TrixelCreative

Restitched: Recapped! | January 2025

Added 2025-02-03 14:45:00 +0000 UTC

Hello! It's been a while since our last edition of Restitched: Recapped!. Did you miss us? We missed you!

We made troves of progress leading up to the trailer in December and have also made substantial progress in January while returning from a personal holiday break.

We can't possibly show everything we've been up to, but we'll do our best to cover the highlights. So... let's dig in and see what's happening!

New Look for Restitched: Recapped!

We're revamping the style of Restitched: Recapped! to better convey the in-development nature of these posts! By standing apart from our other content, the new color choice, logo, and thumbnail design are sure to grab attention and remind folks that things are a work in progress.

Restitched Outfits + Feedback

We started December with a feedback opportunity for our Discord server. We love hearing your fun ideas for new game assets, especially when it involves new things for Stuffy to wear!

So, we created a new forum thread called "Wardrobe Wishlist" where you can pitch your feedback for fun. Maybe you'll even see some of them in the game!

Restitched 'Official Trailer' Premiere

Ahead of the Restitched Official Trailer release, we teased its upcoming premiere with a short video on our social channels!

Less than a week later, we premiered the full trailer on our YouTube and celebrated this milestone with our community via the premiere's live chat, along with our Discord and Twitter/X communities!

Haven't seen the trailer yet? If not, check it out here!

Restitched in the Press!

We were so thrilled by the positive feedback to the trailer, and quite surprised to see it spread so quickly! We've now had featured articles and trailer reposts by IGN, GameTrailers, VICE news, Kotaku, GameRant, ScreenRant, and lots of other independent, upcoming, or foreign publications!

Happy Holidays!

After the game's trailer premiered on Christmas Eve, we followed up on Christmas Day to wish everyone a Happy Holiday season via a new cozy render!

As a small gesture of thanks, we also included a link for some folks to claim free trixel+ Patreon subscriptions. These separate links were available on Twitter/X and our Discord.

Theme Song Reveal

In late January, we revealed the game's official main theme song. This post was available earlier in the week to trixel+ members.

Our team musician (Thomas Voets) created this song to capture the game's whimsical, charming vibe. The track's child-like humming also backs this up!

Using the same tune from various instruments represents some of the many themes and locations Stuffy is expected to see throughout the game's story levels and usable assets.

Steam Store Page Update

Alongside the launch of the new trailer, we also updated our Steam Store page with all-new screenshots, a new description, key art, and more.

Melody Mark Contest

We haven't forgotten about the winning entry from the Melody Mark Contest! This contest was held in October, with the results being finalized in December.

We loved all of the entries we received! Our team voted on the top entries, with the winner being "Aidan Flanary" from our Discord server!

This new music artwork has been added to the game, and will now display when placing the 'Of Bytes and Birch' music object.

Code Commits

We couldn't even begin to count the progress contributed from November to January, but believe us when we say it was quite a lot!

Logic Development

This year, we're eager to cross off more daunting tasks on our roadmap. One of these game-defining features is the logic/automation system.

Logic is deeply essential to the gameplay experience of Restitched and level creation itself. Without it, you can only achieve so much! With the addition of proper logic, we expect things to become much more dynamic, intricate, and fun to play. We're sure to spend hours just tinkering around with it!

Now, that's not to say we don't already have some logic. We've prototyped the basic behavior for moving, rotating, and triggering things. However, these are essentially just "Hardware" items that can be placed and have their settings adjusted to broadcast and receive wireless signals across a level. They may look and function as logic would, but they're not part of the logic system itself.

We have a lot of work cut out for us. Luckily, our new/returning Lead Coder, Raphael, has already started to roll up his sleeves for this ambitious task!

Raphael has begun to code the foundational support needed for logic to interact with other existing features and the level editor itself.

For example: the way it's shown in the Craftbook UI, how you spawn it in a level, how it's serialized in saves, how you connect nodes, its usage of custom scripts to power the behavior, etc...

Many of you wonder how logic will look and behave in Restitched. This is a great question, but one we're still sorting out. We want logic to be useful, robust, not overly complicated, and innovative or unique in at least some key ways.

As noted, this is a prototype. The final visuals and UI/UX experience will come later! We'll update you on our progress as soon as we have it. For now, we're just very excited for what's to come!

Grouping Refactored

Raphael has refactored the way 'grouping' is handled by the game. Formerly, we were not able to properly group things together with differing static/dynamic behaviors.

As an example, a Blink Bubble is 'static' by default. This means it cannot move or fall when placed. What if you want to group it to a falling block? Unfortunately, it would make everything static.

