Restitched: Recapped! | October 2023 (Patreon)

Hello, hello! Welcome back to another Restitched: Recapped!, where we'll be walking you through our various developments from October.

Are you all strapped in and ready to depart? Then let's get rolling!

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October marked our third annual celebration of trixel+! Can you believe the service launched three whole years ago? We feel so fortunate to have shared our development journey with you. Your feedback and support have shaped the game positively, and we hope to see it continue!

For the Trixel+ Anniversary Celebration event, we jam-packed Patreon with loads of exclusive content. From new screenshots, a new post feature, multiple soundtrack previews, our first-ever From The Vault videos, a sneak peek at the next trailer, and more... it was certainly a month to remember!

We also hosted a private Q&A event on our server where we allowed trixel+ subscribers to ask any questions they had. Here's a snippet of those discussions:

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What's a game without code? This month we made many commits to the project. Each is filled with various fixes and features!

On October 7th, 3D Artist Cade created a Corn Stalk model to be used in the farm background. We've also ported this over to the level editor so it can be used in your creations!

The next day, Halston began importing new 3D Models sitting in our backlog. We now have Plush Tomato, Banana, and a set of modular pieces for the Stone Pillar set!

The modular Stone Pillar set is great for sprucing up your level with architecture, destruction, or creating fun puzzle-platforming sections.

For our cinematic animations, we asked Santiago to create a set of lettered Toy Blocks. We'll also be porting these to the level editor to be used as Props!

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On October 4th, 2D Artist Carter wanted to polish their previous work on a "Block of Text" Stamp. This time we have a standard and cursive variation. This will prove super useful on our paper Building Materials and book Props!

Finally got around to doing a V2 of "Block of Script" and with all new "Block of Cursive" if you need it to be more..... squiggly!

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On October 1st, Lead 3D Artist Ozy started on the long-anticipated t-shirt model for Stuffy. We plan to use this model for a variety of color and texture choices, as we're putting an effort into making more basic clothing items.

Our first proper texture variant for this model is the "Trixel+ Exclusive T-Shirt" that we revealed during the Patreon anniversary celebrations:

Using the shirt as a template, Ozy began creating other basic clothing items. These include a long-sleeved shirt/sweater, a tank top, a hoodie, and so forth. Naturally, these went on to be sculpted and textured. Here's a look at the early models:

Santiago also whipped up a lovely variety of cosmetic pieces for Stuffy to wear. We're especially fond of the glucose patch and excited to learn that Stuffy does, in fact, wear underwear!

We've also decided to narrow down our outfit plans to a more realistic goal for launch. We've sorted through nearly a hundred different outfit and cosmetic concepts, sorted them into categories like historical, occupational, general/common, animals, cultural, etc., and now have around 70 full outfit ideas to work through. This is still quite a lot, so we're eager to see how this selection changes over time!

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On October 8th, we added the new Corn Stalk model to the farm background. We feel this really livens things up and promotes the farm aesthetic even more!

The next day, on the 9th, Halston went through multiple level backgrounds to perform a polish pass. The attic theme was given several optimization tweaks and a new light effect.

I've just touched up the attic scene, mostly with lighting. There's now a light 'cookie' being cast on the floor from the window pattern. I've also updated the 2 Sided shader to support AO, emission, color changing, metallic maps, and sliders for smoothness. These changes allow the lamp in the attic to not cull the inside. This is is great for foliage too!

The same day, Halston set out to finish his week-long progress on the Frozen Taiga bonus background.

Further tweaks to environments were made, including visual and technical changes:

I noticed we inconsistently use a skybox vs skydome in Azure Skies, so I switched the harbor, taiga, and moon backgrounds to use a skybox, which has improved shadow harshness. I didn't change the farm because it broke the lighting and sky visuals, but it looks fine already. I also did a little bit of polish work in the farm. I painted some details on the terrain to reduce that tiling look in the distance, but I also removed a couple fence panels to open up more scenery at gameplay scale (and when seeing heavy foliage like the corn field through fence panels, it gets too visually cluttered imo).

