gamey updates: Cows and Polarity II are the two games I'm focusing on this year; Polarity II should release sometime this year since it's pretty simple, and Cows should have a one level demo by december.

Polarity II is still being developed with MonoGame and there are now working linux, mac and windows builds (That was the february goal. yay!) The march goal was to get the waves system and the first wave working, but I got sidetracked and didn't get to coding it. I do have some work to show on the wave system though, so here are some blurry pics from the journal.

![The difficulty table][polarity-difficulty-table]

That's the difficulty table for polarity; the plan right now is to have a set of 10 waves, each with different sets of enemies; every time you clear the set you start from wave 1 (eg. 11) but with a new difficulty modifier. The table above lists what I thought was reasonable, though I still need to test it out in-game. There are only four factors to modify: Number of enemies, probability to randomly spawn a scout instead of a regular ship, probability to randomly spawn a shooter instead of a regular ship, andHP multiplier.

![Trying to define waves][polarity-wave-baddies]

I tried to define which enemies to use in which wave, trying to introduce the specials for later levels. Excuse my drawing skills, but here's a guide: round with three prongs = regular ship; droplet = scout; round with many prongs = heavy; concave top + three prongs = shooter; concave top + many prongs = heavy shooter. There's also a small sketch of the wave screen, which now looks like this:

![Polarity wave screen mock][polarity-wave-screen-mock]
[Click to open with annotations.][polarity-wave-screen-mock-annottated]

![First wave of polarity][polarity-first-wave]

I sketched the first wave with a "notation" I improvised and annotated on the side. It's only an idea; I still need to commit it to the big book of levels.

![Animationstuffs][polarity-animations]

For polarity I also sketched out some ideas for the UI, trying to keep the chain information clear but unobstrusive. I mocked the chain break animation and giffed it with [recordit][recordit], which by the way, I help build. So check it out. Please. Not yet though, we're in the middle of something.

![GIF][polarity-animation-mock]

Cows has had a lot of progress too! For starters we're no longer going to use löve2d, it's an awesome tool and I'm really into lua, but we're doing everything in unity now which will make a lot of things waaay easier. [Toily][toily-twitter] jumped in to help and he and I are going to be working on it throughout the year to try and release a demo with part of the hub and vegetable fields.

![The hub][cows-hub]

The hub is pretty simple, but it ties all the other areas together. There's Ushi's dojo in the center, there's the milk bar for some hints, the exits to all the levels, and the fruit store which is important now: Every time you enter the hub from another area, your stomach will be emptied, however, there are fruit seeds found in the different areas which allow you to get the transformation from the fruit store and enter any level with any powerup. That way you'll discover new areas to explore by bringing powerups normally unavailable to already visited zones.

![Level one overview][cows-level-one-overview]

The demo of the game will have the first area available; here's an overview of the basic makeup of the level, including the expected route and a quick sketch of how it's distributed. These blocks don't mach 1:1 to a room though. They're just to easily separate the "zones" inside the vegetable fields.

![Conceptish][cows-level-one-concept]

I tried to draw a visual concept for the vegetable fields; I really want it to be a vegetable wasteland with lots of plantish debris, like ramps made out of giant carrots, giant eggplants half-buried in the ground, etc.

![Sketch of bovine plains][cows-level-one-area-one]

The first area will be bovine plains: that's a quick sketch trying to figure out the paths and expected behaviors. I don't know what I'm doing. In the bottom is an allocation of space for the maps, we have to fit them all and maintain consistency with their position. That's going to mean a lot of sky tiles to the sides of the sky fortress; It would be a shame if someone hid something there.

That's all the updates I have for now. Toily has a bunch of better drawings, it would be awesome if he could share them as well! *\*nudge\**.

[toily-twitter]: http://twitter.com/escusado
[recordit]: http://recordit.co
[polarity-difficulty-table]: /img/articles/from-the-journal/polarity-difficulty-table.jpg
[polarity-wave-baddies]: /img/articles/from-the-journal/polarity-wave-baddies.jpg
[polarity-wave-screen-mock-annottated]: /img/articles/from-the-journal/polarity-wave-screen-mock-annottated.png
[polarity-wave-screen-mock]: /img/articles/from-the-journal/polarity-wave-screen-mock.png
[polarity-first-wave]: /img/articles/from-the-journal/polarity-first-wave.jpg
[polarity-animations]: /img/articles/from-the-journal/polarity-animations.jpg
[polarity-animation-mock]: /img/articles/from-the-journal/polarity-animation-mock.gif
[cows-hub]: /img/articles/from-the-journal/cows-hub.jpg
[cows-level-one-overview]: /img/articles/from-the-journal/cows-level-one-overview.jpg
[cows-level-one-concept]: /img/articles/from-the-journal/cows-level-one-concept.jpg
[cows-level-one-area-one]: /img/articles/from-the-journal/cows-level-one-area-one.jpg