Restitched: Recapped! | May 2025

April showers bring May flowers! In this case, April's progress brings May's... well, further progress!

Welcome back to a new Recapped! post, where we cover our team's main developments from the month! We're so excited to share more of our progress with you, so let's check it out!

Animator Livestream

On May 18th, we held an Animator Livestream with one of our two 3D Animators, Luke (Saurus). We had such a blast in our Discord server, with loads of community members joining in to watch and pitch emote ideas for Stuffy!

If you're curious about which emote ideas were chosen and created, check out the Animation section later in this post!

Full Song Reveal: "Nana's Reading Nook"

Also in May, we posted a full song to our YouTube, social media accounts, and Discord server. This song is one of our favorites, and it's titled "Nana's Reading Nook"! Check it out here.

Restitched: Movement + Animation Update

After feedback to the Official Trailer from December, we've been busy further tuning and polishing Stuffy's movement to be more responsive and look more natural. We hope this video is a promising glimpse of our much-requested progress in this area!

Are you curious to know more about what's changed, and see the full video? Check out the post here.

Cosmetic Bones Jiggle

At long last, we have jiggle! Thanks to DeRose, Halston, and Yousef, we have created a new workflow to update existing assets with bones and scripting for physics effects.

This was quite the challenge (and still is) because our custom Cosmetics tools don't technically support this. Through some clever workarounds and trial and error, we were able to add this feature anyway.

However, for now, it is only supported on non-bending items (tails, hair, wings, ears, etc.), and not for clothing.

Saved Outfit Icon Generation

Lewis has been working on an automatic saved outfit icon generation feature. This will generate a preview in the Craftbook for any outfits you've saved, which should then be reused in the Workshop if you want to publish them.

Fixes are still in order for the lighting, deformations, and performance of these icons.

Collision Tool Improvements

Josh has improved the Collision Tool by highlighting any non-colliding objects. Now it's easier to see which things have collision or not, and a simple click will toggle it! You can also enable or disable collision for objects in its Settings Panel under the 'Physics' subpage.

Gameplay Camera Settings

Linus has added lots of handy new camera settings to the Level Settings page! You can now adjust the default gameplay camera's tilt across any axis, roll/dutch, field of view, and/or depth offset.

Don't worry, you can also override these per zone by placing a Camera object in the level!

New Outfit Sets

3D Artist Issac has created a new Cardboard Stuffy outfit set. This is one of the earlier looks at its progress:

Yousef has created a new Military Stuffy outfit, complete with uniformed clothing, boots, and a helmet! This is still in development.

Light Sources

Santiago has created three new light source objects for the game, such as a Hanging Lamp, a Modern Sconce, and a Ship Light.

New Stamps

Carter has created a small bundle of new Stamps. These are primarily made to be useful in the Wardrobe, so the batch includes a few character-related graphics!

Clothing Reference/Template

Yousef has modeled a new mesh template for artists. This wraps around Stuffy's body and is handy for some of our developers, as they can more easily and quickly make certain clothing. Very nice!

New Scrubs Textures

Cade has updated the 'Medical Scrubs' outfit upon request. The goal was to retexture it for an optional pattern Swatch and to make the pockets more visible.

New Skins

Issac has created a large batch of new Stuffy skins! These will be useful bases for many player outfits. These are still in development.

Bill O' Wright Outfit

Renaissance geek? Founding father enthusiast? Receding hairline advocate? In any case, we've got just the style for you.

Sports Jersey

Stuffy hasn't the first clue about sports, but they said the jersey was pretty comfy anyway.

Knight Armor Outfit

Stuffy is slaying, but literally this time. Wield the sword and shield, slip into your metal and chainlink, and head to the battlefield.

Rat Base Items

Member of the Rat Gang(TM)? Then look no further... Your Stuffy can now be a sewer dweller, too! This is part of a full outfit set, but by using the base items you can make your own rat outfits.

