What do you do when Unreal Editor crashes?

Take a deep breath. Bugs are annoying, but they're ultimately knowable. Whether you know your way around a debugger or you just want to report a problem and get back to work, here's how to do your part.
Consider subscribing! Or follow me on Twitter: / alexforsythe
00:00 - Introduction
00:45 - Who What Why When Where
01:32 - What: Describing the error
02:09 - Where: Getting the callstack
02:53 - Engine PDBs
04:25 - When: Reproducing the crash
05:37 - Who: Asking around
05:50 - Reporting the bug within your team
06:30 - Why: Diagnosing the issue
08:33 - Reporting a bug to Epic
11:09 - Sermon and summary
#UnrealEngine #UE4 #GameDev

[@cthutu]

This video isn't just about Unreal Editor. This is a great description of the general approach to debugging.

[@mechmayhem]

You present these topics in a very calm and informative way, and as engineer I find this strangely relaxing, great job! I’d love to see a video about how you handle project structure and organisation i.e. everything that happens before you begin coding properly (e.g. is UML involved, other types of sketches, no sketches etc)

[@QuackTeamJames]

Stephen sent me over here but as someone who's learning to be a programmer presently at the moment, this is really helpful and clear, definitely get the frustration angle. Given you're aiming to do more, I've subscribed! Looking forward to more coding content from you, Alex!

[@jdfitzdev]

I'm a programmer and already am very familiar with everything you've presented here, but your presentation style was so compelling I had to stay and watch all the way to the end. Quality content!

[@scottcourtney8878]

Seconded. I also am a programmer and knew these topics, but not as deeply in UE as elsewhere. Not only did this fill some gaps in my own UE-specific knowledge, but I also plan to share it with our team, programmer and artist alike. Thank you for this superbly crafted lesson.

[@twitchyswitchy433]

When did Alex start lookin like the good Jebus? Either way, good vid and good look on ya, Alex!

[@musikalniyfanboichik]

handsome af amirite??

[@Manim8]

@@musikalniyfanboichik the amirites followed Jebus

[@WishMakers]

"no one needs to get emotional about software" me, working on my passion project for 3 years on and off crying about never having time for it due to having adult responsibilities: *sniff* you can't tell me what to do (i like this video a lot alex thanks)

[@IfItsNotFun]

Stephen pointed out your video randomly, but this is actually brilliant because Im studying computer science at college, and I just started learning unreal recently. It’s like all the stars aligned! If you do any more videos like this, i’ll definitely check them out

[@VHSRarities]

what a privilege to go to college. parents paid or do you work ?

[@VHSRarities]

im 29 and I've always wanted to go to college. my family is poor so I taught myself unreal engine In one week, you're being scammed at that school buddy. have fun.

[@IfItsNotFun]

@@VHSRarities I work and have loans taken out. My parents do help a little but I’m paying them back. And I should clarify but my school isn’t teaching me unreal, but I’m doing it alongside learning computer science e for my degree. I’m sorry you haven’t gotten the chance to go to college, but it’s not my fault so no need to call out my education. I think I’ve learned quite a lot of useful things that would’ve been very difficult to cover on my own, but there isn’t enough time there to literally learn everything of course. Congrats on learning unreal so quickly, I hope to get skilled enough at it at some point when I have the time

[@anonymous77379]

Thanks for spreading the good word. You speak very clearly and you have a good speaking rhythm. It makes the content more easy to listen and enjoy.

[@wernt0]

I have no idea what most of this means. I just watched to see Alex

[@AlexForsythe]

Same

[@CalaCrisp88]

Same

[@TrojanLube69]

Same

[@Ryan3D_Games]

same

[@reviveproject]

hahhahahahha classic

[@shanei.7008]

Alot of great tips in here. Thank you! I'm dealing with graphic/rendering crashes right now and some of these tips may help me figure out wtf is going on with my brand new workstation

[@HedronProduction]

i liked the assert of the assumption, i have never thought of that. thanks for the insight.

