Restitched: Recapped! | February 2025

Restitched is a fitting name for a game that often needs restitching itself! During February, we've been doing just that. Using the power of creativity, code, and passion, we've pushed progress forward with a wide range of changes and additions!

Let's look into exactly what that means...

 Valentine's Day

On February 14th, we celebrated a day of love with a special new Stuffy render showcasing two plush pals hugging it out! Adorable, aren't they?

Discord Community Survey

In the first weeks of the month, we posted an anonymous public survey for our Discord community to take part in. We received a couple hundred responses and made sure to read every single bit of feedback!

By hosting these surveys each year, it really helps us connect with you all and learn more about what you're hoping to see in our community, on our social platforms, in the game, and far beyond.

We've read some incredibly kind words that truly motivate us, and we've also read some valid constructive criticism from a few passionate community members.

Some of the example questions we took samples of included production of Stuffy plushies, public game demos, private testing ideas, how you find the game's branding, if the Discord server is comfortable, if you like to feel represented through games with character cosmetics, and more...

Wardrobe Animations (trixel+)

Also happening earlier in February, we posted an exclusive new video for our Patreon members. It showcases our progress as we work to add new reactions and animations while you're dressing up Stuffy in the Wardrobe!

Members were quite excited about this one, and we received a few comments about how polished and cute things already look. Rest assured, we have much more to do, and expect it'll get even better!

Public Asset Previews

Many of our Patreon supporters will be familiar with the Asset Preview posts we release nearly every month. Even though these images are unlocked for free after one month, we like to push out an announcement for the public every so often to remind everyone of the amazing assets!

Logic Update

We're still knee-deep into the important starting work for our logic system. Our Lead Coder, Raphael, is no stranger to a challenge. This is why we're all super excited to see his developments toward this ambitious, game-changing feature!

We don't have much to show just yet, as much of the work is happening on the back-end side. However, Raphael shared an update on connecting wires to nodes, saying:

If you look carefully, you can now see port indicators under the cable! Its positioning can be changed by tweaking LogicNode. Next step is to allow users to add cables. My plan for AND gates is to make an extra input port appear when the cursor is near the gate, that way there is no need to go into the gate settings to increase or decrease the number of ports. It's easier that way for an MVP.

Additionally, I haven't implemented anything other than NOT or AND gates. For the most part, I'm not using [former] code as it was limiting how much we could optimise the performance of the system in the future. I've split the code now in the hope that it will make optimisations for huge logic graphs easy later.

The simulation already is running on another thread.

TrixelAudio Updated

Our custom sound system isn't used for everything in the game, but it does allow us to utilize the "sound bank" and "sound effects asset" features. This means we can more easily assign multiple sound files to play randomly, such as footsteps or physics impacts. It also means we can decide exactly how we want these sounds to be played when triggered by our code.

Gabe expanded support for the sound assets this month, meaning we can now randomize pitch and volume, or even loop sounds if needed! This has been a huge improvement across the game and has also helped us avoid annoying repetition when placing things or hovering over icons in menus.

Debug Transactions

Sometimes major things break in the game, and it's easier to trace it back to the stored "transactions" than to guess the issue. For example, if the game soft locks after moving around nodes in the Shape Tool then it's likely an issue where the game doesn't commit/save the changes as it should.

To help with this across its many useful cases, Raphael has added a debug option to show when transactions are uncommitted.

Stuffy Expressions

DeRose has added support for Stuffy's eyes to animate properly. This means using shapekeys to build expressions and calling upon them properly in the code. Now when Stuffy emotes or attacks you'll notice their face updates appropriately!

We hope to later expand this support into a player choice, so you could visit the "Emotes" page from the Wardrobe and assign the animations you want to play or the default expression you'd like your Stuffy to wear. However, this is just a "cherry on top" idea, as we have much bigger fish to fry first!

Ragdoll Experimentation

DeRose and Halston have often talked about adding fun ragdoll physics to Stuffy. This is mainly useful for when your Stuffy dies, but could also be turned into an optional feature to ragdoll anytime for a bit of fun sandbox silliness.

Halston set up the ragdoll support in Unity as a quick test. Despite a very obvious issue with the hands and a lack of tuning, it worked surprisingly well from the start!

