Restitched: Recapped! | July 2024 (Patreon)

July is our self-proclaimed "Wardrobe Renaissance"!

After months of pulling apart the game to rebuild it in new ways, we've finally restored our character customization features. Not only restored but deeply improved!

While we do have a lot of new things to show from July's developments, we will (as usual) keep a few secrets to ourselves. If you're a fan of dressing up your characters, this post is for you!

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Design Tool Announcement

This month we introduced the Restitched Design Tool via an exciting new video. This post was showcased on our Twitter, Instagram, and Discord. You can check it out right here!

As we gear up (slowly, but surely) for a new Restitched trailer, we've gone ahead and lightly refreshed our Steam Store page as well. You'll notice some outdated screenshots have been removed or replaced.

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Each month sees various changes to the game's code throughout multiple branches and from our developers. This month was the same as we pushed loads of changes and assets!

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Deformers

Stuffy's model supports shapekeys so we can express them or shrink certain areas to avoid clipping with cosmetics. DeRose (Ozy) updated the script to better support these deformations, allowing our artists deeper control over fixing buggy clothing items.

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Optional Tips

Layer Tooltips were recently added, meaning you will see a popup label each time you scroll through layers while moving something with the cursor.

This feature makes it easier to see which layer you're actively in while building. However, we know this can sometimes be annoying for some creators - so we've added an option to disable it!

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Swatch Support

With the Design Tool added and Swatch support now available, we were given some very handy developer tools for setting these up. Thanks to Raphael's hard work, we can now easily decide which items are recolorable and have alternate appearances, while also setting their names and icons too.

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Improved Highlighting

Occasionally, we'll open experimental discussions about improving areas of the game. Putting our heads together and brainstorming solutions often helps us get a clearer picture of what is or isn't feasible.

In this month's case, we wanted to discuss improving the highlighted outline effect that shows around objects you select in the level editor. When a highlighted object intersects another, it could tint to a different color to indicate part of it isn't in a placeable zone. This would help creators get a better sense of depth when placing or moving things.

Raphael proposed a few ideas for how to improve this problem and change the highlight effect:

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Tool Bar Configuration

As developers, our lives are much easier when code and tools are simple and user-friendly. Part of that means being able to easily change things like the name and icon of tools when there are too many in one place.

This month, Raphael made the Toolbar contents easier to edit and rearrange without us needing to dive into the code!

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Improved Grid Scaling and Rotation

Until now, scaling things only snapped to the grid when first placing an item. Thanks to Jake, any object will snap and rotate on the grid even if it's already been placed.

This one has been on our to-do list for a while!

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Emit Particles from Material Meshes (Test)

Particles are very useful for giving things a bit of extra polish, bringing more liveliness, and just showing whether something is lethal or interactive.

This month we quickly tested a way to emit particles from the borders of objects in the level, including Building Materials and Props. This will be a must-have addition for our hazard types and special effects objects.

We haven't yet implemented this properly, as this was only a test!

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Sarcophagus

Cade has changed up the texturing on the Sarcophagus model to make it a bit cleaner and more consistent with our other Egyptian-themed assets.

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Canopic Jars

Following that, Cade created a set of old Canopic Jars to become Props for Egypt/ancient-themed levels.

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Toy Car 2

Similar to a Toy Car made by Santiago much earlier in development, Cade has created a second variation with the same texture style! Very useful for attic levels, eh?

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As mentioned, this was a heavy Wardrobe month for us! Most of our efforts focused on making the character customization and Design Tool functional, polishing assets, and going back through lots of existing Cosmetics to make them recolorable and swatchable.

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Pedestal Rotation

In the Wardrobe your Stuffy will stand on a thread bobbin for their pedestal. This can be easily rotated by clicking and dragging near them, or by pressing the arrow buttons on the screen!

The framework for this was set up by Raphael early in the month. Afterward, Halston jumped in to expand the area of detection (indicated by the grey box) and created icons for the rotate buttons.

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Saving and Randomizing Outfits

A proper way to save outfits to the Craftbook was developed by Raphael. Now you can easily go back and forth between your favorite ensembles!

Though it's not shown here, we've also restored the "Random Pick" feature - allowing you to generate a random (and often silly) assortment of clothing at the touch of a button.

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The Design Tool

We've done a deeper dive into this handy new feature already (video linked at the beginning of the post), but we cannot stress enough how incredible it is!

Raphael has done the Wardrobe a major favor this month by cleaning things up and hunkering down to get this beloved new feature working just as we all envisioned... and we fully intend to implement it in Build Mode, too!

