TrixelCreative

Restitched: Recapped! | October 2024

Added 2024-11-08 13:06:29 +0000 UTC

exhale... Okay! Let's get into the official recap of another super productive month of Restitched development! We have much to cover, including news from our month-long Trixel+ Anniversary Celebration event...

This month was also full of progress things we've not revealed, so some content has been omitted. We have also removed redundant updates, unpolished content, etc... So, while this post is still packed full, keep in mind that there's still much more behind the scenes!

From new gameplay, screenshots, outfit reveals, and more... Where do we even begin!?

Let's check it out!

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Restitched: Melody Mark Contest

A public contest was held this month, and it's tailored toward artists in the community. We've asked for entries that design a unique thumbnail for one of our in-game songs titled 'Of Bytes and Birch'. The contest ran from the start of the month until the end, and we'll be sure to keep you updated on the winning entry!

If you're interested in hearing the exclusive song preview for the contest, you can check it out here.

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Restitched: Stuffy Emoji Set

We've teamed up with an external artist to create over 20 new emoji based on Stuffy! With a wide range of standard expressions, these cute graphics are perfect for our Discord server!

Patreon subscribers can download the full pack of images here.

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Restitched Daily Questions (Discord)

During the month, we posted nearly a week of Restitched-themed daily questions in our Discord server. These questions helped us gain insight from the community on which areas of the game you're most looking forward to, for example!

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"Inside Restitched Development" Post

In what's potentially our most comprehensive team interview yet, this post explores several community questions with answers from the game's various developers - from artists, leads, animators, coders, and more.

What are our plans for the game's future? What do we think about the community? What's our favorite feature? What sort of ideas had to be cut from the game? What's the soundtrack like? How did the project begin, and how do we prioritize development goals?

We answer all these and more, alongside new concepts and images! Check it out here.

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Restitched: Level Editor Gameplay

We shared the first-ever proper look at Restitched's level editor with nearly 9 full minutes of gameplay straight from an early in-engine version of the game! We were blown away by your feedback and support, and are extremely motivated by the encouragement we received!

This footage contains many known issues, as it is a development build. If you're interested in checking it out, you can watch it here!

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5,000 Discord Server Members!

We reached over 5,000 members on our Discord server this month! We're so grateful for our growing community and love that we can speak candidly and transparently with you all. There are some truly lovely folks supporting us!

As a thank-you gift for this milestone, we publicly shared the formerly-exclusive level editor gameplay (linked above).

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The Grandiose Tales of Cpt. Stuffy - Coming 2025

ARRGH! We're excited to announce that Cpt. Stuffy and Puddles D. Duck are setting sail for a full digital comic release in 2025 with 30+ illustrated pages! A few lucky physical print recipients may also be chosen...

We understand many of you are awaiting Restitched and might not be ready to dive into extra or spin-off content of any kind. That’s why we’ve worked hard to make it a unique experience of its own. -- Whether you’re excited about the upcoming game or just looking for a cute story, it's something for anyone who enjoys a light read!

Check out the info about its release here.

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Happy Halloween! + 3 New Outfit Reveals

It's spooky time! Stuffy has expanded their wardrobe just in time for the occasion, with three gorgeous new outfits to celebrate a night of trick-or-treating... What better holiday for a plush fashionista than one dedicated to dressing up?!

Check out their three new ensembles:

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Halloween Soundtrack Preview

In a special edition of our Restitched: Soundtrack Preview 'series', we've shared a bonus snippet this month from one of our favorite new spooky-style songs: "The Haunting Hour".

Check it out here!
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2 New Screenshots

We shared 2 new screenshots from the game this month, including 'Explorer' and 'Hazmat':

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New Tenor GIFs

Tenor integration works on many social platforms, like Discord and Twitter (X). So, we've seen the community's request for new Stuffy emotes and decided to upload a few new animated images for you to react and meme with!

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The code makes the game tick, and this month we pushed a lot of progress for various bug fixes, features, assets imports, experimental branches, and more.

