Week of 2026-01-19 — Building the Foundation: Automation & Core Systems
This is our first blog post for Subspace Ermine. We're making a computer game involving simultaneous online cooperation in exploring "subspace" with sci-fi fantasy adventure and puzzles. We're developing it in the Godot engine. Our team right now consists of me, Joshua, the primary artist, Trevor currently focusing on programming, and John, who shall do all things. We're getting our lives together right now and working on pre-production stuff, experimenting with how we're going to go about putting all our ideas together and doing it in the most efficient way possible.
Technical Infrastructure & DevOps
- Repository Setup: Established Git version control for collaborative development.
- Documentation: Outlined high-level technical docs and basic team workflows.
- Save & Menu Systems: Wrote significant code for a save system, scene transitioning, and popup handling.
- Audio Manager: Wrote code for management of music and sfx, including volume settings.
Gameplay & Mechanics
- Player Control: Developed the basic movement system, Player Controller, and a temporary Camera Controller.
- Setting System: Started an evaluation to overhaul the Settings system.
- Level Mechanics: Documented conceptual mechanics for the first chapter.
Art & Workflow Automation
- Blender-to-Godot Pipeline: Created Python scripts to batch-rename objects for automatic collision generation in Godot.
- Smart Lighting: Developed a script to use "empties" in Blender that automatically place lights in-engine via GDScript.
- Environment Art: Designed assets for Chapter 1 and experimented with efficient office-level layouts.
- Dynamic Music Concept: Produced a song as a concept for a feature that uses the context of the environment and status of the player to adapt the intensity and tone of the soundtrack.
Lessons Learned / Problems Solved
- The Export Bottleneck: Manually setting up collisions and lights for complex levels was slowing down progress. We solved this by creating a Python-to-GDScript pipeline, allowing us to "tag" objects in Blender and have Godot interpret them automatically on import.
- Geo-Node Challenges: Currently working through logic hurdles in Blender Geometry Nodes to further automate office environment creation.
What's Next?
- Finalize the Geometry Node setup for the Office level to speed up environment art.
- Refine the Settings system and finalize the Scene Management logic.
- Set up player pawn/controller system.
- Implement control mapping settings.