Raphael has harnessed his coding expertise to update the way these levelobject systems interact with one another. Careful planning went into this effort, with a full matrix of interactions and special circumstances considered.

Now, you can group things together and the group's settings can override being static. Blink Bubbles will fall when grouped to a dynamic object that's also falling unless you mark the entire group static. When the bubble is ungrouped, it will revert to its normal static state.

These are the small details that most players would never think of or notice when working right, but would sorely miss and find frustrating when it doesn't!

Lighting Changes

Before the trailer, we attempted to make a build of the game for footage. Everything seemed fine in Unity, but the build itself had broken lighting. This resulted in shadows being super dark and ambient lighting not showing properly.

This somehow broke the Stamps shader that's overlaid on objects, causing Stamps to be faded and miscolored unless exposed to direct light.

Raphael thoroughly looked into this so we could continue with the trailer footage. We traced the issue back to a bug with levels using a Skybox instead of a Skydome, as well as some sort of global illumination and baked lightmap issue.

We removed some of the lighting features causing these issues and created our own ambient lighting solution, which references the ambient light already within a level background.

After implementing the lighting changes, we had to go through our scenes and tweak global lighting values to restore the original look of some environments.

This might give the game a slightly more stylized look in dimly lit areas with reflective materials (like the Hazmat outfit), but it's a subtle difference from what we originally had and will be improved with time. We quite like it!

Unity 6 Upgrade

We upgraded our engine to Unity 6 after the trailer was completed. This new engine version is meant to bring optimizations, bug fixes, and general quality-of-life improvements.

Because of the engine upgrade, our development time is slightly better because Unity refreshes and compiles faster. It also seems to offer a slight performance boost in the game itself, though this has not been properly tested.

As a small effect of our lighting changes and the engine upgrade, we have seen a subtle improvement in materials, as they now have better reflections and specular lighting! This is most noticeable on items with a glossy sheen, as shown below with this Alligator Skin in the Wardrobe:

Props and Hardware

Halston imported the keycap button with full behavior and sound effects. Because the style of levels can vary so much with Stuffy's moveset and 3D movement, we've decided to add 2 variations of the button. One is smaller and fills one layer, and the other is larger and fills two!

Halston also imported a custom light 'cookie' effect and combined it with a new spinning Disco Ball light object.

Issac created a batch of stunning chess pieces for us, which you may have spotted in the attic levels from our new trailer!

Cade has created a Sand Castle, which we will likely add to the Beach background for extra detail.

Building Materials

Halston has imported a batch of new Building Materials, including the Gravity Fluid which has a new shader.

With feedback from Daniel, the glass shaders were tweaked and updated quite a bit by Halston. There's still work to be done in this area of the game, but we're steadily improving as we learn!

Stamps

Our resident Stamp artist, Carter, has drawn up some lovely and useful new graphics! We're trying to fill the 'Architecture' category, and these will certainly help with that.

They also created some very handy new Stamps that were used in our trailer levels and scenes, like ribbons, button stencils, and Egyptian-themed graphics.

Halston and Daniel also made some new Graffiti-style Stamps! These are intended for the Nihon Hytes theme, which you may have spotted in the footage as well:

Daniel also made a yellow tape Stamp, which Halston used to mark climbable ledges in some of his trailer levels!

We all know Stuffy is a fashionista, which is why we're putting loads of effort into the Wardrobe. We hope to offer a wide variety of cosmetics that can be mixed and matched, combined with the Design Tool, and more.

The Wardrobe is as much its own game and experience as the rest of Restitched, and we've already spent so much time there as players!

We've even gotten around to finishing the "Style-A-Stuffy Contest" winner outfit titled "Inconspicuous Rat" by Darbot! Thanks to Yousef for the incredible modeling, and Daniel for the refreshed concept based on the winner's design.

Leading up to the trailer, we've added over 80 new cosmetics! In January, we've added roughly a dozen more. We've also spent some time updating older assets to meet a level of consistency and polish set by some of our newer items.

Yousef and Issac have been doing amazing work creating fresh new items, with other 3D Artists like DeRose, Cade, and Santiago also stepping in to help with some pieces.

Each artist brings their own style and vision to the game, which is super important to us!

Optimization

Before the trailer, we performed a light optimization pass on some environments in the game. Removing useless shadows, light sources, tweaking lighting, and more. This has given the game a slight performance boost without sacrificing much visual quality.

New Content

Our 3D Artist, Yousef, has started a blockout for what could become a new level background! This is based on a Greenhouse concept from Daniel a couple of years ago. However, this has been put aside as the artists focus on the Wardrobe and gameplay objects first.