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Lethal Script Consolidation

Instead of using multiple separate scripts for lethal interactions in Restitched, we had the idea to combine them into one super-script. This would be modular enough to let our artists configure the behavior and visuals of certain deadly objects in just the way they like.

Through this, our developers can mix and match options to create new effects that are similar to each other but different in behavior. Among the options, we can choose the death animation type, if it's lethal or sticky (or both), if it sinks you, what sound it plays, if you bounce from first contact, what the bounce contact cooldown time is, how slow you move on it, if you can jump or crawl, death delay, and much more.

We've already begun using this new script to create new visuals for some of our planned lethalities! So far, we've implemented (or reimplemented) Electricity, Honey, Ice, Fire, Quicksand, Acid, and more.

When creating the visuals, it was important to use custom shader overlays and performance-friendly particle effects. We've wrapped the particle system around the mesh of the lethal object so that they spawn on all surfaces and corners with a maximum particle spawn limit. You can see our test of this system below:

When we implement lethal types into a more accessible system, we expect all Building Materials to be made easily lethal with the click of a Lethal Tool or via a settings choice on the object. Below is an example of how early ice should look when applied overtop an existing brushed material:

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Settings Link-Ups

We've been working hard to link up our existing gameplay objects with the new Settings page system! We've made a lot of progress on this during the month. Jake, Raphael, and other coders have already given proper settings to the majority of our existing game objects.

For example, you can now link together Blink Bubbles by range or a typed label. You can mute their sounds, turn on "Pop on Exit", "Regenerate", set a regeneration time, turn on directional mode, and more.

Below is an example of Jake's progress with making Proximity Mines recolorable, as well as setting their detection radius and countdown time:

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Volumetric Fog in Wardrobe

Raphael has restored a broken feature this month by allowing volumetric fog lighting to show up in the Wardrobe scene. Previously this script was not behaving properly, because the Wardrobe uses a different camera system than the main levels and level editor.

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New Level Settings

Raphael has begun adding new global-based level settings to the Craftbook! These are the powerful environmental and gameplay settings that will affect an entire level. You can change the time of day, sun latitude and longitude, gravity on the X and Y axes, turn on day cycle, adjust fog, and more.

We still have new choices to add to this page, but with our settings system being newly-reworked, we can now get around to it!

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Creature Scripting

Jake has been making some inspiring and amazing tweaks to the creatures in the game, including our first enemy character. We can now set various behavior states, assign sound effects, adjust health values, and more.

This will be extremely helpful in going forward, as we can now add new enemy types that use the same base behaviors and health system.

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Stamping Returns

With Louis pushing out a new and improved Stamping system for the game, we've finally been able to play around with this super fun feature again. DeRose wasn't shy about being one of the first to jump in the game and decorate a bit:

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New Stamp

Meanwhile, Daniel has created a new Graffiti-style Proximity Mine Stamp! This one is going to be nice for decorating and warning players about those deadly mine field areas...

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Preserved Stamps

As a funny and generally unintended side effect of the new Stamping system being built on the ruins of our existing one, we've discovered that Stamps from previous level saves carry over to the new Stamping tech almost perfectly!

We were a bit amused by this, as maybe it's a testament to how robust and impressive our save serialization system already is.

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Santiago, Yousef, and Cade have created a few new models that will be making their way into the Wardrobe or Props chapter of the Craftbook.

We now have a devil set ready to be imported, a beach bucket, a tied-back man bun hairstyle, and a witch-like dress.

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Velvet Shader

While polishing the visuals for a new 'Fluffy Onesie' cosmetic, Halston decided to set time aside to go a step further and create a new velvet material shader. This has now been repurposed into a Building Material to replace our old (and thus hidden) Velvet material that was already in the game.

You can see an example of the velvet shader in action below, though a video is the only way to truly do it justice! There's a full node-based shader graph setup for this new effect as well.

