Programming, graphics, games, media, C++, Windows, Internet and more...
Wed
26
Mar 2025
In January 2025, I participated in PolyJam - a Global Game Jam site in Warsaw, Poland. I shared my experiences in a blog post: Global Game Jam 2025 and First Impressions from Godot. This post focuses on a specific issue I encountered during the jam: Godot 4.3 frequently hanging on my ASUS TUF Gaming laptop. If you're in a hurry, you can SCROLL DOWN to skip straight to the solution that worked for me.
The laptop I used was an ASUS TUF Gaming FX505DY. Interestingly, it has two different AMD GPUs onboard - a detail that becomes important later:
The game we developed wasn’t particularly complex or demanding - it was a 2D pixel art project. Yet, the Godot editor kept freezing frequently, even without running the game. The hangs occurred at random moments, often while simply navigating the editor UI. Each time, I had to force-close and restart the process. I was using Godot 4.3 Stable at the time.
I needed a quick solution. My first step was verifying that both Godot 4.3 and my AMD graphics drivers were up to date (they were). Then, I launched Godot via "Godot_v4.3-stable_win64_console.exe", which displays a console window with debug logs alongside the editor. That’s when I noticed an error message appearing every time the hang occurred:
ERROR: Condition "err != VK_SUCCESS" is true. Returning: FAILED
at: command_queue_execute_and_present (drivers/vulkan/rendering_device_driver_vulkan.cpp:2266)
This suggested the issue might be GPU-related, specifically involving the Vulkan API. However, I wasn’t entirely sure - the same error message occasionally appeared even when the engine wasn’t hanging, so it wasn’t a definitive indicator.
To investigate further, I decided to enable the Vulkan validation layer, hoping it would reveal more detailed error messages about what the engine was doing wrong. Having Vulkan SDK installed in my system, I launched the Vulkan Configurator app that comes with it ("Bin\vkconfig.exe"), I selected Vulkan Layers Management = Layers Controlled by the Vulkan Configurator, and selected Validation.
Unfortunately, when I launched Godot again, no new error messages appeared in the console. (Looking back, I’m not even sure if that console window actually captured the process’s standard output.) For a brief moment, I thought enabling the Vulkan validation layer had fixed the hangs - but they soon returned. Maybe they were less frequent, or perhaps it was just wishful thinking.
Next, I considered forcing Godot to use the integrated GPU (Radeon Vega 8) instead of the more powerful discrete GPU (RX 560X). To test this, I adjusted Windows power settings to prioritize power saving over maximum performance. However, this didn’t work - Godot still reported using the Radeon RX 560X.
THE SOLUTION: What finally worked was forcing Godot to use the integrated GPU by launching it with a specific command-line parameter. Instead of running the editor normally, I used:
Godot_v4.3-stable_win64_console.exe --verbose --gpu-index 1
This made Godot use the second GPU (index 1) - the slower Radeon Vega 8 - instead of the default RX 560X. The result? No more hangs. While the integrated GPU is less powerful, it was more than enough for our 2D pixel art game.
I am not sure why it helped, considering that both GPUs on my laptop are from AMD and they are supported by one driver. I also didn't check whether the new Godot 4.4 that was released since then has this bug fixed. I am just leaving this story here, in case someone stumbles upon the same problem in the future.