Hypothetical question (shaders/materials/etc)

[MrBehemoth]

Hypothetical question:

Can anyone think of a way to temporarily fake a lower screen resolution using shaders, refraction or some other jiggery-pokery?

For example (this is a totally made up scenario and not what I'm making) - say you were making an FC where your player character was a robot. Instead of losing sanity, your robot character loses processing power and the view becomes more pixellated (of course, without changing the actual screen resolution).

I imagine that clever shaders could maybe do something of the sort, but I'm not sure what is possible in HPL2 or how it would work. Another potential idea would be to mask the player's view with a refracting material, but the best I've been able to do with my experiments in that direction is a kind of mosaic glass effect, which is pretty, but not the same thing.

Any thoughts?

[Daemian]

You could use a timer that checks your health/sanity every 4-5 seconds, if it's below 100, you put a tv static effect with an insanity event. And maybe fade out the screen for a sec.

[MrBehemoth]

Sure, you're right: for the robot-player example I mentioned, that would be a sensible and doable alternative. That's not actually what I want to use it for though. I don't want to say right now what it's really for, as it might never happen.

What I was wondering about would be more complicated, or not even possible: specifically faking a lower resolution (i.e., pixellated) for a while, in game, whatever way it is applied in script.