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Cloth Physics

Halston also experimented with a cloth component to create dynamic, physics-based race flags on the race entrance object.

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Background Concepts

We've tossed around ideas and held public polls about new level environments for the game. Some of those made it past the conceptual stage, some of them didn't, and some of them are just now being visualized by our artists!

Daniel created a couple of new work-in-progress concepts for level background ideas recently. Those include a Candyland-style theme with ice cream hills, a banana boat, and a cotton candy clouded sky.

Daniel also started a concept for an underwater theme, based on the sunken city of Atlantis with statues, pillars, old architecture, and more.

Continuing this streak of concept artwork, Daniel revisited their first-ever Restitched task -- a greenhouse background!

You can see a timelapse GIF of the background in its various stages, which also serves as a guide for 3D Artists, as it shows how to split up the scene into segments.

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Cosmetic Concepts

Daniel and the Restitched team know how important it is to represent everyone, including different cultures, genders, and our unique interests. This month, a new concept for a Hijab was conceptualized:

A new concept for a feminine flowy hairstyle was also conceptualized, and has recently been put into the 3D modeling phase:

Remember the Cloaked Imp from the Halloween announcement? This is the original concept for that outfit!

...and just for funsies, Daniel also made a concept for a Praying Mantis outfit so that Stuffy can have another creepy sci-fi-like, insect-inspired look.

The Halloween season inspired an all-new cosmetic head concept. Pumpkin Stuffy!

We've also created a concept for a plush fruit head item... can anyone in the community guess why we chose a pineapple? :)

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Asset Imports

Phew... to say that this month's work on the Wardrobe was a handful would be an understatement. We have dedicated an extreme amount of time and effort to collaborate between artists, coders, and beyond during the month - all in order to expand the wardrobe's choices and wipe out our backlog of pending asset imports.

We're relieved to say that nearly all of our existing cosmetic models have been properly weight painted by Yousef, imported by Halston and DeRose, polished further as a team effort, and adjusted to support recoloring (though, this process is ongoing).

We've added a staggering 50+ cosmetics to the game in over just four weeks, with even more than that if you count Swatches!

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Modeling Guidelines

During the heavy asset creation and importing period, our 3D artists have discussed ways to prevent clipping and conflicts between cosmetics made by different artists. We try to follow general guidelines and have shapekeys and custom scripts on Stuffy to help avoid clothing items clipping through one another.

Isaac suggested leaving a thin margin of space between tops and bottoms.

DeRose shared his personal guide for where to end sleeves, how high to place pants, and so forth.

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New Outfit Sets and Weight Painting

Our newest 3D Artist Yousef has made incredible progress this month. Not only have they wiped out our large backlog of assets and fixed things along the way, but they've also created truly breathtaking new outfits based on our existing concepts.

You can see the progress of the most recent Explorer outfit below:

Yousef was also the artist behind this year's Halloween outfits for Stuffy, including the Wicked Witch, Cloaked Imp, and Franken-Stuffy outfits...

As mentioned, Yousef has been working efficiently and quickly to weight paint our existing cosmetic models to the newest version of the Stuffy rig. This has taken some trial-and-error, but has been a game changer (literally) in the way they approach it!

They've also suggested new methods for modeling some of our soft-looking cosmetics, which include smoothing vertex normals and other fancy trickery.

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Confirmation Popups

Joseph has added a very useful confirmation popup message whenever you download levels from the Steam Workshop or save levels from the pause menu. Previously, levels would save on a button click but it wasn't really clear that it was successful.

It's important to us that players don't worry about the stability of their creations, and whether or not they truly save. So, we've added this extra step as a form of polish and reassurance.

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Reworking Settings and Windows

Raphael has been doing a rework of the level settings and windows/popups system in the game, ensuring it works for our purposes in the Wardrobe, level editor, game menus, and more. As a small benefit of this effort, he's also made certain UI prefabs easier to edit visually. Formerly, it was mostly code-based and not as artist friendly.