DeRose is likely to revisit this idea later with his own expertise, and he already has an idea of how to fix the broken ragdoll hands.

Bear Trap and Firework 

Santiago modeled a new Bear Trap and Firework object this month. We were inspired by the idea of a Bear Trap from our community, and our take on the game's missile projectile is currently themed as a handcrafted firework.

You can see a very rough and early prototype of it working below. Please note that our death effects, animations, and the trap have not been polished yet.

New and Edited Stamps

Carter gave us a batch of lovely new Architecture Stamps in January, and this month Halston began importing them into the game.

We've also imported new Stamps from Daniel, which feature the Needle 'n Thread!

You may also notice a recolored "Rock 'n Roll Hand" Stamp. We've decided to shift the color on this one to add a purple gradient.

Cosmetic Models

In the next section you'll see loads of lovely Wardrobe assets and changes, but for now, let's take a look at some new models before they reached the game itself.

Our 3D Artists Yousef and Issac have been making amazing progress in building up Stuffy's Wardrobe choices! This is a really exciting aspect of the game for us, as we all love self-expression and customization. Seeing Stuffy take on different looks is so much fun!

Pencil:

Teddy Bear:

Office Lady:

Wooden Sword and Gopnik:

Bill O'Wright:

Basic Skin Textures: (wood, dodgeball, plaster)

Armored Knight:

Goat Outfit Update

We're still making progress on the Goat outfit! We haven't quite nailed the Skin texture yet, but Lead Artist DeRose has chimed in to help, offering advice and a drawing (not pictured) to help Issac improve the pattern.

This kind of collaboration is not only essential but also helps everyone improve their skills and styles. Learning new things and strengthening our abilities is a huge benefit to working on a hobbyist project like Restitched!

Detail Overlays

Though it's a little hard to spot in these photos, we've been passing over some of our Cosmetics and adding fabric normal maps. This is done because each artist has their own art style, but adding a bit of consistency through fabric patterns will make the assets seem more consistent.

We've also done this to avoid things seeming too flat, stylized, or unfinished. Both versions look incredible, but for a plushie, we're leaning more toward large knits and visible seams! Stuffy is so small (especially in gameplay), so we must make details large enough to be seen.

Outfit Imports

As shown earlier, our artists have created some awesome new outfits for Stuffy! This month, Halston has been working through the backlog to import these and set them up in Unity to match the references:

We often need to manually edit textures to create a recolorable version. Every asset in the game must use a grayscale texture map to properly support the Design Tool. It's this grayscale texture that gets multiplied with a color overlay to create the recolored item you see in-game!

Item Imports

Outfits weren't the only thing we imported! Halston has also been sorting through individual new items and prepping them for use in the game. When making a Cosmetic, it goes through quite the journey. The artist makes it according to our set guidelines, posts it for feedback, makes tweaks (if needed), then rigs it to our Stuffy source file and uploads it for importing.

From there, it's set up for the game's custom datasets, and its source textures are often edited to support recoloring. Then, the dataset must be reimported and a special icon photography tool needs to be run in a separate game scene to capture each icon and assign it to the "Cosmetics Dataset".

Wardrobe Lighting Update

This month saw us taking a deeper dive into the Wardrobe now that it's close to becoming feature-complete. Halston has adjusted some items in the background and added support for the Wardrobe to have its own dedicated lighting (and not inherited from the level, which was a bug).

Part of these changes meant recoloring and relighting the Wardrobe from near-scratch. We even disabled some lights and effects to make things more performance-friendly!

See a before + after of the Wardrobe's lighting changes:

You might notice a missing back spotlight. This helps create a dark void behind Stuffy so they stand out better in the scene. The stars are more clearly lit and reflective, a front light shows Stuffy better, and a rim light casts a subtle glow on the back side of the character.

Outfit Action Effects

When resetting your Stuffy or choosing a saved outfit, there are now particles and sound effects to make things really "pop"! This level of polish is so satisfying to see, and it makes things noticeably more fun and playful!

Force Return to Editor

We've faced a small dilemma with the behavior of level editor tools when Stuffy is playable. There are just too many bugs and edge cases to consider when you can make a tool active while Stuffy is also in the scene.