[@gorlak]

Another great video. Keep it up, Alex!

[@chrispetersen3613]

Thank you, this was a very clear and useful explanation. I downloaded those debugging symbols real quick.

[@jacobhoughton557]

Thank you for the debugger tip, kept sending an empty callstack to people and was confused what more info I could give them

[@6r0m]

very good quality of the information process, thank you! and you should become epic support mentor eventually)

[@Hulkamazing]

You know what I really like about this guy, he tells you the problem BUT he doesn't show you to FIX IT!

[@hugplex]

Super interesting, I have no idea what just happened

[@khronos142]

dude how do you only have 9k subs??? you're so awesome!

[@saudgl]

The job really after this .. this video just starter 😂. Good job man 👍

[@ChuckWilsonWilsonsStudio]

dang... 10 out 10 type of video,,, please produce more!

[@cthutu]

You produce excellent quality videos. Basing your videos around a script and matching the video to the audio is, IMHO, the best way to do it. I can pause the video if I need to look further (pro tip: < and > move forward and backward 1 frame). I intend to make some programming videos and I will definitely base it on your approach. May I ask, which software do you use to do the code animations in your videos?

[@AlexForsythe]

Thanks! For the code animations, I wrote a custom tool for After Effects that took way too long to write and that isn't particularly easy to use. I pass it a series of text files representing the code snippet at each stage along the way, and then the tool works out the diffs, chunks everything up into individual text layers, applies syntax highlighting, and animates everything. Then I use a separate tool to retime the animation to the voiceover. It's still pretty labor-intensive, but it beats animating everything manually (which is actually how I did it for the earlier videos, up to and including the Game Framework / engine startup video).

[@RGG800]

Even if you are not dealing with Unreal, this is a really good video to learn what to do when encountering bugs in your code

[@osten222312]

Awesome tutorial, Gilfoyle

[@SoaringSimulator]

The fix was made in one day. That is Epic!

[@W3Studios]

Nice video, I especially liked the end, hehe. My only added suggestion would be to cover how to load in and read the dmp file it can provide more data ...sometimes.. and I find a lot of people don't know how to do that and its my go to thing after looking at the callstack assuming I'm on the same binaries & build. :) Keep it up.

[@TrojanLube69]

Uh hey there! Love ur assets. Thanks for agreeing to free submissions!

[@monicarogers6513]

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!

[@trx6049]

One of the common crashes i get is when i open a project but forget that I'm on power save plan(on a laptop), the engine would crash because the renderer couldn't work because the GPU on my PC didn't use enough battery power to run the renderer. Switching to high performance plan fixes the problem

[@agulrgn]

Thank you Tom Cruse!

[@andrinSky]

Hello Alex, i get so many crashes with Version 5.1! For example, if i will put a BP into the Map then it crashes. Do you have any solution for this?

[@sudharsansaravanan5401]

Nice Video bro. Keep it up

[@Hydra_360]

Hey My 4.19 editor crashes when i save or apply in the material editor any fixes btw it happens every time

[@filippogandolfi95]

Thanks for your motivating video, unfortunately, the error reported in my case not correspond to a file...

[@Arion661]

Hey Alex, looking nice!

[@samarthgohel3624]

Engine is crashing while performing "Build Lighting only". 43% completion of Encoding Textures. Any help would be a great relief

[@JohnGarnerIII]

Exception Access violation fpr 3 years and no fix with every single update

[@PassMaker15]

ALEX WITH BEARD

[@NicolasGG10]

I'm having crashes in Howards Legacy, and it's almost always when I interact with a specific object, the parchments. In the CrashReportClient file it says: [CrashReportClient] bHideLogFilesOption=false bIsAllowedToCloseWithoutSending=true CrashConfigPurgeDays=2 I've tried everything and nothing works.

[@darkwolf780]

So what about when it crashes so hard you get the blue screen of death???

