Underwater effect

Yea, both are essentially displacing the pixels horizontally using a displacement map that scrolls vertically. The amount of displacement varies - and the degree to which it's noticeable is different for each game but mainly because one's just an indicator of being underwater while the other is intended to effect gameplay.

Demo updated. Does it look better, BB?

Impressive! It's a shame it runs quite slowly though.

Indeed, it's an expensive effect. I tried it on my girlfriend's laptop, using Opera, and it brought the machine to its knees.

I'm going to implement some sort of caching to improve the performance (hopefully).

I averaged at around 50FPS - I did have occasional (very brief) dips down to about 20 FPS.

So far this is coming out very nicely, hopefully the caching will help improve the performance. Perhaps in some instances where images are static and not changing, could the effect be pre-rendered to improve performance?

Perhaps in some instances where images are static and not changing, could the effect be pre-rendered to improve performance?

This is exactly what caching does. As it is, the effect is applied every frame. With caching, I'll apply the effect only when either the map changes or a property is changed. Obviously, this applies not only to static maps but animated ones too (like the one in the demo).

I'll share this as a pack once it's ready.

Ahh.. I had thought that's what you were going to do with the caching but I wasn't entirely sure. I imagine that should definitely improve the performance, at least in many cases.

Demo updated.

The performance improved by ~50%.

The performance has definitely improved. Rather than getting dips down to ~20fps, I am seeing it hold a steady fluctuation between 50 and 60 fps with frequent bursts beyond 60 to max of about 70. I'd say this actually quite a large performance jump.

I went from getting 50-55 to 60 with frequent small dips. I'd say it's still a little tongue-in-cheek as it'd probably do a number on an already busy scene.

~ Blob

Much better, I'm holding at around 60fps on a laptop.

I'll also try to make maps at runtime, so you don't need to "import" maps as actors.

Demo updated. (Something went wrong and I had to upload it again)

Amazing! I'm seeing 20fps burps again, but consistent between 40 and 62 fps.

That demo doesn't work for me for some reason ):