Bug 4808 - client terminates when connecting to server running huge map
Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME
Alias: None
Product: ioquake3
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Misc
Version: unspecified
Hardware: PC Linux
: P3 normal
Assignee: Zachary J. Slater
QA Contact: ioquake3 bugzilla mailing list
URL:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2010-11-29 16:57 EST by Tahmi
Modified: 2011-03-21 09:34:23 EDT
2 users (show)

See Also:


Description Tahmi 2010-11-29 16:57:47 EST 
When a certain huge map (http://q3a.ath.cx/?mapdetails=eastrun) is running on server that has more than certain amount of paks (more than around 30), client connecting to server gets terminated with bad command byte error. Map doesn't appear to get close to limits though. Byte terminating client equals to -1. Problem exists both with id's q3ded and ioq3ded 1.36 from svn and is 100% reproducable.
When server has few paks (does not send long configstrings) clients connect without problems and map is playable.
Configstring long enough to cause this problem does not get close to its limit.

I've found that MSG_WriteDeltaEntity() might be responsible for generating bad command sequence. Bad command byte occurs when client is receiving entity information.
Comment 1 Rambetter 2010-11-29 18:13:43 EST 
I just finished working on a patch for the open source part of Urban Terror 4.1 that addresses this or a similar issue.  (I am not affiliated with Frozen Sand.)  But my patch is specific to Urban Terror's way of assuming that "everything needed for third party map ut4_foo is in the pak file ut4_foo.pk3".  My patch works by loading only needed paks, not all of them.  I don't think you'll have much use from my patch for other games, but for all it's worth, if you want to see my patch:

  svn co svn://svn.clanwtf.net/repos/ioquake3-UrT-server-4.1

These files describe the patch:

  ioquake3-UrT-server-4.1/README-UrT.txt
  ioquake3-UrT-server-4.1/extra-patches/README-extra-patches.txt

The patch itself is here:

  ioquake3-UrT-server-4.1/extra-patches/loadonlyneededpaks_beta.patch

(It might be renamed to just "loadonlyneededpaks.patch" at some point.)

I know that there are problems on multiple fronts when the number of paks on the server gets really large.  I don't know the exact cause or solution to these problems.  Well, I do know "a solution", which is to reduce the number of paks.  I wrote my patch not only to address these problems, but also to address other issues.

Also, if that's who I think it is who reported this bug, I'd appreciate it if you were a little less "trolly" on IRC.  :-P
Comment 2 Thilo Schulz 2011-03-21 09:34:23 EDT 
<user>@tjps:~/q3server/quake3/baseq3$ ls -la *.pk3 | wc -l
50

I've got 50 pk3s on my server. I tested id server, id client, ioquake3 server, ioquake3 client. Always the same result, no "bad command byte" or whatever. Can't reproduce.