Something somewhere along the way broke the harbor lighting, so I went through and polished it too. I made sure the default lighting was more of a gloomy sunset vibe. I also resculpted the sand to be terrain instead of a mesh, so there's more detail and natural variation with realistic texture sizes that we can easily change on the fly.

We didn't stop there, though! Halston continued his environment art spree with the help of third-party and custom assets, resulting in a brand-new desert environment. We're quite pleased with the results and how drastically an environment can change the look and feel of the game!

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Our composer, Thomas, has created a beautiful new track titled "Dust and Memories" for the story's attic world. This track also pushes us into having an hour of music for Restitched!

Speaking on the music, Thomas stated:

Dust and Memories is a relatively quiet, melodic track with instrumentation to bring a feeling of nostalgia and mystery. The synthesized cello isn't my personal favorite but it adds to the track. It uses dual pianos and a toy piano for that classic 'playful memory' type of sound.

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On October 8th, Halston published an internal video showcasing the state of development in our Master branch. The goal of this video is to compare the current game with our first trailer's footage that took place within the same level save. From this footage, we've referenced improvements in animation, gameplay tuning, art assets, graphical fidelity, and more.

It's a big improvement over the first trailer build that had gameplay in this level. Most of our issues stem from Stuffy gameplay/movement, like with incomplete features, missing animations, awkward movement (on slops or jumping across gaps), hopping down and clipping through things, getting stuck on a layer that isn't the frontmost one available. But there are some editor bugs as well, mostly with placing Stuffy but also some other things like missing settings and cloning issues, as well as props not listening to the physics material we set (bouncy, rough, slippery, etc.). Some of this will fix itself with the move to 3D physics I think, but at the cost of lots of other things being broken instead. Right now our 3D physics branch is really out of shape so I couldn't even place Stuffy in the level. The game does look really pretty visually though. I think we will have something really special on our hands when we can shape up the gameplay to be fluid, fun, and refined.

Fortunately, we've since gone on to identify major issues in our 3D Physics branch and are aiming to get it to feature parity with this video with a series of fixes.

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Our animators Luke and Brennan have been blocking out and animating some exciting cinematic scenes intended for our story and second trailer! You can check out a preview of this in our trixel+ exclusive post here.

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Thanks to the talented work of our animators Luke and Brennan, alongside Lead 3D Artist Ozy, Stuffy can now be visually killed in various ways! Some developers say this is like therapy...

We are, of course, planning to refine the visuals of these death events.

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Particles now emit when the needle strikes something, giving tactile feedback to the environment you'll be interacting with. We plan to improve this, as well as add different visual effects and colors depending on the object you're impacting.

We've recently added a placeholder Wardrobe blockout, which is meant to evolve into the new Wardrobe menu. Our goal is to split the Wardrobe into its own screen separate from the level while remaining accessible at any time. Changing the Craftbook to allow for two different menus is proving to be a technical challenge, but one we're quickly surpassing!

This month, Chem added a Wash Tool to the game. This allows creators to quickly reset the appearance of any level items littered with unwanted Stamps, Ornaments, etc.

While we're waiting on the implementation of proper particle logic (including settings, spawning, and more), we've gone ahead and imported several effects that can already be used in levels. Some particles have special properties, like lighting up the level around them!

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We've fixed an issue with footstep colliders, meaning sounds will play on heel impact rather than toes. This has improved an issue where Stuffy's footstep sounds were not quite in sync with the animation.

Switching to 3D physics has caused a plethora of issues for us. Luckily, Lead Programmer Michael stepped in to fix some of the most urgent ones - like brushes not cutting away at Building Materials properly.

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Cpt. Stuffy has been renewed for Issue #2! We're excited to see where the adventures lead in these upcoming pages and which characters they might encounter along the way.

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We've been populating the in-game Workshop with internal level saves! This has been a huge help for us, as we're now able to easily share content with each other without having to manually send files through our development chats.

We think it's exciting to see this menu fill up, and we eagerly look forward to it being filled with community creations one day!

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Fire and Fluff

Tempting Touch

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Thanks for tuning into another development recap with us! We hope you've enjoyed this tour through a selection of our recent developments, and we look forward to sharing more next month!

What was your favorite part of the post? Let us know!