How to Fix a Sprite's Z Position Being Ignored by 2D Sorting

You move a sprite forward on Z expecting it to draw on top, but nothing changes. The 2D sort is ignoring Z in favor of layer and order settings.

How to fix it

1. Sort with order-in-layer

In 2D, set the renderer's sorting layer and Order in Layer to control draw order explicitly rather than expecting raw Z to decide it.

2. Use a position-based sort axis

If you want world position to drive order, set the Transparency Sort Mode to a Custom Axis so the engine sorts sprites by that axis component.

3. Switch sort mode to Z if intended

If you genuinely want Z to control order, set the transparency sort mode to use the Z axis so moving a sprite in Z reorders it as expected.

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.