Aprone, its great that your working on swamp again. I'll try to get the word out to as many people as I can, maybe even some sighted friends? I'm not sure many of my friends will actually check it out, but i won't give up hope, lol.
Is there a swamp subreddit? If not I may create one, been considering that for a while. Do you people think that would really be of any use to anyone though? I guess we could like make topics about mission fails or guides and things like that, might be interesting to have a subreddit. Who knows? Might get swamp some more players.
Aprone, I think i might have already done a name request, and I haven't been on in ages so this might have been changed already, but could you change my character name from robocop to BlindJedi if that hasn't been done already or if that can even be done at all? Thanks.

Hey all. Approne, Would you be willing to roll my Character back? My computer kept getting stuck when I was trying to make my way from 1 map to another, as a result of the computer sticking, I died. Thanks so much in advance. I'm very glad to be playing again. I have another question. What if you could put up different time slots that people could purchase. Like 1 month for $2, 3 months for $6, 6 months for $12 and 12  months for $24.

It's all good Aprone, I've got most of what I had back. I did lose a ton of ammo, but I can work at getting it back. The other players gave me some extra equipment and armor to get me back on my feet. Thank you though.

How are the graphics for swamp rendered anyway? I always figured it would be childsplay for computer hardware of any kind to render a 2d bunch of tiles that are different colours, but when you turn them on the speed hit was massive. I mean the last time I played it was probably twice as fast with the graphics off. Could the graphics perhaps be given some more love in the form of switching them over to rendering on a back end that will tap into our graphics cards? It'd be really nice to level the playing field here

Does anyone else notice lag when switching character's? I notice it especially when sound buffering is higher.

@livrobo: Try to adjust your screen revolution to see if that solves the issue. I have seen the most weird behaviors in Swamp if the screen revolution is not set right.

Exodus, they are just the most basic of windows API calls to draw to the screen.  The reason they're so terribly slow is the sheer number of error checks that are done.  Things like always checking to make sure a pixel at the coordinates exists within bounds before drawing to it, and so forth.  When tossing graphics together quickly, as crazy as it sounds it makes more sense to go slap happy with such checks.  Getting something wrong could/would easily crash the whole computer, and unless you're taking the time to do the graphics right, you don't want to sit back and hope it'll all work perfect.  As I start taking out checks, performance goes higher and higher.  Not the best description of how it works, but it might answer your question.

I'd be tempted to give the graphics a bit more effort.  I recently changed around a few things to improve their speed, and there is a lot more that could be done.

BlindJedi, I might need a more specific set of questions.  The zombies contain while loops and also many If Statements.  When you add up everything from finding a target to chase, movement, attacking, and producing sounds, the zombies are probably hundreds of IF statements. 

Nikos, it won't surprise me if the fast character switching is a little clunky.  It's sort of a hack on top of another hack, just to make it work.  I think I may have explained it already (not sure), but back when Swamp was free the game already had an account system.  The account system was a single character tied to a password, which is how many online games handle things.  When I switched over to the paid system, rather than redesign a lot of code, I just tweaked things to tie 5 old accounts together with a bit of additional info.  Those bundles of old accounts became what the new accounts are in the system.  Well to the system it is actually dealing with 5 completely separate accounts when people refer to their 5 characters, which is a reason why you had to actually log out and back in to switch characters.  To the server, it was never truly 5 characters all under the same account.  The latest quick character feature triggers the server to log you out, then use the login details you used to first sign in to log you in a second time, then it overwrites some data to make it look like your machine did it all instead of the server itself.  A bit messy, but the end result is much more convenient for players than needing to log out and back in.

Glad to hear SLJ had a solution to that problem. 

When a zombie spawns, there are 2 possible behaviors it can start with...  Wandering or Searching.  On the main maps, custom maps, and most of the missions, zombies only use wandering.  In this mode they pick a random direction and start walking.  After moving for a while, or coming up to an obstacle, they'll randomly adjust their direction and continue.

In some missions, especially deathbringer, the zombies start out in the searching mode.  When searching, a special scent trail is overlaid on the map leading to where players are spending the most time.  In a warehouse this would likely be near the truck, or at least wherever the players have been focusing their efforts.  The zombies will still randomly move around, but when picking each random direction they are far more likely to go toward the stronger scent trail.  This helps lead zombies to where players are probably going to be.

As players step on different types of terrain, load guns, and of course fire weapons, they produce different levels of sound.  When each sound happens, a radius is calculated out from the player and any zombies within it are notified.  This is why you can sneak around quietly and zombies may wander right past.  The sneak skill actually just automatically shrinks the sound radius by a certain amount, but otherwise it works the same way.

When a zombie has heard you, regardless of them being set to Wander or Search, they are now in hunting mode.  This is when their speed increases and they do whatever they can to get to you.  Begin brain dead zombies sometimes that means running straight at a wall, but randomly they check to see if they've gotten themselves stuck and backtrack to find a different way to reach you.  If a zombie is avoided for long enough, like if you've outrun it and hidden in a building somewhere, it gives up the chase and goes back into Wander or Search mode.

That's quite interesting finding  out how the zombies actually kinda work on the maps

Hey aprone, at the next update can you look at the Counter mode of the machete?  unless I'm using it wrong it is not working as it should.

hi
the server is down?