Landon Voss

Day 39 — Default Home Items, Interior Spawn Refactor, and Agent Workflow Friction

Written by

Landon

in

Context

With the Home_Edit placement system complete, today was about making homes feel lived in by default and improving the overall spatial consistency of interiors.

Default Home Items

I added support for default items that spawn inside homes. For the starter setup, I included four ceiling downlights. These behave exactly like other home items:

  • They can be moved
  • Removed
  • Repositioned using Home_Edit

This helps interiors feel intentional from the moment a player enters, rather than empty or purely functional.

Interior Spawn Refactor

I made a significant change to how homes are spawned and entered.

Previously:

  • The exterior home mesh was essentially a dummy
  • Entering the home teleported the player to a distant interior location
  • This was done in anticipation of streaming and performance constraints

After revisiting this, I decided it was overly cautious and introduced several UX and consistency issues.

Now:

  • The Home Interior entity spawns directly on the island
  • Entering the home keeps the player in the same world space
  • You can see surrounding objects while inside

This feels much more grounded and cohesive, and I strongly prefer this approach.

Refactoring & Agent Workflow Challenges

This change required another round of refactoring, especially around placement, transitions, and interior state handling.

I also ran into workflow friction with AI agents:

  • Gemini 3 Pro would not function reliably in Agent mode
  • I ended up using Gemini in Ask mode for analysis and task breakdowns
  • ChatGPT 5.2 handled the actual Agent‑based code execution

While this worked, it added extra overhead and context switching. I still strongly prefer Gemini 3 Pro for reasoning, but it requires more manual orchestration.

Summary

What I accomplished:

  • Added default home items (ceiling downlights).
  • Enabled full editing support for default items.
  • Refactored home interior spawning to remain on the island.
  • Improved spatial consistency and interior UX.
  • Navigated a multi‑model AI workflow to complete the changes.

What I learned:

  • Default content dramatically improves perceived quality.
  • Over‑optimizing for performance too early can hurt UX.
  • Clear architectural decisions reduce long‑term complexity.
  • AI tools are powerful, but orchestration still matters.

More posts