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Core Setup

Reference for the core components and ScriptableObjects that every scene needs. The Getting Started walkthrough covers the fast path; this section is the reference you return to when tuning.

What lives in Core Setup

A working swarm is two components in the scene plus a small stack of configuration assets.

In the scene:

Topic What it is
Swarm Manager The single component that owns the simulation. One per scene. It requires a SwarmVisualManager, which Unity adds alongside it and which you rarely touch.
Targets The SwarmTarget component on whatever the swarm should chase.

In your project folder, as assets:

Topic What it is
Swarm Settings Capacity, grounding, body blocking, LOD and dormancy. One asset per manager, so scenes can share it or each keep their own.
Swarm Agent Archetype One asset per enemy type. Binds prefab, radius, push resistance, and the behavior, movement, attack and perception profiles.
Swarm Movement Profile Speed, acceleration, turn rate, and how agents choose their facing.
Attack Profile Reach, damage, cooldown and windup. Optional: an archetype without one is a swarm that chases but never hits.

And in the editor:

  • Scene View Create Overlay: the fastest way to create a manager, a target or a spawner without hunting through menus.
  • Project Settings: the default settings asset, target prefab and agent prefab used when creating new objects, plus the automation that fills an empty slot on a manager you already have.

Four more pages cover the seams between the swarm and the rest of your game:

  • Doors and Barricades: Swarm Flow Modifier, Swarm Breakable and Swarm Pushable, for obstacles that open, break or get pushed.
  • Breakable Obstacles: how the swarm presses, strikes and wears a breakable obstacle down.
  • Combat Integration: the damage contracts that connect attack profiles to your player, enemies and destructibles.
  • Input Integration: feeding a movement direction in from your own controller, the Input System, or the mobile joystick.

What is not in this section

  • Spawning: see Spawners. Spawners are how agents get into the scene; they are configured separately so a single Swarm Manager can be driven by several spawners or a director.
  • Behaviors: see Behaviors. Steering profiles are attached to the archetype; the behavior pages document each pass in detail.
  • Perception: see Perception. Optional: an archetype without a perception profile chases any target in range.
  • Navigation around walls: see Navigation for the optional Surface Flow Field.
  • Colliders, Rigidbodies and layers: see Physics & Colliders.
  • Animation pipeline: see Animation for VAT and Animator-based animation.
  1. Swarm Manager, to understand the inspector you'll use most.
  2. Swarm Settings, the parameters that govern the whole simulation.
  3. Swarm Agent Archetype and Movement Profile, for per-enemy-type tuning.
  4. Targets, short but worth a read for multi-target setups.
  5. Attack Profile and Combat Integration, once you want the swarm to actually hurt something.
  6. Project Settings, only if you maintain shared defaults across scenes.