So, our Project Leads have concluded that we need to force a return to the "level editor" view when you try to place something or select any tool while Stuffy is active in the scene.

This is a trivial change that you'd hardly notice. The only benefit we found to keep the feature was being able to build or move something around while your Stuffy stands beside it for reference of scale, but even that was not very useful in practice!

Input bugs aside, the camera angles are quite different between these two game states, which makes it too impractical to build while playing as Stuffy. Not to mention, invisible objects wouldn't show up but could still be grabbed by accident. We'll consider this fish fried and move on to something more important now!

Gravity Increased

The global gravity for the project and new level saves is now -16.0 instead of -15.0. This is a further increase from last month's trailer feedback tweaks.

We've made this change as we continue to tighten and balance the gameplay controls and the "feel" of weight for objects and placeable materials.

Spider Redesign

Part of the trailer feedback we received was a slight distaste for the look of the spider. We've gathered some artists and other devs to discuss it, and have agreed that it didn't feel finished and didn't seem threatening enough.

We've asked the original concept artist, Ari, to revisit the idea with some changes that can still be made without breaking the Spider's rig or animations:

Santiago, the original 3D Artist behind the Spider, has started making these changes to the model hopefully giving it more detail and a menacing look. We have several other ideas for improving it, but we'll show those when they're ready!

Sheep Ears

Daniel made a quick concept for Sheep Ears after several Discord members mentioned this animal in our "Wardrobe Wishlist" thread!

Firework / Missiles

Daniel also made a fun concept sheet for Missiles, some of which would make for great Stamps in the game!

New Main Menu + News Panels

The User Interface received a lot of TLC throughout the month. Do you remember last month's concept for a new main menu? Well, our UI/graphic designer, Halston, has begun importing assets for it and setting things up in Unity!

We haven't gotten around to showing the player's Stuffy model in the menu yet, so what you're seeing is a placeholder image. However, we did create a fairly basic new script that displays Steam news for the game. This news is showcased in the panels on the right side of the screen, and clicking them will take you to the full post!

Main Menu Aspect Ratio Fixes

Raphael pointed out that the new main menu didn't properly support different aspect ratios. Halston tweaked some UI elements to allow better stretching and squashing for 4:3 or even ultra widescreen monitors.

Optimized Menu Designs

This may look mostly the same, but a huge effort this month involved optimizing and streamlining loads of UI prefabs! Buttons were reused across the game but lacked consistency with each other. This is because developers were tweaking the size and settings of each button instead of the source button they all derived from.

Halston went through several scenes and prefabs to better support dynamically resizing UI. Now, any button can be tall, long, short, or otherwise... and all right out of the box! No special adjustments are needed.

Skins Chapter

Halston posted a vote this month asking to move the "Skins" category to its own chapter/page in the Craftbook.

This is because it became pretty tedious to find Skins buried somewhere in the list of body items. With a growing library of assets, it was an easy choice to tidy things up and place them in their own section.

Centered Prompts in Wardrobe

The Control Prompts we mentioned last month needed some fixes and design tweaks, which has now been mostly completed. Though, one irritating issue was that they aligned to the center of the screen even with the Craftbook open!

 This felt a bit awkward... so we centered it (and the toolbar) to Stuffy, which is actually the center of the screen if you don't count the Craftbook. Did you catch all that?!

Craftbook Scroll Bar

For a while, we've put off the idea of adding a scrollbar to the Craftbook. Not because it isn't useful or desired, but because we didn't think it was urgent and had no idea how to go about it easily.

As is the case with many things, it was so much easier than we expected! Halston simply copied the scrollbar design from another menu in the game, pasted it in the Craftbook, aligned the design, and then dragged and dropped the element into the proper spot on another UI script.

It's so much easier to navigate around long pages now! The design still needs a little more work, including a fix for a bug that makes the handle super long.

Category Divider Lines

We've pitched this idea to our Patreon members before (and possibly in a Recapped too?), but this month we finally made good on the promise!

Category dividers now have chalk lines to help separate the sections more clearly. Additionally, we've renamed some categories to be shorter. For instance, instead of "Signs and Iconography", it's now just "Signs & Icons".