Magic Wand Toy

Requested by Halston and modeled by Yousef, Stuffy now wields the magical powers of this lovely, glowing toy wand...

New Hairstyles

All-new hairstyles (and a head item) were added for Stuffy!

Hookshot Feature (N&T)

Linus has added a new Hookshot mechanic to the Needle 'n Thread (N&T) feature. This can be toggled inside the Settings Panel for an object after making it "Threadable". You can choose between Grapple or Hookshot behaviors.

Hookshot behavior means you will zip toward the needle at an accelerating speed and be released automatically. You can also choose to let go in advance, which will maintain your momentum and allow for some clever gameplay!

Note: This feature is still in development, so the speeds are not final and there is currently no character animation while using it!

Double-Jump Setting

Stuffy can now double-jump! This is a super fun way to traverse levels and solve environmental platforming puzzles. You can toggle this feature in the Level Settings page.

Because this makes 3D traversal so much easier and more interesting, we were considering making this a default part of Stuffy's moveset. An internal team vote ruled slightly in favor of this, but the jury is still out! What do you think?

Note: This is still in development, so the animation, effects, and strength are not yet finalized.

Logic Concept

While the backend of the logic system is still being developed and planned out (it's a beast of a task!), Halston has created a new concept with some ideas for how logic might be presented:

In this concept, we have two design styles: square and circle. The shapes represent different types of logic, which are explained in the image. The names are not final.

Blueprint sheets/panels are our way of containing and organizing logic, similar to what you know as a 'Microchip'. We hope for logic to be placeable mid-air anywhere in the level as its own object, or optionally parented to the surface of things -- especially if you want the logic to affect them.

Dev Thoughts: It's tricky to design concepts for systems that aren't fully developed from the coding side yet, like logic. Some design choices will be influenced by the limitations and behaviors of the code, while some code will be influenced by the design. This is why logic is a long, tedious, complex process that requires coders and artists to work together over long periods. Each version has to be innovated on and problem-solved together!

In Restitched, the logic system must work in tandem with many existing features and objects. This is a tall order, and also the reason the logic system wasn't started sooner. To control all things in the game, those things must first exist.

Our idea with the logic system is to innovate on what our inspirations have done, while also trying to achieve what's within our limited scope as hobbyist developers. We understand the importance of a feature like this, especially when it powers most of the gameplay ideas we have!

Originally, the concepts were quilts with fabric patches. This idea is still one we love, but we thought we'd try a 'blueprints' approach, as this is more in line with the existing UI style and is universally known for its logical look. Time will evolve this idea and its look!

Item Info Page (Workshop)

When viewing a level's details and options (such as playing, liking, etc.), we need a dedicated page for it. So far, we've used a placeholder in the game. It works, but it's not very pretty! This month, Halston proposed a new layout and design for the page:

The idea is to support multiple images or screenshots of a level listing, recommend similar levels to players (with a priority for 'more by author' if possible), a full leaderboard list, and handy stats and analytics. Though it isn't a priority for us yet, this is a good direction for where we might go with the Workshop menus in-game!

Color Balance Update

Halston has gone through the game and updated the way colors are used in menus. All non-interactive headers are now a white color instead of sharing the same color as buttons.

This helps to break up the visual layout of things, and it's now more clear what's interactive and what isn't.

Halston explains further:

Settings Menu

Our in-game Settings menu has been mostly completed now, thanks to Jake's efforts in coding and preparing it all! You can now change visual and sound settings, or tweak various other gameplay behaviors.

Stuffy Shapekeys/Deformers

Our Lead Artist, DeRose, has been battling the setup of shapekeys and deformations on Stuffy for a while now! When we fix one issue, another rears its ugly head.

In this case, shape keys that were meant to make Stuffy skinnier under certain clothing would be ignored and overridden by emotes or certain gameplay movements.

