Introduction to Population Regions
Population regions are the main way you tell the system where a living group of agents belongs.
In 0.12.x, they are one of the most important pieces of world setup because they connect space, characters, homes, and workplaces into a single population process.
What population regions do
Population regions control things such as:
- where agents can exist
- which character pool they use
- which buildings are considered available
- how the region should be populated
Regions
The physical region defines the area of the population space and is made up of colliders.
Those colliders matter because they define the world area the system reasons about.
Character Pools
Character pools provide the possible agent entries that can be used for the region.
Different regions can use different pools if you want them to feel distinct.
Spawning Strategy
The spawning strategy decides how homes, jobs, and characters are matched together.
In 0.12.x, the built-in strategy works by selecting valid home and workplace combinations and creating agents from the available pool.
Why population regions matter
Population is where the authored pieces of the world start becoming a simulation.
You can have valid behaviours, buildings, and character pools, but without a correct population region the system still has no clear place to build the settlement from.
Common setup expectations
For a region to work well, it usually needs:
- region colliders
- valid houses in range
- valid workplaces and work roles in range
- a character pool that can supply usable entries
If one of those is missing, the population result often shrinks to whatever valid combination remains.
A useful mental model
Think of a population region as the settlement manager for a part of the scene.
It does not just mark an area. It ties that area to the data needed to decide who can live there and what kind of daily life can happen there.
Next step
Read Populating for the fuller explanation of spawning and bespoke agents.