Restitched: Dev Diary | Needle 'n Thread (Patreon)

Hello, and welcome back to another Restitched: Developer Diary!

With the premiere of the Restitched Teaser Trailer (which you can watch here) came some exciting new unveiled features! One of which is the Needle 'n Thread.

The journey to getting the Needle 'n Thread from concept to realization is a long one, so let us take you on that journey!

Laying The Foundations

The first-ever mention of the Needle 'n Thread mechanic comes from Project Lead Halston on June 14th, 2020 (that's right - we've kept this feature under wraps for two years)!

Halston then created a really quick drawing of what such a mechanic would look like in action (on July 7th, 2020 - Peppa Pig art style purely coincidental!!)

And here's a proper concept by our former artist and animator AlpineShowTime - in a much more artistic fashion!

As you can see, the foundations were laid for this tool very early on, and the result ended up being very similar to Halston's initial concepts. AlpineShowTime (Michael) was mainly responsible for fleshing out the feature in its later conceptual stages.

Here are a few gifs that Michael created at the time - displaying the different utilisations and animations that the mechanic could have!

As you can see in these last few concepts, the original design was for the Needle 'n Thread to stem from Stuffy's actual body. This was later changed as it was deemed too potentially gruesome and interfered with cosmetics. Instead, the needle now stems from Stuffy's paws.

Building The Needle

With concepts established, it was time to start building the mechanic itself. Halston set this date of November 1st, after the October 31st, 2020 build was compiled.

And on November 3rd, former team member Clem expressed interest in coding the mechanic, and on November 18th, AplineShowTime helped set up Stuffy for the tool.

A special build was then created to test out the mechanics in gameplay. It's important to note that this is not within the Restitched game itself - it was a from-scratch build simply to test out the gameplay in Unity.

Further discussions were then made about the nitty-gritty details of the mechanic, like how Stuffy would animate while attached. These were discussed both on the Restitched Development Discord server and in a Microsoft Whiteboard!

Not only did we use Microsoft Whiteboard, but we also used a Google Site for our Developers at the time to keep Restitched coding documentation all in one place. This has since been brought over to the Trixel Lounge so it's native to our website.

Around this time, more concepts were created by AlpineShowTime displaying how the mechanic might work with potential enemies (featuring a very early design, before we began planning the enemies' aesthetics). There are more concepts here - but they are for another Dev Diary!

Stringing Along

Another previous dev, redfoxdev, then started experimenting with string physics, as up to this point the tool would simply create a straight line. We later decided that this was unnecessary, and a straight line would serve the same purpose for physics, but with added animations to the string image so it doesn't seem stiff.

...and here is redfoxdev further showing more developments to the mechanic in the aforementioned test build. This time, redfoxdev is displaying more than just latching and swinging from other Materials.

Designing the Needle

In January of 2021, our concept artist Ari (who also illustrates The Grandiose Tales of Cpt. Stuffy), came up with some designs for the 'Needle', displaying the player's ability to modify the tool.

...and in February, posted some more refined Needles!

Needle 'n Thread - It's In The Game!

In a huge step for the game, on April 10th, Lead Programmer Raphaël merged Needle 'n Thread functionality into the main build after much work by TeoDiaz to make it usable with Stuffy and their physics.

That's right, Restitched has a special dev menu to help us test out features and work on the game!

All that was needed at this point was to keep refining the feature and get the UI down. Here's a mock-up of a throwing animation by AlpineShowTime (featuring the old Stuffy model!), and some more refining later on in the year. This animation test was scrapped because of the inability to properly thread behind materials that are obstructed by other things, or if they occupy too many layers that disrupt the animation effect.

Much later after this, Ozy managed to get Stuffy's in-game animation states to sense when the mechanic is being used, allowing us to assign Stuffy's animations for the mechanic.

Here's an image Halston posted identifying an issue where players could Thread an object and then fall below other objects without the obstructed string disconnecting.

Threading the UI

With the mechanic in the game, now it was time to create in-game indicators for the tool. This is a popup indicator that shows the player where a 'Threadable' Material is located.

Here are the layers that Halston provided, and a mock-up of the indicator:

And then, as if by magic, the indicator was added into the game by Sjoerd on March 16, 2022! It was later refined in animation and design by Halston.

Threading the... Thread

The next step was to texture the thread for the mechanic, which Ozy began work on around May 13, 2022:

Here's the Needle 'n Thread as shown in the Restitched Reveal Trailer:

Although the mechanic is now in-game, there are still many improvements to be made to its visuals and gameplay! Building a new game mechanic is very tricky work, and we expect to refine this staple gameplay feature over the course of development.

What do you think about the Needle 'n Thread? There are still unrevealed uses for this new tool in Stuffy's arsenal. What do you think they are? Let us know in the comments!