Timberborn Under the Hood: Column Water Simulation & Vertical Pathfinding
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.
