Tester screens and hotkeys
A playtest build draws its own screens over your game: the invite code, an NDA if you set one, consent, an age question, a menu, a flag box and an end screen. Every screen works with keyboard and gamepad. Send your testers the page for testers to read.
1. The screens
- Invite code (remote playtests): the tester types or pastes their code. Nothing is recorded until it is accepted and they agree to the recording.
- NDA, if you turned Require Nda on: your text first, then I agree or Decline. A declined NDA records nothing.
- Consent: what will be recorded. Picture and game sound start on; the microphone and webcam start off. Accept records what the tester left on, plus what they do in the game; Decline records nothing unless your build says otherwise.
- Age question, if you set a minimum age. Under the minimum, only what the tester does in the game is recorded, never their picture or sound.
- End screen: the session ID with a Copy button, an Upload later button while an upload is unfinished, and your contact if you set one.
While a screen is up the game is paused and the game's keyboard and gamepad input are blocked, so a press can't reach the game. Arrows or the D-pad move, Enter or A presses, Esc or B goes back.
2. The default keys
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
F6 | Flag something: a short note box. Type what happened, leave a voice note if the mic is on, or press through. |
F7 | Report a bug: what went wrong (crashed or froze, something's broken, looks wrong, sounds wrong, I'm stuck, slow or laggy), how bad it is, typed or spoken words, and how far back it reaches. It is a flag with a bug attached, and its note has its own length limit (500 characters by default; a flag's is 200). |
F9 | Pause or resume the recording. Picture and sound stop; the game keeps going, and what the tester does is still recorded. |
F10 | The playtest menu: pause or resume, finish, or stop and delete my recording. |
Esc | Back, from any playtest screen. |
You can change the keys in PlaytestConfig, or set a key to None. Tell your testers if you do, and rebind F7 first if your game already uses it. F6 and F7 share one three-second cooldown.
3. The REC light
A small REC indicator is on screen, in a corner, the whole time anything is recording, and turns into an amber PAUSED square when the tester pauses. A build with a Broker Url fails if the indicator is turned off, and an events-only build shows it too. A faint PLAYTEST BUILD mark in another corner tells a playtest build from the real game; some studios also show a faint per-tester code there, so a leaked screenshot can be traced to its session.