[@openingchain328]

I installed unreal engine yesterday and everytime I create a new project it crashed even when I load one

[@MakotoIchinose]

Everyone gangsta until Unreal Engine is exiting due to D3D device being lost

[@solarstoned]

Ohh for the day when all code works together flawlessly

[@lofiDigitalArt2]

Mine crashed when I closed out of unreal engine and it crashed when I try use video photography program

[@RocketHarry865]

I am getting the Assertion failed: SerializeNum >= 0 [File:D:\Build\++UE4\Sync\Engine\Source\Runtime\Core\Public\Containers/Array.h] [Line: 1152] crash bug whenever I even start unreal editor itself

[@wilismatrix9847]

Please, help me, it have been a month that I am facing a crash on a project I am working on using UE5.0.3,. whenever I try to render using MRQ UE5 stuck at initializing and than crash. I tried disabling plugins and removing them but didn't fix the problem, everything was working fine before and I could render high resolution videos until one day the crash just happened. I asked and shared the log file on UE forums but no one s answering me. Please help me, I can pay you if you do. Thank you.

[@Manim8]

Well if anyone can help... Whenever I load UE 4.26 on my laptop, it just freezes and crashes before I can even do anything. On my PC everything is fine, and my PC is 9 years old,my laptop is a MSI GP72 7RD Leopard (i7 7th gen, 16gb RAM, GTX1050). I also had a problem with 4.25 on my laptop where it would crash straight away if it opened in full screen mode. If it was in windowed mode it would work fine. Very strange and it needs fixing asap so if any of you have an idea that you could suggest I'd appreciate it. And if it works I'll give you a shout out in my next video!!!

[@SnakeEngine]

Does Unity have a track record of being less buggy than Unreal or vice versa? Some experienced out there?

[@hassanalhobail8084]

What do I do when my engine crashes without any report???

[@nice-ni9ux]

in twinmotion always crashed when half of the work.... how can i resolve it?.... i dont have programing knowledge... please help me brother.... my 4 hours design work colapsed in a second

[@goatlife6997]

But what if I’m playing a game and getting unreal engine crash? (Rogue company)

[@LowLevelLemmy]

I bursted out laughing at 6:24

[@VHSRarities]

can you please help me my name is Alex too it keeps crashing I know you said not to say that but I don't have enough space for the debugging symbols.

[@VHSRarities]

when I launch it it just crashes. I use Mac m1 16gb ram

[@shadowphoenixxx]

No two see the same Alex. For me it's Binging with Babish's tech-savvy brother.

[@simon_boi2753]

i dont even use it and i got the error...should i be scared?

[@thatdudepeter]

my laptop could perfectly open ue4 but now it cant even open the ue4 launcher please how can i fix it

[@thatdudepeter]

this is the crash report

[@thatdudepeter]

UE4Editor_Core!AssertFailedImplV() [D:\Build\++UE4\Sync\Engine\Source\Runtime\Core\Private\Misc\AssertionMacros.cpp:104] UE4Editor_Core!FDebug::CheckVerifyFailedImpl() [D:\Build\++UE4\Sync\Engine\Source\Runtime\Core\Private\Misc\AssertionMacros.cpp:461] UE4Editor_Core!LoadSeparatedNameBatchInShardOrder() [D:\Build\++UE4\Sync\Engine\Source\Runtime\Core\Private\UObject\UnrealNames.cpp:3336] UE4Editor_Core!FNameBatchLoader::Load() [D:\Build\++UE4\Sync\Engine\Source\Runtime\Core\Private\UObject\UnrealNames.cpp:3472] UE4Editor_Core!LoadNameBatch() [D:\Build\++UE4\Sync\Engine\Source\Runtime\Core\Private\UObject\UnrealNames.cpp:3481] UE4Editor_AssetRegistry!FAssetRegistryReader::FAssetRegistryReader() [D:\Build\++UE4\Sync\Engine\Source\Runtime\AssetRegistry\Private\AssetRegistryArchive.cpp:140] UE4Editor_AssetRegistry!FAssetDataGatherer::Run() [D:\Build\++UE4\Sync\Engine\Source\Runtime\AssetRegistry\Private\AssetDataGatherer.cpp:524] UE4Editor_Core!FRunnableThreadWin::Run() [D:\Build\++UE4\Sync\Engine\Source\Runtime\Core\Private\Windows\WindowsRunnableThread.cpp:86]

