How to Prevent Players from Timing Out or Crashing (Engine Errors, Lua Panics, Etc.)

Player crashes and timeouts are unfortunately quite common in Garry's Mod—more common than actual server crashes. Thankfully, most of these are addon-related and can be traced with a bit of investigation. This guide walks you through how to identify and resolve the most common causes of player disconnects and crashes.

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🔌 Common Disconnect Messages & What They Mean

❌ Disconnect: Dropped Player from server (Player timed out)

What it means:
This typically indicates that a client took too long to process something—most commonly during join or mid-gameplay—and was forcibly disconnected. It’s nearly always caused by a poorly optimized or broken addon.

Troubleshooting Steps:

Are players timing out while joining the server?

✅ Likely Cause: Clientside Lua is taking too long to load (often due to heavy or broken addons).
💡 Fix:
Roll back any recent addon changes.
If no recent changes, disable addons one by one to find the culprit.
Watch for large file downloads or Lua errors in console that may hint at the problem.


Are players timing out during gameplay?

✅ Likely Cause: An addon is crashing the client during runtime.
💡 Fix:
Ask players what they were doing or where they were when the crash happened.
Look for patterns (e.g. crashes when using a specific weapon, tool, or entering an area).
Isolate and disable related addons, then re-enable one at a time to pinpoint the issue.

ℹ️ Note: Timeouts are rarely network-related in GMod. If a player disconnects due to internet issues, they’ll usually receive a different message, not a timeout.

💥 Disconnect: Lua Panic! Something went horribly wrong! "not enough memory"

What it means:
The client ran out of memory (RAM) because the server is sending too much data, or the client is already under heavy load. This is a serious crash usually triggered by excessive entities, poor UI optimization, or addon memory leakage to the client (such as constantly drawing a frame without cleanup).

Troubleshooting Steps:

If it happens rarely to a few players:
Likely their system was already using too much memory before joining.
Recommend restarting GMod or closing background programs.

If it happens frequently across many players:
You're likely hitting memory limits from an addon.
Start disabling addons gradually and test after each change.
Focus on client-heavy addons first (e.g. Bloated HUDs, inventories, entity packs).
Ask players what they were doing before the crash—UI menus and high-entity areas are common triggers. Some of these crashes

🧨 Disconnect: Player overflowed reliable buffer

What it means:
The server tried to send too much data to the client in one go. This usually happens when an addon spams network messages, especially using net.Send() or usermessages without proper throttling.

Troubleshooting Steps:

If this just started:
Roll back any new addons or code changes made recently.

If it’s been happening:
Identify and remove addons that send large or frequent network messages.
Use lua_run_cl to track net.Receive() calls and look for spam in console
Hint: You can also use the NetMessage monitor in the Physgun Utils tab on the gamepanel!
Profile your net usage if possible (e.g. using debugging tools or addons like net_graph).

🛠️ Final Tips

Always test with a clean setup when diagnosing crashes. Load only one or two addons at a time.
Ask your players for crash logs or what they were doing—it often provides the biggest clue.
Keep your server updated, and avoid outdated or unmaintained workshop content. Not just for optimization but also security too, workshop addons can be updated at anytime and will automatically download to your server after a restart. This is the third main source of backdoors outside Leaking & Script Sharing.
Memory and timeout issues can sneak in even from popular addons. Trust profilers (such as fprofiler or the Physgun NetMessage Monitor), not big names.


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Updated on: 07/04/2025