What causes a missing smoke test that boots and quits the game in CI?

CI verifies the build compiles but never launches it, so a build that crashes on startup or errors in the first scene still passes the pipeline.

How do I catch this when it only happens for some players?

Capture it automatically from the player's device with the full stack trace, the device and OS, the build, and a breadcrumb trail of what they did. That turns a vague complaint into a specific, reproducible issue you can fix without owning the hardware it happens on.

How to Fix Missing a Smoke Test That Boots and Quits the Game in CI

Quick answer: Add a CI step that launches the packaged build headless, loads the first scene, and quits after a few seconds, failing if the process crashed or logged errors.

A build that compiles can still crash on boot. A smoke test that actually launches the game and quits cleanly catches startup crashes a build job never would.

How to fix it

1. Launch the packaged build

Run the built executable with a flag that loads into the main scene and auto-quits (or quit it from a test hook) after it has initialized, capturing stdout and the log.

2. Fail on crash or error log

Inspect the exit code and scan the log for fatal entries; a nonzero exit or an exception in the first frames fails the smoke test, surfacing boot crashes immediately.

3. Run headless where possible

Use the engine's headless or null-graphics mode so the smoke test runs on a GPU-less agent, while still exercising script initialization and scene loading.

Catching the ones you can't reproduce

The hardest version of this to fix is the one you can't reproduce — it only happens on a player's hardware, OS, driver, or save state, under conditions that simply aren't present on your machine. A report that says “it crashed” or “it froze” gives you nothing to act on, so the bug survives release after release while quietly costing you players.

Automatic error capture closes that gap. Each failure arrives with its full stack trace, the device and OS, the build number, and a breadcrumb trail of what the player did right before it broke, so even a failure you have never seen becomes a specific, reproducible issue. Fold identical failures into one signature ranked by how many players each hits, and your worklist sorts itself worst-first instead of arriving as a stream of vague complaints.

This is where a tool like Bugnet earns its place. Its SDK captures every error automatically with the full stack trace plus device, OS, memory, build, and game-state context, folds duplicates into one grouped issue with an occurrence count, and ties each to the build it first appeared on — so you fix the problem that hurts the most players first and confirm it is gone when its signature disappears from the next release.

The errors you never hear about are the ones quietly costing you players. Visibility turns them into a worklist.