Been focusing on particle effects mostly, which means stuff like ambient mist.
Underwater particles.
And finally, falling leaves, the most important symbol of autumn. Following shots are taken using a bokeh filter shader for some artsy-fartsy effect. This actually drops my fps down to about 10. But it does work very well with small elements with strong contrasts.
Tweaked the old bonfire particle I had lying around my libraries.
Getting the right setting for the leaves took a fair bit of tweaking. Crysis actually has a shader featuring leaves falling from the trees, but since most of that game takes place in a summer jungle, the effect wasn't nearly as pronounced as I wanted to be. Ended up with the upper limit of six hundred particles on-screen simultaneously.
Tweaking wasn't limited to just the shaders, however, as to achieve leaves that would actually interact with the shadows, I had to force them to face the camera at all times. This meant that in order to achieve some depth, I had to create my own animated texture. Also, the default sprite sucked dick. I guess this one doesn't really look like a leaf, more like a flower petal, due to lack of texture and overexaggerated shading, but the leaves move so rapidly that you never really notice anything wrong. Plus, the smooth shading helps to achieve very pleasing high-contrast particles.
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