Uploaded July 2025 | Updated September 2026, 6 hours ago

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This video tutorial shows you how to achieve a simple wind effect which you see in a lot of 2D games with trees, bushes etc., basically foliage that is being moved to make the level pop more. Here I show you an easy out of the box way or the advanced shader way (based on Xor's shader code).

The easy way is simply to have an asset player and apply the underwater effect on it. Then place all image you want to be be moved/animated through it there. Aaaaand that is it. The downside of this approach is that it can look a bot artifacty (if that is even a real word).

The default way is to have instances and use a shader for drawing. This approach looks cleaner, but you need to take into account that you have to assign each sprite its own texture page (so 4k texture page default size is no bueno). For more details how the whole code works visit Xor's website and there you can find a sample project.


@XorDev
Xor's shader blog with the shader code found here:
xorshaders.weebly.com/tutorials/8-wind-shader



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0:00 Easy wind effect with GameMaker's effect layer or the normal way with shader code
1:27 The easy way
3:15 The normal way with shaders
5:17 Issues with drawing