Pickup Triggers

We've had team feedback from a recent Steam build that it can be tricky to collect pickup items like Tokens, Buttons, and Gifts. We've gone in and increased the size of their trigger colliders so that it's easier to collect them even if you don't perfectly touch the model itself. This small change makes it feel more natural and responsive.

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Poof!

Halston has also added a sound effect to the updated death particle prefab. Now, when Stuffy dies, a cloud of stuffing will 'poof' out with a matching sound.

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Stamping Fixes

Louis has fixed several bugs related to the new Stamping system this month. One of those was a visual problem where Stamps would smear and stretch if the shape of a material was thickened after the graphic was already placed.

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Climbing and Visual Offset

When we separated the visual mesh from Stuffys rigidbody and scripts, we accidentally broke a few things. This was a necessary change, and we've identified and cleaned up its related issues. One of those being an animation/visual glitch when climbing up surfaces.

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Double Threading?

DeRose identified an issue where the Needle 'n Thread attaches twice in the script, along with other issues that might soft lock the needle from being thrown. Together with Lewis, they began debugging and addressing these problems.

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Broken UV Scale Saves

Halston noticed a significant bug, but a small oversight. Josh's recent progress on the UV Tool for Building Materials has created an issue in existing level saves where all surfaces are getting their UV coordinates and scales reset to a common value despite never being edited by the tool.

This change was rolled back until Josh has fixed the issue.

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Annoying Scene Lighting Bug

A persistent and annoying lighting bug was properly investigated this month with all hands on deck. When changing scenes or time of day, certain surfaces and shaders would stay lit and bright. Raphael, Halston, and DeRose dug into this in extended discussions throughout the month. Many fixes were tried, including an engine upgrade to Unity 6.

Unfortunately, none of those fully fixed the issue. The most puzzling part of the whole problem is that it wasn't always there... and we couldn't easily trace it back to when it occurred.

We eventually found out that we couldn't properly fix it unless we changed each background back to using a Skydome instead of a Skybox. While this isn't visually ideal, the difference is barely noticeable and also creates more accurate environmental lighting anyway.

So... we're considering it fixed!

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Improved Thread Detection and Obstruction

A detection issue was found with the Needle 'n Thread this month. Stuffy isn't able to easily thread into things if the line projection is blocked by something else, even if it's just a corner. However, the threadable prompt would still appear as if it could be done anyway.

Louis looked into this issue and made corners a little more lenient before the thread detaches or gets blocked.

Our composer Thomas has created multiple new music tracks this month! These include The Haunting Hour, Wonderful Life, Counting With Stuffy, and Sombras del Caribe.

After speaking about the new tracks and the inspiration behind them, Thomas then stated:

This now marks the 40th level song, or 43rd song including the Wardrobe music, pushing the total soundtrack to 2 hours! My aim is to still have 70 tracks in the game, equivalent to 4 hours or more!
Admittedly I do not know if that will be achievable realistically, it is becoming increasingly harder to create tracks that cover some new area that we haven't already. On my list is still a new jazz track, and I have a vision for about 5-6 [more] tracks for various themes.

Polishing and Exporting Animatics

Luke has made final adjustments to the large portion of the game's first intended cutscene. These lighting, particle, and animation improvements have pushed the clips to a beautiful new quality. It's been amazing to see our plush pal Stuffy come to life with more expression... and to have their personality shine through with the subtle movements and curiosities!

The scenes have now been rendered in 4k resolution and pushed to our shared storage hosting for editing in the next trailer:

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Cutscene vs. Concept

Using the new clips, we've put together a private video showing the differences between our original storyboard concepts for the cutscene and the final version. Despite a few creative liberties and changes, the resemblance is uncanny and the animators have done an amazing job at staying faithful to the source material.

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A new Steam build was pushed this month. This private internal build for our team brought a range of improvements, new content, features, and more - including the first build with a functional Wardrobe!

Before this, it had been nearly six months since non-coders had tried the latest version of the game in its full, combined state.