Unreal Engine

BugSplat’s Unreal Engine integration supports capturing crashes on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, Xbox, and PlayStation games, with support for the Nintendo Switch coming soon. BugSplat also supports both Windows and Linux servers.

There are two options for configuring BugSplat. If you are integrating BugSplat for your organization that uses a dedicated build machine, please continue reading. If you are a developer looking to try BugSplat on your local machine, we've created a Plugin to help you get started.

Additionally, if you want to integrate BugSplat on iOS and Android, please refer to our Plugin page.

Windows 🪟

You must upload symbol and executable files to create symbolic call stacks on Windows platforms. The easiest way to upload files is to use our symbol-upload command line utility. You can download symbol-upload here.

Symbol Uploads

Add a step to your build pipeline that uploads .exe, .dll, and .pdb files via symbol-upload. We recommend creating an OAuth Client ID/Client Secret pair for authentication.

cd {your build folder}
symbol-upload.exe -i {client id} -s {client secret} -b {database} -a {appName} -v {appVersion} -f "*.pdb;*.dll;*.exe"

The appName and appVersion parameters will be associated with your uploaded symbols, allowing logical grouping of files within BugSplat for easier symbol management. BugSplat will automatically remove symbol stores that have not been accessed recently. See our FAQ for a description of these rules.

Packaging Settings

Package your game, and check the Include Crash Reporter and Include Debug Files options are selected in your build configuration:

Configuring Crash Report Client

Sending crash reports to BugSplat can be done via a simple configuration change to Unreal Engine's CrashReportClient.

There are two options for configuring CrashReportClient. The first option is modifying the DefaultEngine.ini file for an engine install or engine source checkout. Modifying the engine's config file is the easiest approach but has the downside of affecting every game you build with this version. Alternatively, you can add DefaultEngine.ini to a specific path in your packaged build directory, which will overwrite values specified by the engine.

Option 1: Editor and Engine Crashes

Unreal Editor can also be configured to send crash reports to BugSplat. To do this, add the following DefaultEngine.ini file in C:\Path\To\Engine_Install_or_Source_Checkout\Programs\CrashReportClient\Config\DefaultEngine.ini.

[CrashReportClient]
CrashReportClientVersion=1.0
DataRouterUrl="https://{database}.bugsplat.com/post/ue4/{appName}/{appVersion}"

Option 2: Packaged Builds

To configure crash uploads to your BugSplat database, create a file named DefaultEngine.ini with the following contents:

[CrashReportClient]
CrashReportClientVersion=1.0
DataRouterUrl="https://{database}.bugsplat.com/post/ue4/{appName}/{appVersion}"

Replace {database}, {appName}, and {appVersion} with the names of your BugSplat database, application name, and version. The appName and appVersion parameters will be assigned to each crash report posted to your database, allowing you to group and filter crashes within BugSplat. These parameters should match the corresponding values used for SendPdbs.

Be sure to URL encode spaces and special characters in {appName} or {appVersion}

Unreal Engine 4.25 and older

For capturing crashes in packaged games in Unreal Engine 4.25 and earlier, copy DefaultEngine.ini to {{output directory}}\Engine\Programs\CrashReportClient\Config\NoRedist making sure to create folders that don't exist (where{{output directory}} is the location of your packaged build).

Unreal Engine 4.26 and newer

For capturing crashes in packaged games in Unreal Engine 4.26 and newer, copyDefaultEngine.ini to {{output directory}}\Engine\Restricted\NoRedist\Programs\CrashReportClient\Config making sure to create folders that don't exist (where{{output directory}} is the location of your packaged build).

If DefaultEngine.ini already exists, add the snippet above anywhere in the file. There are multiple DefaultEngine.ini files in your tree. Ensure you edit the right DefaultEngine.ini file; otherwise, crash reports will not be sent to BugSplat.

Trigger a Crash

Run your game. For testing, a crash can be forced from the console using the command "debug crash". After posting the crash report, log in to BugSplat to view the report.

Optional: Customize Crash Report Client

The default CrashReportClient contains text that explains to the user that the crash reports are being sent to Epic. By overwriting the CrashReportClient configuration settings crash reports are instead sent to BugSplat. It is a good idea to change the text and rebuild CrashReportClient. Customizing CrashReportClient requires rebuilding the engine source.

Please see our blog for more information on how to customize Unreal's CrashReportClient.

Linux Servers 🐧

Special instructions for Linux servers:

  • Package the crash reporter with your Linux server build by adding the -CrashReporter flag to PackageBuildLinuxServer.bat

  • Force a test crash by running your server executable with the option -ExecCmds="debug crash"

Symbolic call stacks are resolved if you deploy symbols on your server. This is the typical case. However, if symbols aren't available locally, upload the Unreal Linux custom symbol files (.sym extension) using SendPdbs.

Licensee Builds 🤝

Some forks of Unreal (e.g. Oculus) are set up as a "Licensee" build. Regardless of other settings, crash reports won't be sent because of this block of code:

if (BuildSettings::IsLicenseeVersion() && !UD_EDITOR)
{
    // do not send unattended reports in licensees' builds except for the editor, where it is governed
    bSendUnattendedBugReports = false;
    bAgreeToCrashUpload = false;
    bSendUsageData = false;
}

To upload crash reports to BugSplat, recompile with bSendUnattendedBugReports = true.

Custom Fields 📝

We extract metadata from CrashContext.runtime-xml file attached to Unreal Engine crash reports. In addition to the values that are provided by prebuilt versions of Unreal Engine, we support a few values our customers have added to their customized engine builds. You can add the following XML fields as child properties of RuntimeProperties:

NameDescription

BugSplatNotes

A value persisted to the Notes column

BugSplatApplicationKey

A value persisted to the Key column

Forwarding Crashes to Epic Games 📤

If you'd like to forward crashes to the original DataRouterUrl specified in DefaultEngine.ini you can enable the Forward Crashes option under the Privacy tab on the Settings page. Forwarding crash reports to Epic is useful when the underlying engine causes a crash in your game and you are working with Epic Games to resolve the issue. If the Forward to Epic option is enabled, an Epic Correlation-ID will be added to the description of all Unreal Engine crashes that were successfully forwarded to Epic.

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