Pixel Shader Effects for 2d Games

Ideas for shader usage in 2d:

* bumpmapping for dynamic lighting

* Paralax scrolling for walls and other semi-flat surfaces

* distortion for heat effect/under water/see through glass

* fractal generated textures for a more unique look everywhere. For instance
using perlin noise as dirt texture, or textures completely generated on gpu.

* Colorizing sprites to give them unique tint (like changeing the color of enemy
pants).

* simulating fires/jet engine exhausts

* simulating wind for realistic flying debris, rain and smoke (doesn't neet to
be done on gpu, but might benefit from it).

* melting/dissolving enemies

And probably a lot more

dynamic shadows and lighting.
'blobs' and metaballs.
morphing.
plasma fields / star fields (think Amiga / Atari).
fluid simulation for smoke, fire, fog, liquids...
real time fractal stuff (perlin noise, moving clouds, ect...).

Hey, my brother is using normal mapping in his 2D space shooter

http://www.blackskygame.com

The effect is really cool!

Good suggestions so far, thanks!

Turns out that Facewound game I mentioned originally has been abandoned and released for free. There are some really slick pixel shader effects there. A few things I've seen so far in it, that aren't on the list yet:

- shockwave explosions
- glowing (e.g. for neon signs)
- muted colors (e.g. for slowmo)
- water surfaces

you can rotate colours to using a rgb to hsl convert and back again, and you can rainbow shift the sprites. But youd probably need shader model 3.0 for that, it would get pretty big.

can someone please explain to me how these shaders in the facewound site work? how to load them using d3d9 and c++? I really can't make them work, I'd like to start from them with shading :)