Carter has been remaking the Synthwave background shown in our first-ever trailer from 2022. This environment has been due an update for quite a while now, as it didn't account for our upgrade to 15 layers and needed various improvements.

The progress is looking promising, and we love the new direction! This will really look fantastic when it's been imported to the game with a proper sky and lighting!

Addressing Trailer Feedback

Without input from our team community, we wouldn't be where we are now. So, it's important we listen with open ears and honor as much of your feedback as possible. With the reveal of the new trailer, we've seen several comments that mention 'floaty' physics, 'stiff' animations, and unpolished combat.

As we've mentioned through social media comments, we're aware of this feedback and agree with many of these issues. The trailer disclaims we're in an early Alpha phase of development, so there is still plenty of room for improvement!

If you're curious about more in-depth details of these issues and our plans to address them, check out this post!

Gameplay Tuning

We've made substantial progress in identifying gameplay issues and fixing them for a better experience.

Before the game had 15 layers of depth and used 3D physics, we relied on only 5 layers and 2D physics. As a result of the months-long work to reshape the game with new physics and depth in 2023, a few things were left over from the old system. This included how Stuffy applies force during movement between layers, their jump strength, rigidbody mass, etc.

Our Lead Artist/Coder DeRose is still working to improve the player movement. We'll be changing how Stuffy applies force via code, the threshold of inputs, the jump strength, slope behavior, and lots more!

With additional investigations and feedback from the Project Lead and Lead Coder, we narrowed down the cause and fix for major issues:

Stuffy doesn't weigh enough, so they don't influence physics around them as strongly as they should.
Stuffy needs an always-present drop shadow to judge depth better.
The gameplay camera needs further tilting upwards and a deeper field of view to show depth in the scene better.
The way force is applied to movement should be closer to a 3D platformer, rather than separating depth movement from sideways movement.
Stuffy is too large, meaning a one-layer-thick surface is hard to land on because the margin of error is too small.
The player controller script values (run speed, air drag, friction, acceleration, etc.) need tuning to balance with the other changes.
Animations need to be updated, with more added for certain behaviors and airborne velocity should affect the arms when falling or rising.

We've already begun working on fixes and experimenting with these changes to improve the gameplay and animations.

Stuffy's Mass is slightly higher.
The drop shadow is now more visible and always present.
Stuffy's default shadows have been temporarily removed (as a test) to see if this helps with depth judgment, similar to the drop shadows from other games.
The gameplay camera was tilted further upward with a deeper field of view, allowing us to see more of the playable space unless overridden by a placed camera.
Stuffy has been shrunk by ~10%, meaning they will now feel more nimble, levels are more spacious for them, and it's easier to land a jump on one-layer-thick platforms.
New animations have been created to improve the look and feel, including a new turn, slashing, landing from a jump, and more.

Game Gravity

We've increased the global gravity to address the floatiness. All objects in a level will now fall slightly faster, and Stuffy more quickly falls to the ground while airborne. Swinging is also more weighted, giving the game a precise and heavy feel that is much more natural.

These gravity changes only affect new levels, and will not update in existing saves unless patched in by a coder. However, we can easily re-save existing levels by changing the level's "Y Gravity" slider to the new value.

Slashing / Combat System

Slashing wasn't quite where we wanted it to be for the trailer. When we first added this mechanic, we offered a combo system to chain attacks. The way it was implemented didn't hold up and didn't work in a way that felt right. So, over time it became obsolete and we reverted to a single slashing animation.

DeRose has now restored the combo system with two new animations from Luke. These new animations are paired with a slightly larger needle model. This will be combined with a future particle effect for slashing, and will hopefully make combat much easier to see from a distance. It already feels much nicer!

In addition to the slashing behavior, we've also shrunk the size of the Spider enemy to match Stuffy's new smaller size. We'll be doing further work on the behavior of Spiders and the visuals for when they're attacked.

Combat is an important part of the gameplay hook in Restitched, and we're finally in a position to give it the attention it deserves this year. We still have so many ideas and can't wait to see them all come together!

Depth Perception

Depth perception could sometimes be tricky. With these adjustments, it's already much easier! Shrinking Stuffy, changing the movement code, adding a permanent drop shadow, adjusting the default camera, and increasing gravity have all proven effective.

In addition to making it slightly easier to land on thinner platforms and jump depth-wise, we've also explored other ideas that could assist in gameplay.

By adding a permanent drop shadow and disabling other shadows casting from Stuffy, we can improve how players judge depth when jumping. This inspiration comes from other platformer games like Mario Odyssey, It Takes Two, The Plucky Squire, and more...

