Information

Unreal Engine includes several debug console commands that can intentionally trigger a crash. These commands are useful when testing the Crash Reporter, debugging tools, crash logs, or systems that need to respond correctly when the engine fails.

Because these commands intentionally crash Unreal Engine, make sure to save your work before using them.

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Crash Unreal Engine

Open the Unreal Engine console and enter Debug Crash. The engine will intentionally crash and normally open the Crash Reporter.

This is useful when you want to verify that crash reporting is working correctly or generate a controlled crash for debugging.

Trigger a failed check

You can also use Debug Check to simulate a failed Unreal Engine check. This is useful when testing how assertion failures are handled while debugging.

The exact behavior can depend on your build configuration and whether a debugger is attached.

Crash the GPU

Unreal Engine also includes GPUDebugCrash for intentionally triggering GPU-related failures. These commands are primarily intended for testing GPU crash debugging and diagnostic tools.

For example, GPUDebugCrash hang can intentionally create a GPU hang so you can test how Unreal Engine captures and reports GPU crash information.

Other crash & invalid operation commands

  • Debug Crash: Triggers a fatal error on the game thread and crashes Unreal Engine.
  • Debug Check: Triggers a failed check assertion on the game thread and crashes Unreal Engine.
  • Debug GPF: Performs an invalid memory access on the game thread and crashes Unreal Engine.
  • Debug Fatal: Triggers a low-level fatal error and crashes Unreal Engine.
  • Debug BufferOverrun: Causes a buffer overrun and crashes Unreal Engine.
  • Debug Recurse: Recursively calls code until the stack is exhausted and Unreal Engine crashes.
  • Debug StackOverflow: Causes a stack overflow and crashes Unreal Engine.
  • Debug EatMem: Continuously allocates memory until Unreal Engine runs out of memory and eventually crashes.
  • Debug RenderCrash: Triggers a fatal error on the render thread and crashes Unreal Engine.
  • Debug RenderCheck: Triggers a failed check assertion on the render thread and crashes Unreal Engine.
  • Debug RenderGPF: Performs an invalid memory access on the render thread and crashes Unreal Engine.
  • Debug RenderFatal: Triggers a low-level fatal error on the render thread and crashes Unreal Engine.
  • Debug ThreadCrash: Triggers a fatal error from a worker thread and crashes Unreal Engine.
  • Debug ThreadCheck: Triggers a failed check assertion from a worker thread and crashes Unreal Engine.
  • Debug ThreadGPF: Performs an invalid memory access from a worker thread and crashes Unreal Engine.
  • Debug ThreadFatal: Triggers a low-level fatal error from a worker thread and crashes Unreal Engine.
  • Debug ThreadRecurse: Recursively calls code on a worker thread until it crashes from exhausting the stack.
  • Debug ThreadStackOverflow: Causes a stack overflow on a worker thread.
  • Debug AudioGPF: Performs an invalid memory access on the audio thread and crashes Unreal Engine.
  • Debug AudioCheck: Triggers a failed check on the audio thread.
  • GPUDebugCrash hang: Submits GPU work that hangs the GPU and is designed to trigger a GPU timeout crash.
  • GPUDebugCrash assert: Triggers a GPU shader assertion to test GPU crash debugging.
  • GPUDebugCrash pagefault: Attempts to create a GPU page fault, but does not reliably crash on every GPU, driver, or platform.
  • Debug Ensure: Triggers a nonfatal Ensure and reports diagnostic information.
  • Debug EnsureAlways: Triggers an Ensure that can report every time it is executed.
  • Debug RenderEnsure: Triggers a nonfatal Ensure on the render thread.
  • Debug ThreadEnsure: Triggers a nonfatal Ensure from a worker thread.
  • Debug InfiniteLoop: Enters an infinite loop, causing Unreal Engine to hang.
  • Debug SoftLock: Creates a soft lock, causing Unreal Engine to become unresponsive.
  • Debug Sleep: Puts the thread to sleep for a very long period and makes Unreal Engine appear frozen.
  • Debug Hitch: Stalls execution to simulate a hitch.
  • Debug Spin: Spins the game thread for a specified period.
  • Debug RenderSpin: Spins the render thread for a specified period.