> > This game didn't last very long because apparently, kicking somebody is fairly processor-intensive on the server. Especially if lots of people try to kick somebody who's already been kicked (like, a second ago). After a couple of rounds, the screen blanked out for everybody. It was temporary, but scary enough to end the game.
>
> That was probably a buffer dump. They're scheduled to happen every night.

I'm not sure what a buffer dump is, or why they would be scheduled nightly. But I really don't know what caused the problem. It might have even been a coincidence of timing. If it was indeed caused by multiple attempts to kick one person more or less occurring simultaneously, then it's most likely a bizarre race condition or deadlock situation with multiple instances of the script trying to modify the same data file at the same time. I've never seen it happen, I don't think, so now I'm curious to try to reproduce it and see what's up.