[@jcgxp]

It crashed when I click launch it is frustrating and it takes 100% of my cpu

[@reviveproject]

u look like gylfoil from silicon valley =))) even same voice

[@DitechGaming]

i just checked silicon valley guy, i think thats him, same guy

[@biswajittripathy2786]

How to force unreal engine to use dedicated gpu

[@hawk294]

my error has the word atidxx64?

[@Muhammad_Abdullah_Sultan]

Subscribed

[@codingletsdoit2746]

It doesn't open but simply crashes

[@meow75714]

crash is happening simply on the splash screen. double click the icon for 4.26.2, or launch it from the ugly launcher. it is crashing

[@meow75714]

l'll try with debug symbols

[@junkability4819]

i watched this because when i load up unreal engine 4 it crashes at 45% all the time

[@TrojanLube69]

Well imagine how it was back in the early 2000s

[@antwanminson]

came across this video trying to figure out why the epic games launcher cant install fortnite, it crashes a bunch. I don't have this issue with steam. At least with steam I can just grab the game files from my other computer and then steam can identify and verify them. Epics Game Launcher is a complete waste.

[@madscatt1063]

Didn't realize Christian Bale was such a talented programmer.

[@Last0wner]

everyone told me to use Unreal Engine so I did. :D My experience so far Opening the software: crash importing two or more textures to the material editor: crash importing a character: crash streaming Unreal Engine: crash 😭

[@TrojanLube69]

In the early 2000s we had sometimes to use different hard drive to store progress in order not to lose entire projects. You have it easy with crash windows and reports.

[@Cyberfoxxy]

Crashing the editor on exceptions seems like a great idea. *this comment was brought to you by Unity programmers

[@HT1YT]

Him: Don't yell at your programmers Me: Oh yeah best to not yell at myself xd

[@digimikeh]

Unreal Editor dislikes nullptr calls too..

[@germanslice]

Unreal Engine, Crash Crash, Crash, Crash Crash, Crash, Crash Crash, Crash, Crash Crash, Crash, or when it crashes and you have a Data Struct or ARRAY OPEN. It also crashes at times if you hit UNDO.

[@TrojanLube69]

Search what undo does, then it will make sense for you. Please don’t try it in real life.

[@germanslice]

@@TrojanLube69 Hahaha. Undo usually crashes when it can't allocate enough memory needed for the undo operation..

[@TrojanLube69]

@@germanslice if you want to have fun, create a while loop that undos all undos when you press undo. Edit: Also overclock your ram.

[@germanslice]

