How do I debug standalone game?

Development Platform & Builds Debugging, Optimization, & Profiling
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1

If I setup build mode to Editor Debug it starts normally.

But when I change to Debug I get:

“The global Shader Cache file “long path to cooked content” is missing”
You’re running a version of the application to load COOKED content only, (…).

Well I didn’t suspected that debug version would require COOKED content of me. Could we please get, back how it worked previously ?

As side question. Why is non-editor mode generating one huge exe file ? In previous builds it generated only small exectuable.

2

Hi Lukasz,

We’re working toward responding as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience.

Sean

3

Hi Lukasz,

Cooked content is required to debug Standalone games, and it has been this way in past builds as well. To accomplish your goal you can cook the content, and then use “Debug” as the solution configuration along with the command line arguments: -game -debug.

Alternately, you are able to set the solution configuration to “Debug Editor”, and again using the command line arguments: -game -debug. This method will allow you to debug a standalone game without cooked content by running it through the editor.

I hope this helps. And I’ll look into the other issue you mentioned of the packaged exe being larger in recent builds.

Cheers

4

I can’t seem to build the project so that it can work with UNCOOKed content. I’ve recompiled both the project and the UE4 engine with the developer build-target, but the same error message applies.

How do we setup the project so that it doesn’t require cooked content?

5

All non-editor builds require cooked content, however, as mentioned above, you can run an editor build with the “-game” command line flag to run the game using the editor data; please note however that this will be slower than a cooked build as the editor is essentially processing assets on the fly.

I tested this with ShooterGame, and had the following on my command line for a Debug Editor, Win64 build:
ShooterGame -game -debug

6

You need to “cook” all resources first. Check out the page

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I am closing this question due to its age. If you need any additional help with this topic, please create a new question.