Shitzza Ballistica by Archaeognathus
Have you ever had the desire to eat a pizza with a weird topping... or had a stroll through the park and though to yourself "Oh wow, I would really apprechiate someone blasting a pizza in my direction!"? If you answer at leats one of these questions with "how did you know that?!", this game might be for you (otherwise I'd still be happy of you want to try).
My italian colleagues kept complaining about what I put on my pizza. I somehow seem to have made such a bad impression that I even get blamed for other, unrelated things, because of it. When I saw the theme of this game I came up with this idea to get back at them. If any of them sees this... have mercy on me!
This is my very first Ludum Dare and my second game jam ever (first one is 10 days ago), so I'm not very experienced. I usually use python for other, mostly hobby things, but thought this might be a fun challenge. I'm by no means a professional programmer, but am happy to share my code (my version of python is 3.9.13, with pygame version 2.3.0). This was the longest time I ever spend coding and making graphics in one go. It was a lot of work, but I enjoyed it very much. I only regret that I did not menage to include some trees to make the environment a bit more pretty, but during the day I work with algae, so who needs trees? ;)
Feel free to comment. I'm also happy to hear your maximum score. In the meantime I'm going to enjoy some of your games!
The game is controlled with the mouse and the two left columns of your keyboard (1, Q, A, Z/Y, 2, W, S, X), but this is also shown again on the title screen.
------ Sources ------
Graphics - Graphical assets created by myself during the jam
Font - "Fibberish" by Nathan Scott https://caffinate.itch.io/fibberish
Music and sound - FilmCow royalty free sound effects library by FilmCow https://filmcow.itch.io/filmcow-sfx - Italian Opera by Steve Oxen https://www.fesliyanstudios.com/royalty-free-music/downloads-c/italian-music/67 - "yes", "no" and "ey" recorded and edited by me
Ratings
| Overall | 734th | 3.444⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 627th | 3.389⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 374th | 3.593⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 716th | 3.786⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 812th | 3.296⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 253th | 3.685⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 900th | 3.167⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 23🗳️ | 46🗨️ |
Is there any easy fix?
10/10 would pizza tank again
+ The ingredient bubble flashing was a little annoying (especially when it got to 3 of them), maybe you could make the bubble larger and fit all the required ingredients on it
+ Sometimes the mail boxes spawned right beside the person and was impossible to get them, you could detect these cases and destroy the mail box or move it slightly out of the way.
+ The gravity (vertical speed) you have applied to the people could be good on the pizza as well, as the people went down I missed my head shots and had to aim for their feet (which is not where the pizza goes).
Unfortunatly there is no easy fix. This seems to be a longstanding issue with the python package (pyinstaller) that I use to convert the game to an exe. It packages my python environment with it. I read that some windows defenders react badly to this. So far I havn't found any alternative or solution for this problem.
Running the source code should not be an issue, but that requires python and the required packages (pygame) to be installed, so I get that this is too annoying for people to try out a game :'(
I already noticed when doing my final testing that the two columns for controls are a bit weird and that two rows would be better, but at that time I was already committed too much. I will probably update this for a future version.
I'm not very familiar with the process of creating a python package, but to my knowledge this requires "official" authorization, appart from the packaging, and you still need to have python installed. This seems like a lot of effort for a game. If you already have python and pygame, you can also just run the source code :thinking:
But I might be wrong!
This was surprisingly challenging, but way more fun than a jam game about shooting pizzas from a tank has any right to be <3
I think you are actually much better at it than I am ... I dont think I ever got such a high score xD
I like the humour as I can relate to this although I'm not Italian nor do I know anyone who is.
The music fits perfectly :thumbsup:
My highscore was 1550 after about 10 minutes of playing
@igly Yay another Ubuntu user! Sorry for not having a dedicated linux version. I coded this on my windows PC and usually run everything from source on linux. I appreaciate your dedication of still giving it a try.Your highscore is very similar to where I also usually end up :D
Do the people want both the strawberry **and** the pretzel? maybe show both ingredients at once.
Also maybe start off with just two ingredients, and each customer only wants one, then a customer wants both.
**Then** introduce more ingredients.
Ingredient selection is very confusing. Not sure of a better layout or control scheme, but this one doesn't work, imo.