After wrapping up the character selection feature, the next step was setting up the database. This was important so players could save their progress and keep track of how far they've gotten. Another key part of the database was handling the game sessions — it needed to store which character was selected for each session, just like discussed in the previous post.
Although the logic to save values to the database is fully implemented in the game, I wasn’t able to completely finish retrieving data from DynamoDB. This was mostly due to how close we were to the project deadline. We had to start playtesting as soon as possible to make sure we had enough time to catch and fix any bugs that might pop up during a full playthrough — and as you’ll see in the video below… there were plenty!
Luckily, Unreal generates a crash dump file for each crash, which clearly shows where the crash happened and what caused it, making the debugging process much easier. However, there was one particularly strange bug that caused the game to crash every time players tried to leave the game. This one was bizarre, as the dump files didn’t give a clear explanation of the issue. To work around it, we decided that when a player chooses to leave, it would instead trigger the return-to-lobby countdown. From there, players can exit the game safely, since the bug doesn’t seem to occur in the lobby level.
