Oops, figured it out. Had another action going "LoS DOESN'T see target -> other stuff happens" which was tripping it up. Guess LoS doesn't like inverted conditions. Should've used Else instead.

I've been confounded by the LoS behavior. For some reason it's now confused when dealing with multiple objects of the same type.

Before:

LoS sees Target -> stuff happens

Now:

LoS sees Target, BUT there's other Targets that it doesn't see, so it doesn't react to the one it sees

LoS sees ALL the Targets -> stuff happens

Maybe I'm too tired to understand what's going on right now. I could swear it used to work just fine with multiple targets before. Anyone experience something similar? What could make it react this way, and how do I fix it?

Lovely work, thanks a ton! This'll be a lot of fun to play around with.

I've got one last question (that I think I know the answer to, but might as well ask the fx guru). Is there a way to change the... "direction" of the Z direction in the effect? In GLSL dirZ controls forward and back away from the camera, but in C2 dirZ sort of goes from top-left corner to bottom-right. I'm guessing this is a limitation of C2 shaders?

Now it's getting really cool. Thanks so much for your work!

Hmmm 15 parameters is quite a lot, though it would be really useful to change colors in the editor. Is it possible to make the input a text line instead of a number value? Something like

Color 1: (255, 231, 234) Color 2: (30, 255, 90) etc.

Then it won't take up 15 lines for each RGB value lol. I just don't know if that's something C2 effects can do.

Oooh I didn't think of making it value instead of time based. That's a good idea, gives some more control of the fx!

I don't know if it's possible, but can you also add adjustable parameters for sphereRadius (line 34), noiseAmplitude (35), paletteFire (99, this is more like 5 parameters haha) and displacement (119)?

Maybe also "rotate" at line 78, but that isn't so important a value I think.

With those params this shader would be epic!

Wow, you're fast with those! lol

I'd love to have them if it's not too much trouble. They sure are pretty.

I might be misremembering off the top of my head, but try adding the "Screen" effect to the object after Spectrum. IIRC that removes black background in most effects.

I was going to suggest using a particle object and just spawn that. You can play around with its attributes to adjust number and size of particles, direction, speed and so on, and make the particles look like cubes. Basically the same effect as what dop said, but instead of fiddling with code you'd need to fiddle with settings.

I was looking around the web for various action-y shaders, was wondering if there's something like the two below available, or if they can be made.

shadertoy.com/view/llj3Dz

shadertoy.com/view/ts23RK

Also saw this one and thought it'd be great to have cause of all the values that can be customized. Not sure how feasible it would be to make though.

shadertoy.com/view/Xd3GWn

Well... just make some smaller cube sprites and spawn them when an enemy dies? Perhaps you can even use the particle object to simulate this.

Is there a more specific effect you're trying to achieve?

Do you mean having a spread of bullets shooting in an expanding cone? You'll need to spawn several bullets and change their angle right after they spawn. Similar to how it is in C2's top-down shooter template, except add more actions to the event.