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Bag Head

This item was made by a former developer, but was never quite finished! A lack of detail and boxy head shape were just a bit unflattering for Stuffy. So, we've made a few sculpting tweaks and applied a wrinkled texture to make it pop!

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Gummy Flavors

The original Gummy Bear set was available only in green. However, with our new design tools we're able to offer two new recolors: Pink and Blue.

What flavor they are is anyone's guess...

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Striped Shirt / Clipping Fix

Remember the clipping issues we mentioned earlier, and how shapekeys could fix them? This is a perfect example of that in action! Using the 'thinner arms' shapekeys, we can ensure Stuffy's shirt sleeves stay where they're meant to be.

We've also improved the texture of this shirt by giving it a subtle cotton texture and making the stripes cleaner.

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Eyes and Glasses

Importing head assets is often much easier and faster than other cosmetics because they don't need extensive weight painting. We were able to test our new Wardrobe features with a batch of assets this month. Some of these included new eyes and glasses!

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Head and Face

We didn't stop the importing at eyes, though! With a backlog of items that need to be added to the game, we had plenty to pick from. Some of our recent additions include hats, face items, and even some cute whiskers!

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Shirts and Swatches

DeRose added some lovely new shirt models this month, including a sleeveless Tank Top, Long Sleeve Shirt, and a Fitted T-Shirt.

The best thing about our new Design Tool? We can add as many recolors to an item as we want - all without taking up extra slots in your Craftbook.

With a single Fitted T-Shirt, you can select various patterns and graphics for alternate appearances directly from the Design Tool menu!

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New Skins

We've also added a couple of new skins to replace some now-redundant older ones. These include a Foil Wrapped skin and Reptile Leather.

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Improved Checkpoint Visual

The checkpoints were one of the first things we added before a style was established. It was a placeable low-poly Stuffy model with a glowing green shader. It did a great job at showing you where your player would spawn, and we still like it!

However, there's always room for improvement. We wanted to bring this object more in line with our other special/invisible tools - such as cameras, lights, notes, and level finish zones.

Now the Checkpoint object is a floating heart icon. When selected, a temporary visual of Stuffy shows up so you know exactly where they will spawn and if there's enough room for them.

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Wardrobe Studio

It's not quite the usual level background we post here, but the Wardrobe scene itself has been spruced up with shiny new stars and lighting!

The stars will subtly and slowly swivel around to give a lively vibe to the scene.

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Forest Optimization

The forest scenery has had some tidying-up to increase performance and reduce visual noise!

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Thin Ledge Climbing

You may have noticed this was already a feature back in 2022 (around the time of our first trailer), but we removed it shortly after! This was an oversight on our end, as multiple coders were working with Stuffy's features and it sadly slipped through the cracks for a while.

Not being able to climb on thin materials has been a known issue, but we've been waiting to redo ledge detection before ensuring thin platforms are climbable again. This month, DeRose gave us a look at this feature back in action. There are still some issues to sort out, but we're glad to see it working!

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Needle? Meet Thread...

We've fallen back to the original method of casting a thread out of Stuffy, as explained in our recent Recapped posts. One way to make the line renderer look more realistic was to connect it to the Needle model with a tied knot.

The idea is the tied knot will take on the player's color and be an actual 3D model. Whereas the thread itself is a tiling image. The thread image clips into the knot, making it look like it's wrapped around the needle more naturally.

We'll need to do some clean-up work on this still, but having the Needle 'n Thread feature back into proper development after a brief hiatus is very refreshing!

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Notes

Our original Notes system was going to be fully based on UI, and not a placeable object. We had already begun implementing it, but unfortunately, it didn't work out as easily as we'd hoped.

Fast forward over one year later, and we're stuck with remnants of the unfinished feature throughout the game. A note should not be this much trouble!

We've gone back to the drawing board and decided that the game is in a much better place than when we started developing Notes. Originally, they were meant to be a level-editor-only feature so creators could leave reminders and check off tasks.

It's clear now that Notes could be made more useful and easier to develop if they were placeable objects. So, we've made them Hardware objects!

Now you can place Notes in the level editor and decide whether or not they should also appear in Play Mode. You can change their color, format their text, move them around, and adjust their size.

We'll surely add more settings and features to them over time, but for now, they finally exist (and work!)... and it only took us two days this time!

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Saved Outfits

Saving your outfits is essential to a character customization system. We've already shown earlier in this post that it's functional, but the next step was to provide options for renaming, deleting, and publishing.

