Pizza Tower/Heat Meter
This is a sub-page of Pizza Tower.
One of the mechanics that surprisingly didn't make it into the final game is the Heat Meter, a mechanic that challenged skilled players to get higher scores by killing more enemies. The mechanic was an essential part to progression in levels, as with each enemy you'd hit in a row, the more "heat" you would build up on your meter in three different stages; a normal mode, a sped up mode where enemies would move faster and a "rage" mode where enemies would start performing actions they otherwise wouldn't do, all of which try to hurt the player with little time to react. Getting hit by an enemy or waiting too long to attack another enemy will decrease your heat, so you're encouraged to kill enemies as quickly as possible.
The mechanic was first introduced as a small work-in-progress with some concept art in Thing of the Week 4 with its main premise already set in stone, comparing the mechanic to the one found in God Hand. Some things were changed around, such as being able to lose more points by taking damage and Peppino getting a new ability when he's in full rage. The mechanic was met with critique by the community, resulting in the video getting reuploaded to remove most traces of the concept. It wouldn't be near the end of 2020 with the bunch of changes that the game was going through that the idea was fully implemented and added to the April 2021 Patreon build. It was revised again in the Eggplant Patreon build to only keep in one heat stage to build up higher scores. Rage attacks were also no longer tied to the meter, so rather than enemies activating their rage attacks when the meter is full, specific enemies would perform their rage attacks if a variable was set, regardless of the meter's state. By October 2022, as the game was starting to wrap up development, any in-game remains of the mechanic were removed completely, putting an end to a mechanic that the community was very fifty-fifty about, with an exception for the Pizza Slug, Shrimp Thug and the Tribe Cheese enemies, which has its rage attack enabled by default.
Although most of the code that activates the Heat Meter was removed from the final game, pretty much all the assets and scripts that change enemies' behavior have remained and handful of animations that were made specifically for the mechanic were reused in one way or the other, but the rest has remained inaccessible and unused.
Contents
Sprites
With the exception of spr_tv_exprheat, which was repurposed in The Noise Update, these sprites and palettes are unused.
spr_heatmeter
The meter itself.
spr_heatmeter
The corresponding bar that would fill the meter. even though it's not animated, some frames were modified so the bar wouldn't clip outside the meter.
spr_heatmeter_palette
The heat meter's palette. The palette would change to be more red by each heat stage.
spr_tv_exprheat
A Peppino TV sprite for the meter once Peppino reaches a certain heat stage. Setting global.stylethreshold to a value of 3 or higher will make this sprite appear in place of the default idle sprite. This sprite was later reintroduced in The Noise Update, when Peppino has a combo higher or equal to 50.
Enemy Behavior
With an exception for the Pizza Slug, Shrimp Thug and the Tribe Cheese enemies, the rest of the enemies' rage attacks go unused. They can be re-enabled by setting the variable elite to 1. When enabled, the enemies will perform their rage attacks when the player is in front of them and leaves behind a red trail in some cases.
Cheeseslime
Grabs a bat and moves forward to attack the player.
Forknight
Grows a jetpack from the back and slowly charges forward.
Swedish Monkey
Leaves behind a banana with an evil grin. Touching it hurts the player.
Mini John
Jumps in the air to perform a kick attack. This replaces its punch attack.
Pencer
Holds his position and suddenly lunges forward.
Flying Anchovy
Swells up and drops itself from the sky until it hits a solid object. This replaces its charge attack and doesn't care what direction you're facing unlike other enemies.
Noise Goblin
Shoots an arrow that follows and circles around the player. The arrow disappears a few seconds later.
Pickle
Duplicates itself once when becoming visible again. If one of the enemies is killed, it'll just duplicate again.
Ninja Slice
Flings its arms around and shoots bullets. This replaces its kick attack.
Pizza Soldier
Grabs a pizza slicer to attack the player.
Cardboard Tank
Charges towards the player. Because the enemy is programmed to stay stationary at all times, the enemy can't do its rage attack anymore.
Some enemies also have had its rage attacks stripped from its code or weren't coded in, but sprites still exist.:
Pineacool
Spins around to harm the player.
Spit Cheese
Spits out a bigger projectile.
U.F.Olive
Drops a different projectile than it did earlier in development. Its rage sprite is otherwise identical to its scared sprite.
Snowman
Slides a bit faster.
