Heat Shimmer

For my 2D platformer I would like to be able to do a nice heat shimmer where the heat makes things distorted and all that in desert or lava levels.I'm not sure the best way to do this though. I tried putting Warp on my tiled background in a test level and it lowered the framerate. Also, with Warp I'd have to put it on each object I want heat shimmer on. I'm not sure if I want the shimmer on just the background or everything or just select objects, but I'm certain that adding warp on each object would kill the framerate. I'd like to know the best way to do this kind of effect (preferably with control over what gets effected, though that isn't as important as framerate).

Thanks in advance

Try a canvas on the top layer. Paste everything into the canvas and use the warp effect on that. That way you're just using one shader and one shading pass, it'll help with rendering time.

And yes, using shaders will lower the framerate. There's not a lot you can do about that. Sometimes you just need a faster computer v<img src="http://www.scirra.com/forum/images/smilies/icon_confused.gif">v

hmmmm better than canvas would probably be to use warp on the whole layer.

Layers can have effects. This will only run the shader once. Try it with and without the "force own texture" setting.

Well okay then yeah, but if he has more than one layer then uh, you know. Stuff.

play with the magnify shader on a layer with different gradient sprites moving around all over it to make it animated. i wouldnt use warp.