Raphael and Halston have been collaborating to create new UI windows that offer these choices to players! Now, whenever you save an outfit, you'll be prompted to name it. If you have an existing outfit, you can right-click it to open its options menu.

A first pass was done on the functional UI to make it a bit more appealing. More work is needed, but things are shaping up here!

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Level Ending

Jake has been working on the object to end a level when triggered, along with its UI menus. Now levels can be properly ended and will soon display the stats from your playthrough. We plan to introduce statistics like death count, time in level, score, gift pickups, and more.

Additionally, if you've finished an online Workshop level you will be greeted with a secondary menu offering more details on the level (such as the creator and description) and the choice to rate your experience.

The design work is a placeholder for now. We'll be polishing and matching it to our original concept (shown in a former post) as soon as it's fully functional!

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Tooltips

Jake's work on the tooltips system last month has allowed us to refine them even more. The time it takes for them to appear is much shorter, and the name of an object always appears when the Eyedropper tool is used.

We've even extended support to the Stuffy placement system. So, whenever you are ready to drag Stuffy into your level you can now see exactly which layer they occupy.

Tooltips are useful for other things that aren't clear at a glance, right? We've also added them to the Control Panel buttons! No more guessing what does what.

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Score HUD

The Score HUD is now fully functional and was merged into the main development branch! Jake has even added an animation to the UI so it's more apparent when score items are collected.

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Number Stamps

Daniel has created some Stamp concepts this month. This idea came about when we wanted to apply details to the Toy Car models!

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Proximity Mines

In our Discord server, we had a short discussion with the community about lethal gameplay ideas. Some of us decided that Proximity Mines could be a very interesting feature to explore!

With a basic prototype working in the game, we're now exploring how it should look. It needs to be generic enough so players can theme it, not mistaken as a button or light source, and still be quite small and versatile.

Daniel created a sheet of concepts for us to choose from:

After a team vote, we've narrowed it down to the top middle and top right options! We're even considering combining them so that the top middle version has the dotted lights.

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Options Popup

We know it might not be obvious to players that you can right-click an outfit to see its options. We've struggled to agree on a concept that looks right, despite there being quite a few!

Below are some of the arrangement ideas we've explored. Right now, we're holding off on adding this - but a time will surely come when it's needed!

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Settings Menu

Halston created a concept for how the settings menu might look. In this idea, it would reuse various UI elements that have already been added to the game - such as settings widgets.

Jake is looking forward to making this menu a reality once other urgent tasks have been finished!

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Design Tool Concept

Before the design tool existed, Halston created a mockup of where the menu for it might appear. Would it be a standalone popup to the side, or would it nest inside the Craftbook as its own temporary page?

Putting it in the Craftbook brought up a lot of edge cases and unexpected issues. So, we've decided on the popup menu - which we feel is the better-looking choice anyway!

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Trampoline Effects

The Trampoline gameplay objects now have an animated bounce and particles! This makes hopping around levels even more satisfying than it already was...

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Wardrobe Idle

Stuffy's default idle animation is very boppy and energetic. This can be a little annoying at times in the Wardrobe! To fix this, Brennan has created a simple new idle animation where Stuffy has much less energy.

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Outfit Equip

Luke has made a couple of new animations for the Wardrobe, so that Stuffy is expressive when applying a saved outfit, resetting their appearance, etc.

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Cutscene Polish

Luke and Halston have been tossing feedback around for improving certain clips in the animated cutscene. From lighting to effects, a lot has changed throughout its creation. It's now looking better than ever, and nearly finished too!

Further work is needed to make the lighting consistent across all clips, and to brighten up some areas that might be a bit too dark.

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With heavy development and an influx of changes to the code, bugs are to be expected. Some months we have near-infestation levels of pesky little bugs to squash. Luckily, we have a talented team of exterminators (err... developers) ready to defend Stuffy.

Bugs can be interesting and shed some light on the process of development, including how tricky and puzzling it can be at times!

Glitchy Movement

DeRose has merged improvements to the player's coding. These changes affect physics, input, moveset abilities, and much more.

While these improvements were needed, they created several conflicts and a good batch of new bugs. For instance, Stuffy could no longer be controlled once airborne, ledges weren't climbable, it was easier to get stuck, and you couldn't slip/slide down steep slopes.

To patch this (temporarily, until a proper fix is made), we've reverted part of the new movement code to the old version. We're now using the improved physics and detection aspects but with the previous movement logic.