Restored Search Page

The Craftbook's Search feature is back!

It's been mentioned before that the search page broke during a big refactoring of some other features (we truly can't remember which at this point). Raphael was the architect behind this feature, but it wasn't until he rejoined the team that we could more easily see about fixing it.

Thanks to his skill and kind nature, the page is back in action and just as useful as ever (even more now, really).

We even gave it some light touching-up so that it looks a bit prettier than just being a floating search bar.

Polished Popup Windows

Halston also passed through a lot of the in-game popup windows to improve their design, make them consistent with each other, fix some text strings and formatting issues, etc...

We've also added icons to each button and separated the content area from the button area with a divider line.

Clickable Prompts

Remember the prompts we talk so much about? Well, thanks to Jake they're now clickable! Without pressing the ESC key, this means you can more easily exit the Design Tool, Shape Tool, Eyedropper, and more with just a click.

New Loading Screen

Halston revamped the loading screen style this month, too. It now uses the same designs of other menus in the game, has new titles and tips, and uses the player's set color in more places.

Out of Bounds 

If a certain rigidbody hits Stuffy's collider at the right angle and time, they can be nudged out of bounds by the leftover momentum/force.

Attempting to move in/out while snap Stuffy back into the playable space, so this is mainly a visual bug that needs to be fixed later.

Hand Spikes

Kind of the bane of our existence for a while, these hand spikes were artifacts leftover from some wonky mesh/rig choices made in Blender. DeRose has corrected this. No more spiky hands for Stuffy!

Stamp Sorting Order

We discussed an issue where Stamps were imported using the name of their asset ID and not their actual human-made titles. This causes them to not sort alphabetically in the Craftbook, which is a bit annoying when we're trying to group common things together by name.

Animation Arm Position

We identified a small issue where the idle animation displaces Stuffy's shoulder position, creating noticeable texture and model issues with Cosmetics.

The Animators have been working to fix this, so we expect it to be addressed when the next batch of Stuffy's animations are ready to import.

• We've added a looping sound effect for when Stuffy pulls the Needle 'n Thread.

• We've added a sound effect for when the Needle 'n Thread is strained/blocked while pulling.

• We've added various sound libraries for when the Needle impacts different types of threadable surfaces when thrown.

• We've changed the sound effect for when a popup window closes.

• To avoid repetition, we've added subtle pitch and volume variation for the following actions: brushing materials, cutting materials, stamping, placing ornaments, changing an object's layer, changing a material's thickness, selecting, hovering over icons, placing objects, deleting, opening and closing windows, changing a material, swatching with the eyedropper, using shape tool features, and more.

• We've added a sound effect when the Wardrobe's "reset outfit" button is used.

• We've also added a sound effect when you apply a premade or saved outfit.

Cosmetic Animation Setup

Using the system DeRose created, Halston was able to set up loads of new animations for when Stuffy equips or removes items from different categories. We mentioned this earlier in the post, but if you haven't seen the full video on Patreon, you can see an example of the equip/removal animations here:

New Wardrobe Animations

Luke and Brennan, our animators, sent over some examples of the new animations they've made for the Wardrobe. We're very excited to add these!

We've also been toying with making Stuffy react to a very fast pedestal spin! Those ideas resulted in a couple of dizzy animations:

New Stuffy Reference Renders

DeRose rendered a new Stuffy model reference this month. The last version of this image was from 2021, when Stuffy's new look was first created!

We've made some minor tweaks since then, including how we light and color Stuffy, their arms' thickness, and hand shape. This new render also uses a better camera field of view, making them more accurate to their in-game counterpart in thickness.

You're welcome to use this image for any super cool outfit concepts you might have! Pop them into our Discord server using the "Wardrobe Wishlist" forum thread or the #fan-art channel!

We've also prepared a semi-related version taken directly from the game, with some helpful commentary on some of Stuffy's details. Can you guess what this might've been used for? :)

Funny Blooper

A silly little image we captured while rendering the new reference sheet:

"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!

Happy Valentines day!!! (by: Shincore610)

(by: kodas_nest)

Trixel Creative Brass Coin (by: xecular)

 Thanks for joining us again! Those were the highlights from February's developments, and we hope you've enjoyed them!

See you again soon!