Overview of debugging tools¶

Introduction¶

When developing your game, you want to test your game and debug when problems occur. Godot provides several debugging options and tools which aid your debugging process. There are the debug dropdown options, Script editor debug options, debug project settings, and the debugger.

Script editor debug tools and options¶

The script editor has its own set of debug tools for use with breakpoints, and two options. The breakpoint tools can also be found in the “Debugger” tab of the debugger.

..image:: img/overview_script_editor.png

The Break button causes a break in the script like a breakpoint would. Continue makes the game continue after pausing at a breakpoint. Step Over goes to the next line of code, and Step Into goes into a function if possible, otherwise it does the same thing as Step Over.

The Keep Debugger Open option keeps the debugger open after a scene has been closed. And the Debug with External Editor option lets you debug your game with an external editor.

Debug project settings¶

In the project settings there is a “Debug” category with three sub categories which control different things.

Settings¶

These are some general settings such as printing the current FPS to the Output panel, the maximum amount of functions when profiling and others.

GDScript¶

These settings allow you to turn specific GDScript warnings, such as an unused variable, on or off. You can also turn off warnings completely.

Shapes¶

Shapes is where you can adjust the color of shapes that only appear for debugging purposes, such as collision and navigation shapes.

Debugging tools¶

The Debugger can be found in Godot’s bottom panel. Click on it and the panel expands to show all the debugging tools.

There are multiple parts of the debugger, each is for a specific task.

Debugger¶

The debugger tab is for working with breakpoints in the script. When a script reaches a breakpoint this panel gives you information on it.

The buttons in the top right can be used respectively to:

Skip all defined breakpoints, without removing them (so you can toggle them on or off while testing).
Copy the current error message.
Step Into goes to the next line of code, and if it’s a function, it step line by line through the function.
Step Over goes to the next line of code, but does not go down into function code.
Break pauses the game like a breakpoint would.
Continue resumes the game after a breakpoint or pause.

Errors¶

This is where errors and warning messages are printed while running the game.

Profiler¶

The profiler is used to show why individual frames take as long as they do to process and render.

Unlike other debugging tools the profiler does not start automatically. It can be started at any time during gameplay by pressing the start button. You can even start the profiler before opening the game to profile start up performance. It can also be started and stopped while the game is running without losing information from when it was last running. The information it records won’t go away unless you click clear, or close the game, reopen it and start the profiler again.

After starting and stopping the profiler you should see things being kept track of on the left and a graph on the right. The items listed on the left are everything that contributes to frame time, and they should each have a value for time and calls for the current frame you are looking at.

The frame number in the top right tells you which frame you are currently looking at. You can change this by using the up or down arrows, typing in the frame number, or clicking on the graph.

If you want to add something to your graph, or think it looks too cluttered, you can check and uncheck the box next to an item to add or remove it from the graph.

Network Profiler¶

The Network Profiler contains a list of all the nodes that communicate over the multiplayer API and, for each one, some counters on the amount of incoming and outgoing network interactions. It also features a bandwidth meter that displays the total bandwidth usage at any given moment

Monitors¶

The monitors are graphs of several aspects of the game while its running such as FPS, memory usage, how many nodes are in a scene and more. All monitors keep track of stats automatically, so even if one monitor isn’t open while the game is running, you can open it later and see how the values changed.

Video Mem¶

Video Mem list the video memory usage of the running game and which resource is using it.

Misc¶

Misc is used to identify which control node you are clicking while the game is running. “Clicked Control” shows where on the scene tree the node is. “Clicked Control Type” tells you what type of node it is.

Remote in Scene dock¶

When running a game in the editor two options appear at the top of the Scene dock, Remote and Local. While using Remote you can inspect or change the nodes’ parameters in the running game.

Note

Some editor settings related to debugging can be found inside the Editor Settings, under Network>Debug and Debugger sections.