Fireworks Rockets and Explosions

When a firework missile explodes, it's meant to force away dynamic objects that are light enough in mass. For some reason, this doesn't work at the moment:

Fireworks weren't quite sensitive enough when impacting surfaces at a lower speed. This caused them not to explode, which was a bit awkward! A couple of tweaks and a new default speed should fix this.

Stamp Import Bug

When we moved to a new Stamping and shader system, we were required to generate a sprite physics shape around all graphics you can place. This is how the game detects them, highlights them, and lets you pick them up when hovered over.

A small oversight with our custom Stamp editor tool means this physics shape doesn't regenerate itself to match a new graphic when you import one in place of an existing Stamp. For example, if you place a rubber duck Stamp and swap its image with a triangle, the physics shape will still be a rubber duck... meaning anything not within that shape won't render when placed!

Wardrobe Stamp Shader Bug

When Stuffy has a Stamp placed on them in the Wardrobe, the lighting is only shadow-accurate for the head and body. The neck area seems to ignore shadows. This is because of the way the shader handles multiple light and shadow passes on an object.

We had a very similar issue with our Building Materials being stamped, which luckily means we might know an easy fix!

Pedestal Dizziness

We've added a 'dizzy' effect to the Wardrobe pedestal. When you spin Stuffy enough with the arrow buttons, they will react by ramping up in speed and trying to keep balance! When you stop, they'll recover with a dizzy animation.

Improved Blending + Rise/Fall

We've made big improvements to Stuffy's overall tuning in recent months, but the past few weeks were also spent improving certain movement animations, the method of blending them in Unity, and creating more expressive reactions when rising or falling at strong enough velocities. You can see the full effect in our movement update video, which was linked earlier!

Animator Livestream Emotes

As mentioned earlier in the post, our Animator Livestream on the Discord server was a blast! We all had a few good laughs thanks to Luke's contagious energy and funny animations. <3

We'd love to do this again sometime, but for now, let's check out some of the emotes made at the community's request:

The community also had a field day with memes! We saw a lot of funny GIFS captured from the stream:

Further Sound FX Support

Falling wind effect (with fading), hopping down, climbing up, undo/redo in Wardrobe, and selecting a tool in the Toolbar are all examples of the new sound effects assignments that were supported via Gabe's code this month!

Jake has also helped by adding new sound effects to the Workshop menu as it opens and closes. Several sound effects have been or are currently being moved over to our TrixelAudio system.

Music Tracks Imported

Our musician, Thomas, has been creating songs faster than we can get around to importing them! This month, Halston spent some time importing and setting up several new music tracks for the game. This clears up our backlog a bit until more tracks are ready.

Cpt. Stuffy Comic

If you've been around for a while, you'll know that we have a spin-off comic in the Restitched world called 'The Grandiose Tales of Cpt. Stuffy'! Last year, we announced that this comic would be released in 2025 as a complete collection, with limited physical prints.

This effort is still underway, and our Cpt. Stuffy artists have already been touching up old pages while still wrapping up the final two pages to come. We're excited to conclude our journey with Cpt. Stuffy and Puddles soon!

"Trixel Spotlight" aims to highlight exceptional community content, whether fan art, commentary, or even in-game creations!

Note: Featured content does not endorse, confirm, or deny any ideas, misinformation/speculation, and is simply a way of bringing attention to community efforts!

Restitched April 2025 recapped!: TONS OF NEW STUFF! (by: Marneyy)

Community member Marneyy has created a handy video that covers April 2025's Recapped post! Check it out for some of the highlights we showed last month.

Lara Craft

Silent Stuffy

Test Level - Blink Bubbles

That's all for now!

Thanks for checking up on our progress this month, and feel free to let us know what your favorite bits were!

Development takes a long time, but "you can't rush perfection" they say. We're very grateful for your patience and support, and we hope these transparent glimpses into our progress are satiating your Restitched hunger a bit!

See you next time!...