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Softlock Fixes

When adding a collectible item to the level, Stuffy would trigger its logic before it was properly placed down. This created an unexpected chain of events that softlocked the game and made the level editor unusable. Jake has fixed this by ensuring the trigger only activates when in play mode.

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Stuffy Collider Bug

With our work on the Wardrobe requiring a certain object hierarchy in Unity, we decided to improve and rearrange the layout of Stuffy's colliders and visuals. This made for an interesting new bug where Stuffy began shooting around levels wildly and forcing away any objects they touched!

This has since been fixed! So no more Hulk Stuffy. Phew...

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Trigger Detection Issues

When we rearranged the colliders' order on Stuffy, we also broke detection for certain game objects - including score pickups. This meant that tokens, buttons, and gifts weren't being acquired in levels anymore.

We've easily fixed this, but it is interesting how one small change can break many other features!

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Broken Lights

Raphael spent an evening stripping out our now-unused voxel lighting code. This was custom code used to power our proprietary lighting and shadows system. We now use Unity's built-in lighting, so it's no longer needed.

However, when stripping it out, we accidentally deleted a few important prefabs, scripts, and post-processing effects that our new lighting system relies on. Naturally, all light objects in the game broke and could no longer show shadows, fog, or have their settings edited.

Raphael quickly restored it, but let's have a look at what broken lighting is like:

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Pink Moon

The sky in the Moon has randomly decided to turn pink on us! We explored several options for why this might happen, but ultimately it was an alien invasion.

Just kidding. It was fixed by adding the sky shader to our always-included list of shaders for when the game is compiled and built.

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Collider Mismatch

Colliders are needed on every object the Design Tool (or most other tools) interacts with. Without it, the game has no way of knowing that you're hovering over something.

Unfortunately, there is a scale difference between Wardrobe Stuffy and gameplay Stuffy. This, in combination with many other factors, has broken the colliders for cosmetic objects.

Raphael and DeRose were able to address this by taking advantage of existing cosmetic scripts. Now Stuffy can properly have clothing detected as long as the colliders are in the right spots!

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Joel has improved sound effects for physics interactions. This means any objects that fall and slide around will now play the sounds at more appropriate times and volumes.

Explaining in more detail, Joel stated:

So here's what we've got now. I made a soundbank system using ScriptableObjects like TrixelAudio but for normal Unity Audio to allow for me (and anyone else) to modify [the] pitch and volume of a sound, or have random soundbites from normal AudioClips as a bank in runtime.

• Pitch changes for if a object is heaver or lighter based on Object Mass.

• More randomization of the sounds.

• Improved sliding sound so now it fades out and gains volume depending on its velocity(it is a bit quiet rn though needs to be polished via sound effect).

• Impact "debounce" meaning the impact sound won't play multiple times if it can avoid it giving that gap for when there's so many impacts.

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Wardrobe Lighting Vote

Between the red curtains, brick walls, and brown Stuffy - there's just too much warmth in one scene. We worried this would blend with Stuffy too much, and not be as visually interesting or contrasting. So, we've held a team vote to decide between an orange backlight and a pink/purple one.

Most of the team agreed that the pinkish light would be nicer. You can see it on the right!

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Rotation Arrows Vote

The rotation UI for the Wardrobe pedestal needs some neat and nice arrows to go along with it. Below are a couple of design concepts shown to the team for voting. We went with the left option!

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Trailer 2 Title Cards

Nobody is as excited about a new Restitched trailer as we are! We've been aiming to pull it together for so long, but keep deciding that the game can use more content and polish before we're ready to pull back the curtain and let everyone see our latest work from the past 2+ years!

The reality is setting in that the next trailer is growing ever closer because we're now working on animated title cards for it! We've also nearly nailed down a music choice. How exciting!

Once we've finished some final tasks, we'll be ready to look at capturing footage! This could still be a little while away, as we want to develop/finish a couple of major features before we're ready to showcase the game again.

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With all this work on the Wardrobe, we couldn't pass up the opportunity to share some fresh new looks for our Stuffies! 

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Tiger Skin with Colored Wolf Ears

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Bad Boy Wolf

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Custom Outfit

by: DeRose

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Custom Level

by: Jake

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Custom Outfit

by: Halston

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Thank you for checking into our development recap from July! We're stoked to continue developing this passion project, and our recent work on the Wardrobe this month has given us a little extra spark of motivation!

Let us know your thoughts in the comments, or join our Discord server for a chat!