out of hudelems

Call of Duty

out of hudelems

Printed by the server, usually repeatedly, once a mod has been running for a while.

Cause

The engine allocates a fixed HUD element pool per player — hudelem_t current[31] on Call of Duty 1. Every newClientHudElem() takes a slot. Once 31 are live, further allocations fail and the message repeats.

Almost always one of:

  • Elements created per round or per event and never destroyed.
  • A leak in a cleanup path that returns early.
  • Simply asking for too many at once (a scoreboard drawn as 20 separate elements).

Fix

Destroy what you create. Every element needs a matching destroy() on every exit path, including the ones you did not think about:

if (isdefined(self.myelem)) {
    self.myelem destroy();
    self.myelem = undefined;
}

Call the cleanup at the start of the code that creates them too, not just at the end. A map change or an early return that skipped teardown will otherwise accumulate.

Move static content out of the pool. Anything that does not change per player — labels, backgrounds, frames — belongs in ui_mp/hud.menu as an itemDef, not as a HUD entity. Menu items cost nothing from the 31-slot pool.

For dynamic text, bind a menu itemDef to a cvar and push values with setClientCvar:

itemDef {
    name "my_text"
    type 1
    rect 296 230 80 16
    visible MENU_TRUE
    cvar "scr_my_text"
    decoration
    textscale 0.45
    forecolor 1 1 1 1
}

player setClientCvar("scr_my_text", "some runtime string");

One caution: every setClientCvar is a reliable command. Pushing them on a timer for many players overflows the client's reliable command queue and produces Hunk or MAX_PACKET errors. Push once when the value changes, clear once when done. Do not poll.

Share level-scope elements. newHudElem() at level scope is one allocation for everyone, rather than one per player.

Related