godot-enemy-ai-headless-smoke

Headless smoke testing validates FSM transitions, archetype resource round-trips, health handling, and navmesh polygon counts without rendering or overlap sync. You construct the enemy state machine in isolation to test patrol, aggro, alert, search, and re-acquire transitions.

Runtime navmesh bakes can fall into a nested-host zero-polygon trap after level instancing. Headless smoke tests catch this by asserting polygon-count validation to ensure the bake actually produced navigation polygons before manual playtesting begins.

The best way to validate enemy FSM transitions is constructing the state machine in isolation within a headless smoke test. This allows you to confirm patrol, aggro, alert, search, and re-acquire transitions without windowed perception or real chase checks.

Verify enemy archetype resources and health death behavior by running headless smoke tests that confirm resource fields round-trip correctly and that damage handling reduces health, emits death signals, and frees the node without requiring an active rendering window.

Yes, you can run enemy AI smoke tests without the editor by validating headless-safe logic. You construct the state machine in isolation to check FSM transitions, archetype loading, and non-empty runtime navmesh bakes, leaving real perception and pathing checks for manual F5 runs.

You should not use headless testing for real chase and perception checks or fully settled runtime physics validation. Headless smoke tests target FSM logic, archetype round-trips, health death behavior, and navmesh bake verification, leaving windowed perception and pathing checks for human F5 runs.