Heat Meter

This is a sub-page of Pizza Tower.

Mockup of the score HUD with the meter attached.

One of the mechanics that surprisingly didn't make it into the final game is the Heat Meter, which challenged skilled players to get higher scores by killing more enemies. With each enemy you'd hit in a row, the more "heat" you would build. There were three heat stages: a normal mode, a sped-up mode where enemies would move faster, and a "rage" mode where enemies would start performing new attacks with little time for the player to react. Getting hit by an enemy or waiting too long to attack another enemy would decrease heat, so players were encouraged to kill enemies as quickly as possible. The mechanic was easily one of, if not the most controversial mechanic added to the game during its five-year development, causing many arguments among fans before its eventual removal in late 2022.

Conceived in 2019 as a simple score multiplier, the Heat Meter was revealed as a small work-in-progress with some concept art in Thing of the Week 4 with its main premise already set in stone, based on a similar mechanic in God Hand. It was quickly removed from the video following negative feedback, but was re-revealed in December 2020 in Thing of the End of the Year and first appeared in the April 2021 Patreon build. The Heat Meter divided the community, with many feeling that it was counterintuitive to the game's flow and punished skilled players rather than rewarding them. As a result, it was reverted to its original concept as a score multiplier in Eggplant Patreon build, with only 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 was full, specific enemies would perform their rage attacks if a variable was set, regardless of the meter's state.

In October 2022, as development was wrapping up, the Heat Meter was removed in its entirety. The only visible remnants of the Heat Meter in the final game are the Pizza Slug, Shrimp Thug and the Tribe Cheese enemies having their rage attacks enabled by default and the TV HUD recycling sprites made for the mechanic when Peppino has a combo higher or equal to 50. While most of the code that activated the Heat Meter was removed, pretty much all the assets and scripts that change enemies' behavior remain in the files.

Sprites#

With the exception of spr_tv_exprheat, which was repurposed in The Noise Update, these sprites and palettes are unused.

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. Note that this attack belongs to the old tank object, obj_tank, and not the one used in the final game, obj_bazookabaddie.

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. Remnants of the code still exist, but the code that enables the attack is missing, so it's impossible to load into the game normally.

Spit Cheese Spits out a bigger projectile. There's still references to the rage attack in the code, but it shoots out the wrong projectile when modified to work.

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. This attack was seemingly never added in the game during the existence of the Heat Meter.

Noisey They hold their breath, entering the second phase. This might be their rage attack, however it's currently unknown due to the rage attack never being programmed in.

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_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_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_cheeseslime (Before the Snotty palette overwrote the Heat palette)

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 swapped 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. This may have been an inspiration for Gerome, as the colors match the color of his body perfectly.

A Cheeseslime with a blue color. This first appeared in the Noise's Hardoween build. However, in the final game, it has been overwritten by the Snotty color.

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.

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.