GZDoom hangs when shooting a monster

[SPZ1]

I was working on my game and I came to a snag in this one map. It is a somewhat easy to replicate bug where GZDoom will completely hang. All you have to do is shoot the "Triple Element Spell" weapon at the "Minotaurs" while moving around. It should happen after just a few Minotaurs and not even need a restart of the map. When it happens though, you'll have to CTRL+ALT+DEL out of it. I can't reproduce it with any other weapon or enemy combination. I can't make it happen just by shooting at thin air either. I can't find anything wrong with my definitions and it happens almost randomly at different places in the code. Here are the links to my demo:

Check newer post for demo in attachment

[SPZ1]

I just had this happen again on a separate map! Shooting a Minotaur with the Triple Element Spell is what does it.

EDIT: I just got the game to freeze again by shooting Minotaurs with the Ugly Wand. What is it about the railgun that causes the game to freeze? I'm thinking that I just caught it happening with the triple element because it shoots 3 railguns which increases the likelihood of the freeze happening. Maybe the problem is SPF_REPLACE?

[SPZ1]

One more update: I found that the "Number of Particles" setting is directly proportional to how often the game will lock. 100 means it happens very frequently and 10000 means it happens much, much less. Also, why isn't there a setting to just completely turn particles off?

[SPZ1]

I'll just leave this here...

[Blue Shadow]

The demo file is very large (730 MB). Can't you create a smaller one?

[SPZ1]

Here you go.. I just made this much smaller demo. The rate at which it hangs can vary from just a few seconds to having to restart the map a couple times. Turn your particle limit all the way down to see it much more frequently. I made this because gzdoom hanging is getting in the way of me testing my own project.

[Heisanevilgenius]

Without looking too deeply, whenever I have an issue where the game completely freezes and has to be closed, it's because an actor has an infinite loop of frames with 0 tics each.

[SPZ1]

I've had that issue too and this isn't that one. There is no zero length state in my DECORATE. It is just one modified imp that spawns particles when it dies. This problem is seemingly random. It also only happens with railgun weapons and when SPF_REPLACE is used.

[Blue Shadow]

I did manage to get the freeze, by reducing the max number of particles to the lowest possible value (100) with GZDoom 4.12.2 and a fairly recent dev build. Unfortunately, I don't know why it's freezing.

One weird thing I noticed is that after a while of killing those imps, the railgun attack produces no particles or hardly any, even though there aren't any live particles in the level (as far as I could see, anyway).

I requested the topic to be moved to the bugs sub-forum to bring the issue to the developers' attention.

[Jekyll Grim Payne]

Moved to the Bugs subforum. Please remember we have it for bugs

[Redneckerz]

Apparently still current as of 4.13 judging by this seperate thread by the OP (could have just updated this one): viewtopic.php?t=79661

[SPZ1]

I wasn't sure if anyone was paying attention so I made that thread...

[Graf Zahl]

Ok, I just had a look.

I can't see how this code could ever work - the 'oldest' particle is only set if there are no active ones when one gets spawned.
The code never accounts for a case where this particle expires while others are still active - if it then later gets reused and THEN be replaced, the game is over...