Logging

Where the VN’s own log messages go, how to silence a noisy subsystem without silencing the rest, and why a shipped build stays quiet by default. Nothing here needs setting up: the defaults are already the ones you want in the editor and in a release build.

Everything goes through one facade

The package never calls UnityEngine.Debug directly. Every message it produces — loading a story asset, advancing a node, resolving a keyframe, writing a save — goes through VNLog, a static facade — one front door for every message — in the Beasty.VN.Core namespace.

Where the messages land depends on one thing: whether Beasty Console — a separate, optional asset — is in the project. With it installed, every message goes to its window at Tools > Beasty Console > Console. See The Beasty Console window for what it adds — level filters with live counts, search, Collapse, Clear on Play, and a detail panel whose stack-trace lines open the file at the right line in your IDE. Without it, the messages go to Unity’s own Console — same content, minus the level filters and the category colours.

The VN does not depend on the console: VNLog finds it by reflection — it looks the console up at runtime instead of referencing it directly — so the VN compiles and runs either way, and importing Beasty Console later needs no re-wiring; the VN’s logs land in its window from that moment on.

Every message is prefixed [BeastyVN][Category], so the console’s search field is enough to isolate the package’s own output from yours. Exceptions are handed to the console as the exception object itself, which is what keeps Unity’s stack trace intact.

Categories

Each message is tagged with the area it came from, and each area has its own switch:

VN logs in the console, one per category

Category	What logs through it	Default
`Data`	ScriptableObject loading, validation, model integrity	On
`Director`	Flow control, node transitions, choices, decisions	On
`Stage`	Scene presentation: backdrop, video, characters, keyframe resolution	On
`Streaming`	The node loading window, Addressables prefetch and release	On
`Save`	The save and load integration	On
`Verbose`	High-frequency output: the typewriter, per-frame work	Off

The switches are public fields on VNLog:

using Beasty.VN.Core;

VNLog.LogStage = false;          // stop the stage chatter, keep the rest
VNLog.LogVerboseChannel = true;  // turn the noisy channel on while you debug the typewriter

Verbose is off by default because it prints during the typewriter effect and on per-frame work. Turn it on while you are chasing something there, and turn it back off.

Note Warnings, errors and exceptions ignore the per-category switches. Silencing Stage silences its informational messages; a stage error still reaches you. Only the master switch below hides those.

The master switch

VNLog.Enabled = false;

That silences all VN logging, warnings and errors included. Its default depends on the build:

Where	Default
Editor	On
Development build	On
Release build	Off

That is the point of it. A visual novel logs on every dialogue line, every choice and every room change, and a shipped game must not write all of that into the player’s log. You do not have to do anything to get that behaviour — it is what a release build already does.

If you do want the logs back in a release build, set Enabled = true yourself.

Setting the switches so they stick

VNLog resets every switch during Unity’s runtime initialization, so each Play session and each build starts from the defaults above. A value you set from an editor script, or in a previous session, does not survive.

The per-category log switches, and the master switch

Set them after startup — from a bootstrap MonoBehaviour in your first scene, or from a RuntimeInitializeOnLoadMethod:

using UnityEngine;
using Beasty.VN.Core;

public class VNLoggingBootstrap : MonoBehaviour
{
    private void Awake()
    {
        VNLog.LogStreaming = false;  // this project's streaming logs are not interesting
        VNLog.LogVerboseChannel = false;
    }
}

Two switches, not one

With Beasty Console in the project, VNLog sits on top of it, so there are two switches above your logs and either one silences the VN:

VNLog.Enabled — the VN’s own switch. Off in a release build.
BeastyConsole.IsEnabled — the console’s master switch, which silences everything in the project, including your own log calls. It resets to true at the start of every run. See Release builds.

Neither switch removes the calls from the build. They stop the output, not the work of building the message. That matters for your own logging, not for the package’s — see Release builds for the pattern.

Logging from your own code

VNLog is public, so you can tag your own messages with a VN category and have them filter alongside the package’s:

VNLog.Info(VNLogCategory.Director, "Chapter 3 unlocked", this);

The last parameter is a context object: pass a GameObject or a ScriptableObject and the entry becomes clickable, pinging that object in the Hierarchy or the Project window.

For messages that have nothing to do with the VN — if you own Beasty Console — call BeastyConsole directly instead. See Logging.