Is there a way to have a device that is only enabled in private/playtest builds but not public releases?

Very often I find myself wanting to add debug buttons and other devices to facilitate testing my map, but I don’t want them available when the map goes live.

Up to this point I’ve just been having to go in and disable/delete all of them every time I’m ready to do a push to live, but this requires doing a new build, which runs the risk of inadvertently breaking something or even worse missing one of the debug devices and pushing something out live that was just meant for testing.

You can try the debug draw tools, they can help you visualize things in the Game mode and they will be automatically hidden in published game.

Those are great for visual debugging, but in the cases I’m talking about it’s generally that there are events that occur in the game but there are a bunch of steps required for it to happen. For testing and debugging its much more efficient to add a button or similar type device to “short cut” the process and just test that the end result works as expected.

If it is complex, then it should be tested end to end. Especially after Fortnite updates and after any new stuff is added.

In my maps, I have lists of events that can happen, so it is easy to control and limit what happens during testing. Good thing it is only one place, bad thing I might release limited version if I forget.

I think we should have API to control features, so we could disable certain things without having to release a new version.

Also, I try to limit which events can happen at the same time to reduce complexity.