Restitched: Recapped! | June 2024 (Patreon)

Welcome to another installment in a long line of Restitched development updates from the team at Trixel Creative. In this post, we'll review some of the biggest updates to the game from our work in June!

While recent months' posts have been jam-packed with content, this one might be a little less substantial - though not small by any means! During June, we spent much of our time working on unannounced/secret features, polishing and fixing things, or having important discussions.

There's loads of exciting content and updates to read through, so let's get started!

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Pride Month

Each year in June we celebrate Pride Month, and this year was no different! We've created a very special version of the Restitched key art to show off Stuffy's pride. You can also download it as a mobile-friendly wallpaper!

From the very start, Trixel Creative has always been about uniting and celebrating diversity. From our team to our community (and even Restitched), diversity and self-expression are central to what we do.

No matter who you love, how you identify, or whether or not you’re sure yet... pride month is all about supporting one another and continuing toward a future where everyone is equal, everywhere.

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Asset Previews

We've posted a public batch of Restitched: Asset Preview images, with each one spotlighting assets directly from the game.

Restitched is already growing to be quite the creative arsenal! Whether you're spicing up a level or playing dress up with Stuffy, there'll surely be something to catch your eye...

Which bits of content are you most looking forward to using?

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We've made even more great progress on the game during the month. With a larger team of talented coders, we're slowly but steadily knocking off a few much-needed tasks. We can't wait to continue this great work in making Restitched super fun and robust!

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Fake Connections

Chris (one of our newest additions to the team) has enhanced our Steam Workshop script to support a 'Mock Community Manager' option.

This will allow developers to fake a connection with Steam when testing our publishing features, and will only work if the game is running in a development state. This will be super useful, as we don't always want to publish empty levels while testing the UI!

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Trigger Zone Shapes

After showing off our trigger zones in the last Recapped post, a few of our community members expressed concern about whether we'll support detection shapes that aren't spheres.

To prove how easy the development of other detection shapes is, Jake has quickly created a few examples.

I've just seen someone mention this over on the Trixel Creative server. It looks quite feasible with the system that we currently have!

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Music Triggers

We've also added trigger visuals to all music objects (there are currently 33+ in the game)!

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Multiple Players' Scores

Jake has ensured the player score UI shows up even when multiple players are in a level. This is another exciting step toward local and online co-op support!

We'll touch more on the actual design and implementation of the score HUD later in this post.

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Stand Still

We still have much work to do on the new Wardrobe feature. In recent months, we've tweaked bits and pieces in our spare time, but most of our efforts are being channeled into the gameplay and level editor first.

One of the small improvements made by Ozy this month was fixing Stuffy's broken animations when standing on the pedestal. Now your Stuffy will look fabulous while getting fabulous!

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Particle Icons

Just as with invisible light sources, music, and cameras, our placeable Particles and Effects objects now have their own editor-only icons! These only show up when not in gameplay.

This makes it much easier to find the origin point of placed particles, as seen below:

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A key part of our development flow is consistently getting new 3D models. From gameplay features to placeable art assets, they're super important in styling the game and offering content to play around with.

This month, 3D Artists Cade and Santiago have crafted some exciting new assets for the game:

Cogs:

Boxes:

Spotlight:

Trampoline:

Sarcophagus:

Neon Sign:

Button (Score Pickup):

Carter has created a new score pickup object! To better fit the game's theme, we've decided to use a golden button as the default score type. This was always our intention, but you may have noticed in the past that we started with a more generic 'Score Token' instead.

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Let's expand on the previous section a bit by taking a look at some of our new assets in-game:

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Cardboard Boxes

You may have noticed in previous media that we use cardboard boxes in our level design. Those models were originally reused from our attic background and were quite dark with a dirty look.

With cardboard boxes being so important to the game's aesthetic and the Attic Atelier story theme, we've decided to create a brand-new batch that looks more clean and pristine!

The boxes come in various flavors and sizes, as seen below. We've even made an open version for tossing all your clutter and toys inside!

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LIVE on Air

We've been itching for new lighting objects, and Santiago and Halston helped us scratch that itch a little. These new signs are lovely in any color and will fit perfectly in sci-fi levels, moody scenes, and urban streets.

