I did up a degauss unity image effect for Incapacitor. During one of our meetings, we were talking about the feedback we would use for the player taking damage, as they are a robot we would not be able to use the default CoD blood screen. I have played SOMA, as you may have read about in previous posts, and *spoiler* the player is a robot. The damage feedback for the player in that is a glitchy, degauss-like visual interruption, with lots of chromatic aberration. I showed the team what the old CRT monitors looked like when they were degaussed, (example), and the team was very interested in having something much like it in our game.
I used a base Image effect shader by Steve Halliway (here) to skip the setup process, and incorporate the built in unity image effects for chromatic aberration and rendered vortex to help add to the overall look. I have changed the vortex effect so that it renders pixels from outside the source image as black, so the default one won’t look quite right.
The main thing that I did was run each of the colour channels through a sine wave, at different offsets, after offsetting the current reference pixel position by a base sine wave. This is done in the shader, and the timing for the sine is sent through the image effect script. This image effect script is used to allow easy adjustment or dynamically controlled strength of the effect itself. I split up the controls for the wobble strength and effect time, colour strength, chromatic aberration and vortex twist strength. This will be able to work for small to large damage effects.
Currently it isn’t doing a rotational wobble very well, my next goal is to add a stronger twist that over-corrects, and has a stronger twist the further from the centre of the screen it is (the unity vortex works in the opposite direction). I have also been asked to add a ‘static’ effect. I need a better description of what is required before I start designing for it, but that will also be put in.
Ben Welsh 