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Realtime Breakpoints? Debugging Tools help needed

Development Discussion Blueprint Visual Scripting
#1

I have a system going where a dungeon is randomly generated room by room. However, I’ve noted a few scenarios where multiple rooms are created in the same location, indicating a flaw in my logic. Due to the circumstances (random generation), it is extremely difficult to debug this.

What would be incredibly helpful would be a way to “step” through each function in the blueprints while also being able to view the results in the level. I realize I can see all the values with standard breakpoints, but I can’t view the level to see an overall effect. Does anyone know if this is possible?

Also, one add-on question, is there a better way for viewing values in-game besides using the “Print String” function? Not only is it tedious to concatenate a bunch of values and format them correctly, but it only displays for a fraction of a second. I keep ending up taking screenshots and pasting it in Paint so I can review what happened. Hardly ideal. If I could even find some ways to write the text to a file so I can review it, that would be helpful.

Thanks

#2

Hi Chumble,

With regards to the prints: Print String has some advanced options, which by default prints to console and screen. If you hit ~ it will bring up a small console at the bottom, if you hit ~ a second time it will display a larger console which will show more of the previous prints.

it doesn’t make them less tedious to setup of course, but it does make it easier to see what has happened.

Out of curiosity, what is stopping you viewing the level while debugging your blueprint? I haven’t yet had any problem doing that, so I might be missing something with your question. Or is it just a space issue? (would be cramped doing it without a second monitor)

  • Mark
#3

I must say that you can look all the variable values of a blueprint in real time, you just need to open the blueprint while playing and select on the top the correct instance of the blueprint (its a dropdown), moreover you can right click on any variable (on the event graph, or funcitons) and click on “watch this value” and it will show the values without the need of hover the variable connection with your mouse

#4

I’m a little bit late responding to these as I did not see the replies.

Yeah, I ended up finding this. The “Print to log” has been incredibly useful, although I found the log that gets created doesn’t fully get saved to a file until the editor is closed.

Due the the number of functions being called, viewing the details at this level isn’t very helpful. The entire process is described here but basically involves building random rooms wall by wall. Viewing the specific values when building 30 rooms wall by wall simply isn’t a great way to debug why one room got placed inside anther.

I ended up creating my own functions that would wait for player input before continuing. It’s messy but it works.