Restitched: Recapped! | December 2021 (Patreon)

This is a trixel+ early access post that will be posted on the Trixel Creative website later!

Welcome back to Restitched: Recapped! The second edition of our new monthly feature in which we recap the recent steps we've taken in developing Restitched. It was super inspiring to see that those following us in our adventure crafting Restitched seemed to really engage with Recapped! So, we're very excited to continue updating you on what we've been up to recently!

Progress has been somewhat slower this month as we've all been celebrating the holidays and busying ourselves with incredibly important festive discussions (such as whether Stuffy would look cuter as a snow-bear or Santa Paws - comment below)!

Prompt Concepts

This month, Halston reintroduced the discussion for more in-game prompts. The prompt above (dating back to July 2021) displays the design for when a user connects a new input, such as a controller. The goal is to make the engine side of the game as designer-friendly as possible so that our more artistic team members can add and refine the visuals while programmers move on to other tasks.

Importing Objects

One feature of the game's development that we most look forward to sharing with the community is the importing of new assets. It's exciting to look to the future and imagine what you guys are going to create with the things we design! This month, Carter and Halston designed something especially exciting for fans of both Restitched and spicy food. You might need a glass of cold milk after this month's Recapped!

How would you use the Stuffy-approved 'Bobbin Farms' Spicy Sauce' to bring the heat to your custom levels in Restitched? Let us know!

Hard Hair vs Hair Cards

With previous hair models for Stuffy, we've used hard sculpts - a single model that is blocked out and sculpted. However, this month, Lead Modeler Ozy took some hair card textures he created back in October and applied them to a ponytail test for Stuffy.

Here are the hair cards:

...and here are some images Ozy took of his experiment:

As you can see, the use of hair cards allows for more detail within layers, such as for strands of hair. This is also known as alpha-style hair. Here's an in-game image of Stuffy donning the new ponytail hair (though, as you may be able to tell, there were some issues that needed to be ironed out).

We look forward to one day sharing gameplay footage of Stuffy's luscious locks!

Floating Element Settings 

This month, Halston, Billy, and Raphaël further discussed a proposal for floating settings menus that would exist separately from the Craftbook. The thought process behind this proposal is that it should act to declutter and simplify the layout of the Craftbook and make user creation more obvious, accessible, and simple - whilst also working in harmony with the logic system we discussed last month.

(Note: these are only concepts and not in-game UI)

Programming Development

This month Restitched received 47 new commits to the code thanks to contributions by Michael, Jamie, Raphaël, Ozy, and Halston! Here's a little peek into the update logs...

An Explosive Bug?! 💥

Well... not quite. This funny bug discovered by Michael was named the 'volcano bug', as it allowed players to place objects underneath the world, only for them to shoot upwards into the air - like an erupting volcano!

Cpt. Stuffy Progress!

Another month, another page of Cpt. Stuffy! Here's a sneak peek to page 5, arriving January 14th. As usual, this page is drawn by the amazing Ari and written by Billy and George.

Looking Forward

Later this month, we will be releasing the 2022 Public Roadmap for Restitched! Last year's roadmap proved to be very popular within our community, and brought about lots of inspiring and useful discussions about the development of the game, particularly within our Discord community!

We've aimed to make this year's roadmap much clearer to help continue engagement with our community following the growth of Restitched - such as the introduction of colored backgrounds and other design elements.

We hope you're as excited as we are for the events and announcements yet to come! But more on this in the near future!

...and that's everything for December!

Thank you for coming back and checking in with us for Restitched: Recapped! We love hearing from you guys, so make sure to let us know what you think of this month's post! Next month, we're hoping to begin incorporating more elements from our amazing community, starting with sharing our favorite fan art for the month of January! So, in true Restitched spirit, get creative! Write, draw, sew, create! And make sure to share your creations with us in the #share channel on our Discord server, or by using #restitched on Twitter or Instagram! 

We're already working on so many exciting new things to hopefully share with you very soon, including a top-secret project! So make sure to come see us again in February for the next Restitched: Recapped!

Happy New Year!