@@TrojanLube69 Fun? No, Unreal Engine is not what I call a barrel of fun... Well There's bugs in the engine that I don't like... Engine suddenly Crashing for no reason at all. Error, crash, sorry you're too late to save any of your work so thank you for using our services and well just flip you off to the sorry screen instead. Now be gone with ya. Building the game and spending an hour or two building and the build fails with Error Unknown. You don't have a clue and neither does the engine. Ok so can I continue on with the build if I have an little teeny weeny red error I have no clue on resolving or finding?, But I got thousands of my other lines right, why not this one. Engine: no absolutely not, every line must be red free or the build will fail. Now you have to start your build all over again sorry this engine has lost the error pointer we cannot find the error for you.. Data Structs corrupting themselves is another. When the struct becomes corrupt. Oh woe are your pins if you have many um interfaces and rabbit holes. CONSTRUCTION SCRIPTS: Deleting a Procedural Actor Object instance from out of the map with the code still connected up in the Construction Script. Its an instance be careful, it might be dangerous if you go near it it may turn hostile... If it decides to bite (corrupt the construction script) and when it corrupts when creating any new BP's and try to use the construction script and add in code to the exe pin it, engine goes into an immediate slowdown and then crashes the engine. (had that happen once). Deleting instances from the game object world is supposed to be safe haven since the actual asset exists on your HDD in the browser. Not with Constructions Scripts wildlife that have an array with a for loop running in real time in the game world as I learnt. Ouch. ouch, Have to Disconnect that exe pin first before deleting the instance from the level. Corruption in the Data Table Pointer Index is another place of danger.. (Example I put Row 242, in the dialog actor instance trigger and its correct in pointing to row 242 when I list the data table and scroll the rows, but in the engine when running the game when this corruption happens the engine dosen't reads in Row 242, even though it reads row 242 in the trigger properties but displays on the screen Row 300 (Array Index pointers all out of alignment). Array Index Struct Pointers sometimes can get corrupted. I know not of any fix once this bug happens. Dialog still works but you have to use the wrong row numbers now to get it to display the right row numbers because the array pointers have corrupted themselves. So just like the slow slipping of the Fracture zone I sincerely believe Unreal Engine suffers also from slow slipping.... Slip, 1 pointer out of alignment, slip, 2 pointers out of alignment. slip slip slip. Particle Emitters sometimes get erractic when running for a certain amount of time in the engine when the engine is idle. Here's anothe case of slow slipping.. Fountain of water is smooth frame rate at first, then 10 minutes t half an hour later, slip, slip, one value at a time its loses its smoothness and and becomes jerky and disjointed and all you did was just put in an emitter in an empty engine room and sat back and just watch it slowly deteriorate. IS VALID? When a bad variable reaches the IS Valid Branch, and if the variable is still NOT valid, instead of bombing out with the Red Non Access Error instead the code just stops running. You think oh good the red error is all Gone now, hey wait a minute why is the rest of my code not doing anything, its all dead. Then you have to look in the developer's log to find the error in yellow.. Corrupt interface nodes, Unreal Engine creating far too many files. Oh for a simple game you have only abt a measly 14-20 thousand assets. Where are all those extra thousands of files coming from? Creating materials and instances from texture, files. Unreal Engine taking up too many gigabytes- Nodes that go dead in a BP for no reason at all and Refresh nodes Dosen't revive them. You had no idea 'm sorry Jim its dead, there's no way of knowing it. But its dead. We cannot revive the BP. Its corrupt. PARENT AND CHILD. Parent always overrides child. This is where more bugs come out and things get more complex. Welcome to the rabbit hole. In short, spending more time in Fighting fires that spring up in the dry tinderbrush of the engine instead of developing the game., Engine easily catches on fire...

[@TrojanLube69]

@@germanslice hahahaha trust me udk was a lot worse haha. Even kismet had horrible issues 🤣

[@DerekSan_Arg]

This happens to me while playing DBD, By the way I don't even have Unreal on my computer and I don't know what started that

[@jamesrussell6467]

You really should be doing voice-over work.

[@GeerHedVR]

I get why you are talking so smooth, and promoting being calm. However it is in direct conflict with the panic and stress I feel right. This. Second. So it's making me stressed out even more, i've had to speed up the video to 2x to get your voice to the speed to match the inner panic in my brain right now. Just wanted to put it out there. I bet most people just go to another video because the inner panic, does not match your soothing, although incredibly punchable-in-the-throat, clalmness.

[@soumikbhattacherjee6430]

Epic crash reporter really needs a 'don't send and restart' button.