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Construction Spotlight

On the topic of new light sources, we felt it necessary to add a portable construction-themed spotlight!

What sort of other new lighting objects would you like to see?

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Trampolines

This one is super important to us. Trampolines are a major gameplay mechanic in Restitched! They're used to bounce around, reach higher places, and create more interesting gameplay puzzles.

So, it was important to get the vibe and proportions right. We went through various concept phases, a couple of different models, and lots of discussion before settling on the current style. The simplest route can often be the best!

When the Trampoline occupies 2 layers (right side), it looks more natural. However, when it occupies 1 layer it's much more versatile! We couldn't quite decide, so we held a team vote where the one-layer-thick version won by a landslide.

To make it a bit more polished and plump, Santiago has adjusted the model to better fit in a one-layered space. We'll share that in a future post!

Even with the Trampoline being smaller in one layer, it's quite easy to stack and arrange them into larger bounce zones!

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Particles and Effects 

New particles were added to the game this month, with weather effects being the common theme. Whether you want sunshine or rain, we've got ya covered!

Sun Rays:

Falling Rain:

Falling Snow:

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Ledge Shimmying

In some of Ozy's final nips and tucks to the ledge climbing mechanic, we've added the ability to shimmy in and out of the scene when on a side-facing ledge. We still have a few things to tidy up here, like the climbing speed and animations.

We've also improved ledge detection overall, with Stuffy now attaching more naturally and only when actively facing the direction of a grabbable ledge.

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Play Dead!

When Stuffy touches a lethal object (or otherwise dies in general), they will now stop moving and all input is blocked. Previously, Stuffy could move around even while lying dead on the floor! No zombies here, please.

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Getting Things Thready

If you've been following our recent posts, you'll know that we've spent months trying to update the Needle 'n Thread feature to support a better joint system. Our goal was to have it look and behave like a realistic rope, wrapping around surfaces and being a physical model. We even purchased an asset kit to help us with this!

Unfortunately, we weren't able to make it work in our favor despite passing the task through 2-3 developers. Stuffy is a complex character and the game uses a pretty complicated custom framework. Going back through years of code to support this has proved challenging and time-consuming, with poor results.

Fortunately, we were able to restore the original version of this feature! Now, we can continue improving it within our limitations and make more fun gameplay. There are still some bugs and visual issues to patch up, but it still works like a charm!

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We've been busy bees, and made some pretty nifty adjustments to the UI! These include long-awaited quality-of-life updates and new features entirely...

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Player Score HUD

We covered the development of this feature last month, but we're excited to see it make immense progress this month! Jake has properly added the ability to capture a player's Stuffy character into an icon. This is now displayed in their score UI at the top of the screen.

We've also tested it in the Wardrobe to ensure changes are happening live and work with all sorts of shaders and cosmetics.

Jake is busy wrapping up some final to-do's on this feature, such as multiplayer layout and score multipliers, but we're almost ready to start tallying up those level points!

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Pause Indicator

You can always see when the level is paused by looking at the top middle 'toolbar'. This piece of UI features an undo, redo, and pause/unpause button. However, it's still not always clear at a glance!

So, we've added a nice new pause border to the level editor. This is thanks to Luke's feedback, Halston's design concept, and Jake's implementation (teamwork makes the dream work!).

Originally, this was a red line around the perimeter of the screen similar to The Sims games:

This was a placeholder image, though. Jake proposed a new design that's more visible, animated, and less intrusive. We loved it, and quickly agreed!

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Hotkey Icon Swapping

When holding a level object in Restitched (Prop, Building Material, etc.), you'll see a 'controls row' pop up at the bottom of the screen. This is a strip of icons that correspond with a number on your keyboard, and pressing it will enable that action! For example, you can open settings menus, flip objects, clone things, mark them static/dynamic, and more.

Jake offered feedback on the matter after spending a couple of weeks with the game:

I think that the object properties (the buttons assigned to the number keys) could use some UX improvements. For example, it's not always clear when an object has static or dynamic physics enabled.

It has some visual feedback through an animation which is good but maybe we could have a look at adding some kind of visual indicator to these buttons such as swapping the icons for different states?

Halston verified this as a polish feature we've been tracking for a couple of years, but haven't gotten around to it yet. Jake is familiar with the UI systems and was able to quickly and easily implement this for us!

