Anim Blue Print Asset Hard-Crashing Rocket on Launch...Every Single Time

#Prologue

I’m sorry to always be reporting
problems to you and not all the good
news too, but I was requested to confine
my good news to the rocket forums :slight_smile:

I’m loving UE4! Thank you so much for making it!

issue

I was making some simple changes to a REALLY simple anim blueprint,

and then I made some changes to my code, compiled,

and then

all of a sudden

no matter what I did, Rocket would hard crash at launch, after saying (Initializing World) on the logo

and my game instances also crashed every time for no reason

and there was no call stack for any of this

Basically

I lost all access to my project.


luckily for me

I guessed it was the very simple change to the Anim Blueprint (even though it was really really simple)

because I’ve had anim BP’s crash my game before

https://rocket.unrealengine.com/questions/4941/animblueprint-very-nasty-crash-pattern-making-edit.html


but this time its different

because the first time I reported this issue

I had about 40 seconds of time after launch

in this case

the anim BP is crashing the editor before it ever even loads


#Anim BP That Crashes Editor Before It Even Loads…Every Time

for you on drop box:

NathanLyer/CircleAnimBPHardCrashesRocket.uasset

#The Change I Made Before Crashing Started

The Anim blueprint has no event graph

and only 3 nodes in the node graph

  • a llooping animation

  • a fullbody slot

  • and the result node

I had disconnected the looping anim leaving the fullbody slot with no input

to stop the anim for a test

all I did that caused the crash

was reconnect the anim to the fullbody slot

perhaps I forgot to click compile, I dont remember exactly


#Solution

All I had to do was remove the single asset I’ve uploaded to dropbox, an Anim BP, and then the hard crash stopped immediately

Then I remade the anim BP exactly the same way and compiled, exited restarted, all is well again :slight_smile:


#Repro

-if you stick this asset into a project’s content dir you should get same behavior

-If you dont, you can drag a skeletal mesh actor into the world and via f4 properties, assign the offending animBP to the skeletal mesh actor,

-save the level

-exit

-restart

In my case I did have a skeletal mesh actor placed in the level as described above

To get the crash as I am, you might want to make sure the level you added the skelmesh Actor to is your default loading level


#Summary

Anim BP’s have a habit of hard crashing the editor in a way that would be very very hard for someone to debug if they had made many changes before experiencing the actual crashes,

or if they were part of a team and were simply downloading assets from another teammate who made the changes and then sent them over before trying to restart the editor.

I’ve experienced every-load hard crashes from two different anim bp’s now, and have had to perform content-directory-level evasive action in order to be able to continue work on the project at all.


The editor needs a way to protect itself from renegade Anim BPs so that a single asset does not stop all production on a multiteam million dollar game project

I have not had this experience with any other type of asset, which is what made debugging this issue a 2nd time only take me a couple of seconds :slight_smile:

Rama

PS: you might want to read my prologue again if my tone is not clear in this report :slight_smile:

Hi Rama,

I have tested and not been able to reproduce a crash. I had to grab your other ‘AnimatedPlatformCircularFlying’ assets from the FTP in order to link up the AnimBP properly, but with the assets in place, I experienced no problems with loading the project, opening the AnimBP, or repeated attempts at disconnecting and reconnecting nodes.

We will keep an eye out for this issue though, and if you find exact repro steps, be sure to let us know.

Thanks

Quick mention that there was a crash in Rocket when opening the AnimBP before it was associated with its proper skeleton. The crash was resolved once the skeleton was connected. And when the issue was tested in our current internal build, it was handled more gracefully with a message rather than a crash.

-Cheers!

“And when the issue was tested in our current internal build, it was handled more gracefully with a message rather than a crash.”

Woohoo!

Sounds awesome Stephen!

Sounds like the new build is not far away, and its gonna be amaaazing!

:slight_smile:

Rama