advice on avoiding server crashes.

[Ezekel]

thus far i've made 3 maps, following tutorials from the official valve wiki and here.
my 1st map causes errors 1/2 the time with downloading from the server it's on. but plays without a problem.
my second and 3rd both download without incident, however the server crashes at seemingly arbitary times.
this isn't a crash that happens when a point is captured or anything is being triggered.

i'm completely stumped over this, as i have no idea what it is i'm looking for in order to fix this.

the server in question is only running 1 mod, which is called beetlemod.

 

[Jazz]

I had this problem, figured out it was either the info_player_teamspawn's, the info_observer_point's, or bad input-outputs.

My forward spawns were a little screwy and had to re-make them. Regarding observer points, always be sure to have some of those in your map and set one to the main point. Another thing that could cause this map crash is bad input-outputs. You can check for bad I/O by going to Map > Check for problems, then fixing the problems it shows you.

 

[Ezekel]

I had this problem, figured out it was either the info_player_teamspawn's, the info_observer_point's, or bad input-outputs.

My forward spawns were a little screwy and had to re-make them. Regarding observer points, always be sure to have some of those in your map and set one to the main point. Another thing that could cause this map crash is bad input-outputs. You can check for bad I/O by going to Map > Check for problems, then fixing the problems it shows you.

unfortunately i've already checked for these.
focusing on my payload map:
the map itself doesn't seem to crash client side. but it causes the server to stop working and need a manual restart.
the map has a welcome point and 4-5 other observer points + the bomb itself.
there are no i/o errors on the map. i triplechecked that.
if there was, and i'd not checked for them then the TF2 game would crash to desktop anyway when they try to trigger. - this doesn't happen.
when i run it locally i can play the map and complete it without a single problem.

what sort of thing can go wrong with spawn points that require they be remade?

 

[Jazz]

unfortunately i've already checked for these.
focusing on my payload map:
the map itself doesn't seem to crash client side. but it causes the server to stop working and need a manual restart.
the map has a welcome point and 4-5 other observer points + the bomb itself.
there are no i/o errors on the map. i triplechecked that.
if there was, and i'd not checked for them then the TF2 game would crash to desktop anyway when they try to trigger. - this doesn't happen.
when i run it locally i can play the map and complete it without a single problem.

what sort of thing can go wrong with spawn points that require they be remade?

Well, my forward spawns wouldn't work because I had a info_player_start in the map. After asking around, it turned out that I didn't need one and that it was causing people to spawn in disabled spawn points.

 

[Armadillo of Doom]

The only server-crashing bug I find consistently is a lack of spectator cameras. Though I don't know if the observer points on the bomb count. If you don't have any, adding just one is enough, assuming that's the problem.

 

[Ezekel]

i have 1 cam per point, and a welcome cam that looks over the 1st area

i do have one info_player_start on all my maps - but thats only because when compiling if i don't have one of these, the compile will fail due to it saying there's no players start points on the map.

i have 48 teamspawn points on the map. (16 red, 16 blu and 16 blu in a forward spawn)

i guess the question is then: how do i get hammer to compile the map without puting an info_player_start entity on the map?

 

[UKCS-Alias]

Just remove that one and run it. That it says there are problems doesnt allways mean that the map cant compile. without the info_player_start im 100% sure it will compile fine.

And another basic question. do you have leaks? if so then those coused the random ingame crashes (which then actualy arent random).

 

[Ezekel]

no leaks - i've got it running vvis an vrad successfully. and i check pointfiles whenever there's a leak to fix them.
i'll give it a shot at trying to compile without an info player start tonight when i'm at the computer

 

[Ezekel]

although removing the info player start did allow the game to play for 2/3rds of a round, it still crashed the server after about 8 minutes. again, nothing major was occuring.
is there another solution?

 

[UKCS-Alias]

Maybe you reached one of the game limits? Does the crash give a special message?

Btw, info about limits can be found here: http://forums.tf2maps.net/showthread.php?t=3924
Its not complete but worth to take a look at.

 

[Ezekel]

the crash is server side not client side.

the only thing that may be occuring at the time is someone spawning. of that i cannot be sure if someone was spawning at the instant of the crash, but the map was fine prior to the crash. even with me going crazy with backstabs, so it's not a case of every spawn causes a crash. and i know for a fact that it wasn't a case of the entire team spawning at once.
a: there were 4 or 5 people dead at the time at most
b:if that was the case, the map would crash on start, when everyone spawns.

is it possible that this is a problem with the server itself, rather than the map? (i doubt it, but i can't think of anything that could cause it that is on the map)

 

[UKCS-Alias]

Maybe check for a looping action of entities. Any uncontrolled I/O loop can couse a crash. And they can happen randomly after waiting some time (they have to be triggered though). If the map became laggy just before it crashed then this is definitely a possible couse.

 

[Ezekel]

well the problem is apparently still there.

when the server crashes it's sudden, without any warning. no lag spikes or anything.

there aren't any input/output loops on the map.

only i/o's are doors, the cart and cp stuff, and... well more doors.
and of course the final bit - the final cp just enables physics on some entities, kills some other ones and triggers an explosion.


also, i've seen the map play through to finish without problems on occasion. but this is only really when there are fewer people connected - hence me wondering if it's a spawn related issue, but i'm stumped really.
it's like shooting at something in pitch black. i've no error messages or anything to point me towards the problem.