[@houdinini6715]

好久没更新了大兄弟

[@BudgiePanic]

A classic Null ptr error

[@kirisuma2186]

I'm here so i do not need to yell... because I can't even start my project because 15 seconds into a project it straight out crashes xD

[@VHSRarities]

I hav literally been crying though I'm disabled and it keeps crashing this is my only career option left

[@yunjiehong4649]

6:23 Interesting and many people did that haha which is annoying

[@proyectozvz3859]

i havent 30gb free, so what can i do? EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION writing address 0x0000000000000008

[@abdulshabazz8597]

Two things I expect in future releases of the Unreal Engine 1. How to create a game in Unreal Engine just by playing it. The difficulty is in communicating the correct semantics which describe what I'm trying to do. 2. How to encode the Unreal Engine semantics, as well as those in my own game project, so that I can verify them in a 3rd party theorem prover. Seems like a fast and way cooler way to track down bugs. I'm sure taking up such a task and publishing it back to the Unreal Engine repo would be appreciated by Epic Games. Now if only they can develop a theorem prover which emits blueprints and or C++ code. I've made some progress in these areas but haven't quite unwrapped it all.

[@gamedevdesign]

I don't panic. I just destroy my computer

[@ThePigMensToes]

Hello decent human beings. Does anyone have any good learning tools for absolute beginners? Or even a bulleted list things to do in a game engine to build up a good skill base.

[@SurviveOnlyStrong]

I have a crash randomly during gameplay without any errors... the worst fucking thing

[@dinopaladino]

im am br spoke for helping me

[@b5a5m5]

"There's always an identifiable cause" Laughs in hardware failure and cosmic rays

[@GLAUTOMOTIVEMEDIA]

0:04 restart the Engine. Thanks me later.

[@olliveraira6122]

This would be a lot easier if Unreal Engine binary builds always just shipped with the source code & if they accepted PRs actively Whats the point of making a software open source if you dont accept community collaboration

[@jh-lp7cg]

I work alone. I yell all the programmer all the time.

[@segfault4568]

you look a lot like Tom Cruise.

[@lordsombo]

Uninstall the engine turn off your laptop pack your clothes move to North Korea and start a new life as a farmer

[@bumblestudio]

fr

[@jimmy-k6770]

Understood nothing

[@cipheroth]

😴

[@shekiba.646]

I am very tired of UE4 problem.

[@cipheroth]

zzz emoticon

[@forbiddenbox]

I DO NOT LIKE THE GUY THAT SENDS IMAGES!!

[@karlamcordova9176]

I'll tell you what to do, just go into GeForce Nvidia if your system works with Nvidia and just update the system drivers, that's all, then it should work perfectly for you, well, yes, for me it worked after watching thousands of videos.

[@buster5661]

Its easy to stay calm when you dont offer any useful advice

[@ethanwasme4307]

do you really need to sit on someone's lap and have them explain a call-stack to you again? idk what else you need, a basic cpp tutorial to follow the trace maybe?

[@buster5661]

@@ethanwasme4307 all this video does is tell you to hand the problem to someone else and doesn't actually help you recover your data. Don't blame me for that

[@guysome3263]

@@buster5661 He solves it for his local copy of the engine, the report is for Unreal to fix the issue for themselves and for everyone else who downloads the engine. lol

[@nursultannazarov8379]

DISLIKE FOR CRINGE

[@asdf256]

having an issue with the editor crashing on startup in my project, but the kicker is it happens randomly and nothing you do makes it any more or less stable. so you basically play a game of russian roullette but instead of 1 bullet it's all spots but 1, so you're constantly shooting yourself in the head until you finally get lucky and it works. then you do it all again when you re-open the editor. Big ol' middle finger to this: Fatal error: [File:E:\UE5\Engine\Source\Runtime\RenderCore\Private\RenderingThread.cpp] [Line: 934] 0x00007ffdb28c2376 UnrealEditor-Engine.dll!FSimpleElementPS::SetParameters() [E:\UE5\Engine\Source\Runtime\Engine\Private\SimpleElementShaders.cpp:80]