We'll continue polishing this and hope to wrap it up in the coming months, as the player is so core to all other features being made! We thank you deeply for the feedback and please know it's being addressed with care. <3

Surface Velocity

Thanks to Lewis, Stuffy will now better stick to moving surfaces. Whether you're sliding down a slope or standing on a rolling wheel, you'll inherit its movement.

Improved N&T Detection

Lewis has also improved Needle 'n Thread detection, so you can thread into things even if the Needle must first pass through trigger zones and non-colliding objects.

An example is shown with the player threading a block through a field of Gravity Fluid:

The detection is also much better in general, and won't stutter as much or try to connect to awkward angles of an object. We've completely changed the cone of detection for threadable things, and have made some big tweaks to how the N&T's pull strength works.

Trixel Picks / Featured Levels Badge

We already have plans for officially showcasing our favorite community levels, but Daniel has suggested a graphic that could be placed on the levels themselves to show their merit!

Dialogue Popups

We're getting to a point in development where logic is being properly worked on. This means we'll be adding new gameplay gadgets and HUD-based features soon enough! One example of that is an in-game dialogue system. We've had many concepts for this over the years, but Halston has revisited the idea for a simple yet effective approach in displaying character names and text.

Full UI Canvas (Play Mode)

As a test of how our main gameplay UI could look in levels, Halston has created a concept showing the placement and style of all on-screen elements as if they appear together.

This concept includes UI for player stats, checkpoint activation, collected items, in-game text chat, and control prompts.

It's important to note that we do not have plans for an online chat feature in-game right now, because it would take a lot of effort and time that we unfortunately don't have yet! However, the idea isn't off the table for the future and so we've included it here as a mockup.

Control Prompts

If we display the controls for a given action, we must place them somewhere that won't get obstructed by other UI. This is why we've decided to try placing them on the bottom-left corner of the screen in the level editor, and in the bottom middle in gameplay.

Emote Wheel

Halston has made another concept for an emote wheel. This is just for fun, but who knows? Maybe it will see its way into the game sometime!

New Main Menu (Concept)

Halston has created another concept for the game's main menu! About four versions of the main menu have been conceptualized since development began. The main menu is like a nice bow and wrapping for the game's contents. It creates a first impression, sets the tone, and connects all areas of the game under one roof.

By listening to team and community feedback, as well as considering our own development experiences with UI, we've settled on a new direction. This style reuses existing design elements from other in-game menus. It also considers the 'social' aspect our community has been asking us to lean into more.

(conceptual mockup)

Your Stuffy is also there to greet you! In this concept it's shown in 2D, but in-game it's expected to be a fully 3D version of your player shown in the middle of the main menu's Home tab.

Restitched is designed as a somewhat "social" experience. Despite being an otherwise normal game, it also relies heavily on community-made content and Steam Workshop features. This is the heart and soul of the experience!

We've added a set of news panels on the right-hand side of the Home screen to help with a sense of social integration. We hope to link this to official Steam Community News, which allows us to post news regarding game patches, featured content, contests, add-ons, and more. The idea is for players to see this in-game when booting up, and have it presented easily without needing to hunt it down online.

(conceptual mockup)

We understand the desire for a playable aspect of the menu. Unfortunately, we've decided this is outside of our scope for now. We've explored the idea in a few ways over the years, but it's a large task and would also not help our effort to stand apart from our inspirations.

Instead, we're hoping to allow other players to see what the host is doing from the Party screen, and even enter the Wardrobe while waiting to play together.

While we have a million and one ideas for how to make the game bigger and better, we're just a team of hobbyists! So, we're staying realistic in what we can achieve within a short time frame so the game can reach your hands sooner rather than later!

Wardrobe Workshop

Joseph has taken on the task of expanding the Steam Workshop integration. This new version of the in-game Workshop menu will be accessible from the Wardrobe and let you browse and download other players' Stuffies!

We're still developing the code and framework for this, but we also have a concept for how the panels might look. This is similar to how levels are presented in The Workshop menu, but are now taller to show off outfits.

Control Prompts

Jake has begun implementing the Control Prompts in the game! These small strips of UI pop up in gameplay to guide your actions. You'll see them when actions are potentially unclear. For example, threading into a block will display a prompt to 'Pull Thread' while showing an icon for the input.

In gameplay, this will be used for things outside of the basic moveset. You won't see prompts for running, jumping, crawling, or climbing. However, you will see it for special abilities like the Needle 'n Thread.

In the level editor and Wardrobe, these prompts indicate when a tool is active and can be exited... or, when a tool is active and has extra options like 'create node', 'delete node', etc.

New Gadget Icons

Some items in Restitched aren't quite logic but aren't objects either. These 'gadgets' have received a facelift in recent months, helping them show up more clearly and fit our design style!

