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debug

Inspect, debug & data Core

Toggle Gameplay Debugger categories at runtime.

What it’s for

Unreal’s Gameplay Debugger is the on-screen overlay you normally summon with the apostrophe key and steer with the number keys to show categories like AI, EQS, or Behavior. This namespace reserves the surface for driving that overlay, and today it is honest about a limitation: its one method, debug.spawn_category, returns NOT_IMPLEMENTED, because debugger categories cannot be toggled from editor scope at all.

The debugger’s real console verbs, gdt.ToggleCategory and gdt.EnableCategoryName, only work while a Play-In-Editor session is running. So the working path is: start PIE with editor.play, then issue the gdt command through editor.console_command.

For runtime metrics that are not debugger categories, such as FPS or scene stats, use editor.show_stats or performance.show_stats instead.

Examples

Show AI perception during a play session

Start PIE first; the gdt verbs require a running game.

You: Turn on the AI gameplay debugger category so I can see perception.

  call("editor.play", {})
  call("editor.console_command", {command:"gdt.EnableCategoryName AI"})
    → {ok:true}

Done. AI category enabled while PIE runs; perception state now draws over the pawns.

Toggle a category back off

The toggle verb flips the category, exactly like pressing its number key twice.

You: Hide the EQS overlay again, I'm done looking at the query.

  call("editor.console_command", {command:"gdt.ToggleCategory EQS"})
    → {ok:true}

Done. EQS category toggled off.

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