Tastyspleen Coop server crash

[|iR|Focalor]

Was on Coop a minute ago with 2 or 3 other guys I'm not familiar with. Out of nowhere, this happened:

Upper Palace
::tastyspleen.net::
Refusing to check a path with .. (models/monsters/tank/../ctank/skin.pcx)
Refusing to check a path with .. (models/monsters/tank/../ctank/pain.pcx)
Warning, texture 'REGION' not in a sub-directory
Warning, texture 'REGION' not in a sub-directory
Warning, texture 'REGION' not in a sub-directory
Warning, texture 'REGION' not in a sub-directory

WARNING: A cl_maxfps value of over 100 is strongly discouraged
R1Q2 separates network and rendering so a cl_maxfps value > 30
is rarely needed. Use r_maxfps to control maximum rendered FPS

Stoneclad entered the game
anticheat Stoneclad is not using anticheat.
GiMpTroN_69 entered the game
anticheat GiMpTroN_69 is not using anticheat.
Solly tried to invade WallFly[BZZZ]'s personal space
WallFly[BZZZ] entered the game
anticheat WallFly[BZZZ] is not using anticheat.
rven entered the game
anticheat rven is not using anticheat.
Solly disconnected
rven died.
You have found a secret area.
rven died.
GiMpTroN_69 almost dodged Stoneclad's rocket
This force field is activated
by the communication laser.
GiMpTroN_69 died.
Server exited: SV_FindIndex: overflow finding index for
models/weapons/v_hyperb/tris.md2
Disconnected by server!

It restarted normally as expected. I seem to recall seeing something like that when someone spammed grenade ammo drops all over the place to crash the server, but never with a hyperblaster model.

[ImperiusDamian]

That's... distinctly odd. I've never had that happen in Q2! Sounds like the server's OWN copy of the hyperblaster model caused it to crash! 

[|iR|Focalor]

I'm assuming someone else connected at the time started spamming hyperblaster weapon drops or something. I seem to remember an occasion years ago where krenz did something similar spamming drops for the hyperblaster or cells ammo or something.

[ImperiusDamian]

I'm assuming someone else connected at the time started spamming hyperblaster weapon drops or something. I seem to remember an occasion years ago where krenz did something similar spamming drops for the hyperblaster or cells ammo or something.

Do silly ass people really pull that shit??

[QwazyWabbit]

I don't think you can crash a server by spamming just one model but you might be able to do it by spamming different new models. The model indexes are assigned as models are needed up to the limit of the game and if a model already exists in the array it isn't added to the indexes. (You can't fill the array by spamming the same model name.)

Coop mode has always been a little unstable in my experience. The original game was all about a single player with monsters and items in the maps and as long as the maps didn't go over the model limit minus one for the player everything was hunky-dory. The player and map entities are reserved during initialization and the map model indexes are assigned as models are spawned during map load. Load a server with multiple players and monster models and you've got a big load.

The error recovery in Q2 was always a bit thin. It'll crash and report a hard error rather than try to discard and replace items and spend time managing memory or entities. It just wasn't designed for that at the inception. Speed and size on a i386/i486 was the design limitation of the time.

It sounds to me more like you had a larger map and lots of entities in that map and the spawning of a hyperblaster was enough to take it over the limit. I don't remember the bsp name for the Upper Palace (edit: it's city3) but I know that one was a heavyweight map even for DM.

Additionally, when they added VWEP to the game they used index 255 for it and depleted the pool by one.

To diagnose this error the "configstrings.txt" file is dumped by the server into it's root when it happens and might be helpful.

QW