Incorrectly Assigned Scripts
One thing of note is that two Cheeseslime enemies were possibly intended to have their rage attacks enabled in the first room of The Crumbling Tower of Pizza. However, their assigned scripts are set to be a room pre-creation code script, not a creation code script. Below is what's seen in the script.
escape = 1 elite = 1
If this is corrected, the enemies will enable their rage attacks and will spawn from a John Enemy Spawner.
Early Heat Meter Revisions
Perfection takes time, and the Heat Meter went through a few revisions.
Revision 1
The first revision is the exact same meter seen in Thing of the Week 4. It's simple, lacks any real animations and was reused for (the also scrapped) hard mode. The "under" variants were likely for the meter to increase, which doesn't happen in hard mode and leaves these unused.
spr_heatmeter1
A happy pizza.
spr_heatmeter1under
A happy pizza, mirrored.
spr_heatmeter2
A pizza with a straight face.
spr_heatmeter2under
A pizza with a straight face, mirrored.
spr_heatmeter3
A pizza with an angry face.
spr_heatmeter3under
A pizza with an angry face, mirrored.
spr_heatmeter4
A pizza with a red face. The bar has now turned into skulls.
spr_heatmeter4under
A pizza with a red face, mirrored.
Revision 2
The second revision, dubbed the Style Bar in the game's files (though was still called the Heat Meter by the developers) was created specifically for the old HUD with Peppino's face. A cloud would appear above Peppino's head and go up as you killed more enemies. In order, you would go from MILD, to ANTSY, to MAD, and finally to CRAZY with a small meter below the text that went down if you waited long enough, much like the meter that was presented in the April 2021 Patreon build.
spr_mild
Mild bubble.
spr_mildpop
Mild bubble pop in/out.
spr_antsy
Antsy bubble.
spr_antsypop
Antsy bubble pop in/out.
spr_mad
Mad bubble.
spr_madpop
Mad bubble pop in/out.
spr_crazy
Crazy bubble.
spr_crazypop
Crazy bubble pop in/out.
spr_stylebar
The small stylebar itself that was given an outline in-game.
Once you reached the CRAZY phase, the enemies' palettes would change and remain that way until your meter went down to the MAD phase. Five palettes still exist in the final game, though there was a sixth palette for the Cheeseslime enemy, which was overwritten by its Snotty palette.
palette_forknight
palette_pepgoblin
palette_pizzard
spr_swedishmonkey_palette
spr_minijohn_palette
A Forknight with golden armor.
A Pepperoni Goblin turned purple. The palette's colors were reused for the Pepperoni Goblin Bat and this palette was at first made for the Noise's Hardoween build.
A Pizzard in a different suit. Just like the enemy on the left, the palette was made for the Noise's Hardoween build.
A Swedish Monkey with brighter fur and a red helmet.
A Mini John turned pink.
Score Multipliers
The Heat Meter's predecessor is closer to what it was in the Eggplant Patreon build, simply acting as a score multiplier rather than a new difficulty for the player if they're doing well. There's two variants of these, neither of which were playable in any released build.
Revision 1
This score multiplier would've placed itself on the top middle of the screen and had a multiplier, with x16 giving you 16 points with each enemy killed or topping collected. To raise the bar, simply kill enemies or collect toppings, and the bar will slowly start to raise. You can drop the bar by not hitting enemies or collecting toppings for a few seconds. While the sprites for the bar no longer exists, their multipliers (titled spr_styles) do. This revision was only used from April 14th to April 30th 2019.
The Cheesy multiplier's sprite likely became the basis for the Cheesy combo rating sprite. Hot Dog would also later become the second highest rating for Golf challenges.
Cheesy x1.
Mildly Spicy x2.
Stupid x4.
Not Bad But Not Hotdog x8.
Hot Dog x16.
Revision 2
This score multiplier would've gone directly under the old TV HUD (titled spr_stylepizza and spr_stylepizzadown), resembling a pizza box. This multiplier works the same functionality wise, but now a different text color would raise up with every enemy killed or topping collected. This revision was initially used from May 1st to May 15th 2019, however, it was updated again between the Boss_v12 and Desert Playtest Patreon builds to the design seen below, changing the displayed score amount to an actual multiplier that would multiply your score up to four times with each topping collected. This was around the time when the Heat Meter was proposed, so this was likely related or a variant of the meter for a short time.
Pizza Pizza (x1) unraised text.
Pizza Pizza (x1) raised text.
OK Pizza (x2) unraised text.
OK Pizza (x2) raised text.
Super Pizza (x3) unraised text.
Super Pizza (x3) raised text.
Devil Pizza (x4) unraised text.
Devil Pizza (x4) raised text.
