Stuck on "Awaiting Scripts" or the loading screen
Players connect but never actually spawn in — the loading screen never goes away.
Do this first
Ask a stuck player to press F8 and send you what it says. That names the script responsible.
What it means
The client connected, downloaded everything, and is waiting for the session to finish starting. The loading screen never goes away because something never signalled that it is done.
What causes it
Ordered by how often it is the answer.
- 1
A client script erroring during startup
An error before the spawn call means nothing ever spawns the player. There will be a SCRIPT ERROR in the F8 console.
- 2
A custom loading screen that never shuts down
A loading screen resource is responsible for calling
shutdownLoadingScreen. One that does not leaves the screen up over a working session. - 3
spawnmanager or the spawn resource is not started
Nothing places the player in the world.
- 4
A multicharacter or apartment script waiting on the database
A slow or failing query means the character never loads, and the screen waits forever.
- 5
A stream folder still downloading
Not stuck, just slow. Big servers take minutes on a first join.
How to tell which one is yours
Press F8 while stuck. Errors in the client console name the resource. If the console is clean, it is the loading screen or the spawn path rather than a crash.
Where to look
The client console output first, then whichever resource owns spawning.
How to fix it
A loading screen must hand over:
-- client
AddEventHandler('playerSpawned', function()
ShutdownLoadingScreen()
ShutdownLoadingScreenNui()
end)And every startup thread should be guarded so one failure does not stall the whole spawn.
Still stuck on your own code?
This page is what this error usually means. Paste your console into Server Fixer and it will rank everything in it and tell you what to do first, and if you would rather not touch it, ORBIE can repair the script and hand the resource back ready to drop in.
bug_reportOpen Server Fixer