Ripple: 2D Water for Godot 4

Add one node. It draws itself, splashes when things fall in, floats your RigidBody2D bodies, tips them with the waves and throws spray.

What you get

• RippleSurface: the water. Splashes, waves that travel and settle, ambient swell, falling rain that ripples where it lands, and spray that follows the look.
• RippleFloat: puts lily pads, buoys and boats on the waves with no physics.
• Four looks: Soft, Flat (cartoon), Banded (retro) and Pixel (pixel art), each a short shader you can copy and change.
• Sixteen ready-made variations: Lagoon, Deep sea, Toxic and Lava in every look.
• Refraction that bends what is behind the water, in any look or your own shader.
• Six example scenes to play with: playground, pond (walk and swim), rain, flooded cave, looks and variations.
• Every property has inspector help and every class has built-in editor documentation.

Three lines to splash

var water := RippleSurface.new()
add_child(water)
water.splash(Vector2(300, 0), 400.0)   # something hit the water here

Or skip the code: add a RippleSurface in the editor, drop a RigidBody2D above it, and run.

Made for gameplay

if water.get_depth_at(player.global_position) > 20.0:   # px under the surface
    player.swim()

water.splashed.connect(func(position, strength, body): sound.play())

Read the depth or surface height anywhere, one point or many in a single call, and react to splashes with a signal.

Fast

The simulation runs on the CPU in native C++, with no allocations while it runs, and a surface that has settled goes to sleep and costs almost nothing. Measured on the development machine, in Godot 4:

It uses a plain mesh and a canvas shader, nothing renderer-specific, so it is built for Forward+, Mobile and Compatibility.

Install

1. Download the zip and copy addons/ripple/ into your project's addons/ folder.
2. Add a RippleSurface node.
3. Run.

There is nothing to enable. The README in the zip has a tutorial: a swimmer, choosing and tuning a look, pixel art, refraction and writing your own look.

Details

• Godot 4.7 or newer. 
• Windows and Linux (x86_64) libraries included. macOS is not built or tested.
• One horizontal strip of water per node; rotate the node to tilt it. Waterfalls and shaped basins are not supported.