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The Problem
Selling atmosphere without geometry
Parallax Protocol needed an oppressive, hazy feel that matched the game's horror tone — but adding volumetric fog or particle systems would have blown the jam's performance budget. The challenge was creating a convincing atmospheric effect purely in screen space, with no extra geometry cost.
What I Built
Technical breakdown
- Noise-based aberration — layered fractal noise drives chromatic split, making the effect feel organic rather than uniform
- Smoky screen overlay — scrolling noise texture in screen UV space creates the illusion of drifting atmospheric haze
- Edge vignette — darkened screen edges focus the player eye while amplifying claustrophobia
- Time-driven animation — all noise layers animated at different speeds to avoid visible tiling or repetition
Reflection
What this taught me
This project deepened my understanding of how screen-space effects can carry narrative weight — the shader isn't just visual polish, it communicates genre and tone. Building it alongside the VHS shader in the same project also pushed me to think in reusable systems rather than one-off solutions.
Research Question
How far can screen-space post-processing go in replacing expensive volumetric or particle-based atmosphere — and what are the design trade-offs when shaders carry narrative responsibility?