We find it much easier to understand the level editor with small changes like these. 

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Tooltips Support

An idea for tooltips has been tossed around for a year or more. Halston, as the team's graphic designer, has reignited this pitch by sharing details and concepts for it.

How would it look? How can we set it up and make it robust? What's it used for? These are questions that were addressed in a short pitch in the development server:

This was followed by concepts showing how it might look:

A few developers were quick to chime in with their support of the idea, stating that it "sounds good!" and would be very useful. Jake, however, decided to ask a few follow-up questions. Once the discussion was had, he laced up his coder boots and got to work on quickly making the idea a reality - and it only took him a couple of days!

With tooltip support working, we needed a way to set it per object. We don't want them to show up for every object in the game - as this would be intrusive. Instead, we've added a checkmark for each object type so developers can choose which bits of content have them by default.

We've decided to enable tooltips for all floating icons, editor-only objects, and things that aren't easily identified from looks alone. An example would be showing the name when hovering on music icons, cameras, and particles.

Halston then dove into the new feature and polished the design to match the concepts and be consistent with the rest of the game's UI. Dynamically resizing the tooltip based on name length was also added.

We iterated further on the polish by adding animations, improving cursor tracking, and setting up support for other ways to show tooltips (including debug options to force them on for everything).

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Soundtrack Thumbnails

There are no music updates to share yet, but we did have our lovely artists create beautiful new icons for a few existing tracks... with many more on the way!

These tracks are by Carter, Daniel, and Ari respectively:

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Impact Sounds

Sadly, we can't embed video clips here. This means we're unable to show off our lovely new physics sound effects that Joel has been tinkering away with!

Adding sounds to the world of Restitched brings the game to life in a very natural way, making it feel more lively and charming than ever. We can't wait for you to experience it when we're finished!

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Story Concepts

Carter was struck by a bit of Egyptian inspiration this month, as he's put together new concepts for the Desert/Egypt theme. The first concept is the general aesthetic for this theme, showing the combination of natural scenery and artifacts. Carter stated:

I imagined it being a mashup of standard Egypt, with aspects of the in-universe museum within, (pots and art on marble pedestals, wood borders holding the sand up, maybe even some chunks taking place in the museum outside the exhibit, with some fancy damask wallpaper?)

I also imagine the egypt levels being mostly open air, to encourage some exploration, with hazards being more parts of the environment instead of broken up "gameplay motifs"

In between work I'm trying out some concepting for story characters as well! Here's a rough design for Cleopatra VII I intend to polish up some more!

I wanted to try my best to avoid the stereotypical designs of most depictions of Cleopatra, did some extra homework to try and keep it as respectful as possible!

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Music Icons

Ari started on their first batch of music icons this month, with a couple of sketches for the "A Past Forgotten" track.

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Trampoline Ideas

Before creating the trampoline model, we looked up a few reference photos of the styles we like most. Having round shapes in a layered collision system wouldn't work out well. So, we've instead opted to morph it into a more rectangular shape.

Our idea was to make it look like a hybrid of an inflated raft and a trampoline.

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Neon Light Objects

Remember the "LIVE ON AIR" sign model from earlier in the post? We first needed to make the design as an image before translating it into a model. Below is a quick concept from Halston showing how that might look in-game:

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While Brennan was busy rigging up our first enemy character (shhh, it's a secret for now), Luke was working to further polish the story's opening cutscene.

Still working on Scene 3 polish. There's a lot of props n' stuff that can be used to fill out the scenes after the lighting's done. Scene 3 is taking a while since it has a lot of changing camera angles. No "one size fits all" lighting here.

...when all the lighting is done, I can just stuff the scene with objects and fun doodads to make [them] more condensed and filled with life. I'd have to make minor changes to lighting after the fact but that'd be the final polish. We're getting close!

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Dragon Castle

by: Jake

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Space Factory

by: Halston

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Blinding Lights

By: Santiago 

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 "Stuffy had an ale"

By: Luke

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Thank you for checking into our June updates toward Restitched. We deeply appreciate all your support, patience, and feedback.

As a friendly reminder: We are all hobbyist developers working on the game in our spare time. We're giving it all of our love and attention, and want to play it just as much as you do! Stay tuned for future updates - as always!