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# Timberborn Under the Hood: Column Water Simulation & Vertical Pathfinding
- URL: https://simstructures.com/timberborn-under-the-hood/
- Published: 2026-08-31T18:31:05.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-31T18:31:05.000Z
- Description: Inside Timberborn's Unity build: a per-column dynamic water simulation with drought and wet seasons, plus job-driven beavers that path across vertical structures.
- Author: ENGN GAME STUDIO LLC
- Tags: Timberborn, Articles

### Engine & Tech Stack

- **Engine / language:** Unity with C#.
- **Map representation:** a 3D block and column terrain grid with real verticality, where structures stack and connect through platforms, stairs and levees.

### Core AI & Decision Making

- **Beavers:** a job and hauling system assigns work (gathering, building, operating machines) by priority and availability, and beavers path to worksites over walkable structures.
- **Dispatch:** behaviour is priority-driven and economic rather than combat AI.

### State Management & Data Architecture

- **Model:** an entity and component approach on top of Unity, where buildings and beavers are entities with behaviour components.
- **Signature system:** a dynamic **water simulation**. Water is tracked per column with flow and evaporation, driven by seasonal drought and wet cycles, plus badwater (contamination) that spreads and blocks farmland.

### Tick Scheduling & Performance Tricks

- **Simulation cadence:** water flow, contamination, plant growth and the dry and wet season cycle advance on the simulation tick, separate from render frames.
- **Speed control:** game speed multiplies simulation steps per frame.

### Pathfinding & Spatial Systems

- **Walkable graph:** routing runs over the graph of paths, platforms and stairs on the block grid, so vertical connectivity, not open-field distance, is the real cost.
- **Rebuilds:** the walkable network updates as players build up and across the terrain.