Built .exe file won't run - no log generated (Windows, UE5.1)

Development Platform & Builds
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Hi,

I’ve packaged my game for Windows, but when I click the .exe it doesn’t run. It also doesn’t generate a log in the Saved folder as it normally would, so I don’t see a way to troubleshoot the issue.

This issue seems similar to the one here, but it’s not quite the same problem (in the other case, a log file was generated when they tried to open the .exe)

It might be relevant that we recently upgraded our project to UE5.1. We previous were on UE5.02 and were able to build the game and run the .exe, but a lot of code and content has gone in since then- so the version upgrade may not be the issue.

Things we’ve tried:

  • Disabling the Quixel Bridget plugin from editor > Plugins (this fixed the issue in the other post, but not ours)
  • Building in shipping and development mode to see if we can generate a log in either mode (nope)
  • Attempting to run the .exe on a different PC (in case of a hardware issue on my side)
  • Deleting and regenerating the binary and intermediate files for all of our plugins (in case of corruption when upgrading)
  • Running the .exe from the command prompt
  • Checking the log during the build for errors (the only error in the log is the “not initialized properly” error discussed here, which seems to be benign)

Here’s the build log, in case there’s anything else in there that’s relevant:
1-24-23 build output log.txt (32.8 KB)

Any help or ideas on how to troubleshoot would be much appreciated!

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This should help you with troubleshooting.

Since you have the game fully packaged you can actually run the game from Visual Studio as if it was running in that packaged directory.

In visual studio, switch your project configuration from Development Editor to a non-editor one, like Development (try that first) or Shipping.

Then, add the -basedir launch command-line parameter, like this:
-basedir=C:\PathToYourGameFolder\Binaries\Win64.

image
image987×64 4.65 KB

Now you can compile the game and run it but using the pak file, configs and everything as if it was running in that game folder, and you can debug exactly what is happening.

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Thanks Ari! That’s a nifty trick- I was able to run the game from Visual Studio as you recommended.

A breakpoint was hit immediately upon running the game, which I guess is why it didn’t generate a log outside Visual Studio.

This is the error I saw in VS:
Assertion failed: Module [File:D:\build++UE5\Sync\Engine\Source\Runtime\Core\Private\Modules\ModuleManager.cpp] [Line: 393]
ImageWrapper

The cause of the error was this line that attempted to load the ImageWrapper module at the top of a file. Removing this line allowed us to build the game and run it:

//Module loading is not allowed outside of the main thread, so we tried to load the ImageWrapper module ahead of time 
//Source: https://nerivec.github.io/old-ue4-wiki/pages/asynchronous-image-loading-from-disk.html
static IImageWrapperModule& ImageWrapperModule = FModuleManager::LoadModuleChecked<IImageWrapperModule>(TEXT("ImageWrapper"));
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Thank you so much for sharing this, Ari! It helped a lot!

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I don’t understand，How is this different from an additional process。