The sample is a deliberately small systems showcase rather than a content-heavy game. A player and three moving drones share a bounded 10,000 × 10,000 simulation arena with four static obstacles. All visuals are colored rectangles authored in the scene file.
The headless executable builds a 20 × 20 navigation grid, places a wall with one opening, finds a
stable A* route, converts successive path segments into 360 InputFrame values, runs the world,
renders the final snapshot, and emits replay/performance identity evidence.
This path exercises the same engine contracts as the interactive sample without requiring display hardware. It is the preferred recruiter/CI demonstration because output is repeatable.
The SDL3 executable loads the same scene, uses a bounded 60 Hz FixedStepClock, and maps arrow keys
to movement. Escape exits and Space populates the action field for future mechanics. Rendering uses
SDL's cross-platform renderer with primitive batching delegated to SDL.
- Run the headless executable and point out tick/entity/collision/state/pixel evidence.
- Open the generated PPM and replay text.
- Show
SparseSet<T>, the spatial hash, and the brute-force property oracle. - Explain why the core is independent of SDL and how the SDL target is compiled separately.
- Show sanitizer/fuzz/coverage/cross-platform GitHub Actions and the benchmark report.
Texture-atlas batching, animation state machines, deterministic collision response, object pools, audio, and an ImGui debug overlay are valuable next steps only when accompanied by a measurable sample need and new verification. They are not implied by the current version.