Our term 'gadgets' is just a way of referencing Hardware objects, which includes Music, Cameras, Checkpoints, Notes, Prototype Logic, and more.

Confirmation Popups

Joseph has added a popup window to confirm exiting a level with unsaved changes. This is especially handy to prevent accidents where you misclick or aren't sure!

This confirmation has also been added to other areas, like exiting the game from the main menu or confirming the download of a copyable Workshop level.

Level Environment Picker

When you choose a scene for your level in the Level Settings page of the Craftbook, you can now see the icons and names from a grid list. Previously, this was a prototyped 'roller widget', which would cycle through the internal file names and required each scene to be loaded one at a time until you reached the right one.

It's a relief to have this feature, and it's just one more polished feature that makes the game feel a step closer to complete!

Restored Search Chapter

We've been without the Search page for a while now. This is a very handy feature in the game and one we've deeply missed! Luckily, Raphael has updated and restored it so it's accessible again. However, that comes with a couple of new issues that need to be fixed in the future.

It was accidentally removed as a side effect of Craftbook refactoring over a year ago and wasn't deemed high enough urgency to restore until now. Because the UI has changed since we last had it, we'll need to polish the look a bit - including the search bar design.

Broken Features

Some of our refactoring post-trailer has introduced lots of pesky little bugs. These feature regressions are properly tracked and some will be revisited and fixed when other urgent things are finished first.

Examples of recent issues:

The highlight effect around objects will now be black instead of matching your Craftbook color.
The speed to scale objects has accidentally been lowered.
Cloning a material object will no longer let you smear or thicken/thin it in brush mode.
The 'Appearance' page on material settings is now missing, which prevents a custom bevel style from being set.
You can't pan the camera when holding Stuffy in placement mode.
The layer indicator doesn't update anymore when changing layers for an object.
The static/dynamic group refactoring has broken existing saves, causing all objects to become dynamic and explode when unpaused.

Other bugs were introduced briefly, like shape keys on Stuffy not updating and causing a lot of clothing to clip through their body. This was a simple mistake made when exporting from Blender, and has since been fixed along with some other issues!

Fixed Stamp Importing

As we moved to a new Stamping system, the original method for importing new graphics to the Craftbook broke. Fortunately, Louis (Coder) quickly patched this up, sending a funny Team Fortress 2 photo to prove that it's once again possible to import new assets.

Needle 'n Thread Sounds

Gabe has added the code to support sound effects while using the Needle 'n Thread. Finally having support for this makes the feature feel more impactful and fun to use. Sound support is slowly growing in the game between more urgent tasks, and it always motivates us to breathe that new life into the game!

New Music

Like most months, Thomas (Composer) has created new music! We've already shown the Main Theme Song earlier, so we'll focus on some of the other tracks and his explanation behind them:

A new upbeat track was added, including drums, synths, and a hint of funk! We've also added a new Wardrobe track for those who might spend an extended time dressing up their Stuffy.

We've also added a new fast-paced sci-fi style track, a Latin-America-inspired track, and a new song for the Celtic Harbour theme.

Our animators Luke and Brennan have been taking in your feedback from the trailer, alongside their own experience with a recent game build. Using this, they've revisited various emotes and gameplay actions for improvements.

Luke has created a batch of new animations for Stuffy to react with when in the Wardrobe. Whether it be applying an item to the head, feet, legs, etc.

Brennan has made some new animations for the Ice lethality, including shivering and freezing to death. He also made a new style for being electrocuted! Who doesn't love a bit of teddy torture?!

Both of the animators have been working on new gameplay reactions, like a better run-to-turn animation, a spin when bouncing on Trampolines or other objects, and an improved drowning/sinking style.

These new animations are being imported by our Lead Artist, and the progress is promising! We've also seen improvements to emotes, such as updated expressions:

Some of our coders discussed platform compatibility in late January. These discussions raised further questions about porting to MacOS, Linux, and being compatible with Steam Deck.

Fortunately, the game continues to run well on Steam Deck with no specific effort on our part. Whether the game is someday marked playable by Steam's review team is another question.

We still have no official announcement for launching outside of Windows PC, but these platforms are of interest to us and we will do our best to explore them in the future.

Celtic Harbour Level Editing

Egypt Jump Trial

Beach Maintenance
Note: this outfit was designed as an exclusive reward for game testers!

Huuuge Spider!

Trixel Spotlight aims to shine a light on 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!

"What is planned for Restitched in 2025" (by: Plush Piney)
This YouTube video from community content creator PlushPiney does a great job at recapping some of our comments and commitments for 2025, along with some speculation of their own!