Well, as the title says..
It's a part of the YASS image generator that seems to be causing extreme load on the server. When an image that contains emoticons is attempted to be rendered, things go downhill. I can't load any page on the server,and logging into FTP is next to impossible. commenting the following block of code, allows loading return to normal once more. anyone want to take a stab as to what's happening?

code:

---

$baseheight = imagettfbboxext($nicksize, 'resources/font/'.$imgitem[$imgdata['nick_font']], '|');
if ($baseheight['height'] < 19)
   $emotesize = $baseheight['height'];
else
   $emotesize = 19;
$spacewidth = imagettfbboxext($nicksize, 'resources/font/'.$imgitem[$imgdata['nick_font']], ' ');
$spacer = ' ';
$i=0;
while(strlen($spacer)*$spacewidth['width'] < $emotesize && $i++ < 30)
   $spacer .= ' ';
$emoteoffsetx = floor(abs((strlen($spacer)*$spacewidth['width']-$emotesize)/2+1));
$emoteoffsety = floor(abs(($baseheight['height']-$emotesize)/2));

$i=0;
while ($i <= count($smileys_from)){
   $pos = strpos($strUsername, $smileys_from[$i]);
   if ($pos !== FALSE){
      $imgEmote = imagecreatefrompng('resources/emotes/' . $smileys_to[$i] . '.png');
      $emotepos = imagettfbboxext($nicksize, 'resources/font/'.$imgitem[$imgdata['nick_font']], substr($strUsername, 0, $pos));
      imagecopyresized($imgBack, $imgEmote, $emotepos[4] + $imgdata['nick_x'] + $emoteoffsetx, $emotepos[7] + $imgdata['nick_y'] + $emoteoffsety, 0, 0, $emotesize, $emotesize, imagesx($imgEmote), imagesy($imgEmote));
      $strUsername = str_replace_once($smileys_from[$i], $spacer, $strUsername);
      imagedestroy($imgEmote);
   } else {   
      $i++;
   }
}

---

$baseheight = imagettfbboxext($nicksize, 'resources/font/'.$imgitem[$imgdata['nick_font']], '|');
if ($baseheight['height'] < 19){
   $emotesize = $baseheight['height'];
} else {
   $emotesize = 19;
}
$spacewidth = imagettfbboxext($nicksize, 'resources/font/'.$imgitem[$imgdata['nick_font']], ' ');
$spacer = ' ';

$i=0;
while(strlen($spacer)*$spacewidth['width'] < $emotesize && $i++ < 30) {
   $spacer .= ' ';
$emoteoffsetx = floor(abs((strlen($spacer)*$spacewidth['width']-$emotesize)/2+1));
$emoteoffsety = floor(abs(($baseheight['height']-$emotesize)/2));
}

$i=0;
while ($i <= count($smileys_from)){
   $pos = strpos($strUsername, $smileys_from[$i]);
   if ($pos !== FALSE){
      $imgEmote = imagecreatefrompng('resources/emotes/' . $smileys_to[$i] . '.png');
      $emotepos = imagettfbboxext($nicksize, 'resources/font/'.$imgitem[$imgdata['nick_font']], substr($strUsername, 0, $pos));
      imagecopyresized($imgBack, $imgEmote, $emotepos[4] + $imgdata['nick_x'] + $emoteoffsetx, $emotepos[7] + $imgdata['nick_y'] + $emoteoffsety, 0, 0, $emotesize, $emotesize, imagesx($imgEmote), imagesy($imgEmote));
      $strUsername = str_replace_once($smileys_from[$i], $spacer, $strUsername);
      imagedestroy($imgEmote);
   } else {   
      $i++;
   }
}[/code]
I think it's just the while loop continuing when it should stop?

$i++;
isn't executed when a smilie was found, only ("else") when no smilie was found.

code:

---

$i=0;
while ($i <= count($smileys_from)){
   $pos = strpos($strUsername, $smileys_from[$i]);
   if ($pos !== FALSE){
      $imgEmote = imagecreatefrompng('resources/emotes/' . $smileys_to[$i] . '.png');
      $emotepos = imagettfbboxext($nicksize, 'resources/font/'.$imgitem[$imgdata['nick_font']], substr($strUsername, 0, $pos));
      imagecopyresized($imgBack, $imgEmote, $emotepos[4] + $imgdata['nick_x'] + $emoteoffsetx, $emotepos[7] + $imgdata['nick_y'] + $emoteoffsety, 0, 0, $emotesize, $emotesize, imagesx($imgEmote), imagesy($imgEmote));
      $strUsername = str_replace_once($smileys_from[$i], $spacer, $strUsername);
      imagedestroy($imgEmote);
   }
   $i++;
}

---

hmaster: Adding those curly brackets makes no difference, they're optional.

mynetx: I think that's by design... it allows for multiple instances of the same smilie.

braces are only needed if there is being more than one line being executed, as a group of code. And yes, it is by design. if I replaced the 'while' with a 'for' only the first occurrence of each icon would be displayed.

so, does anyone have any good suggestions to offer?

I'd just throw some temporary debug code in there to find out exactly what's going on. Track the values of all relevant variables, count the total number of iterations made by the loop, and dump the info to a file.