Check it out! First of all, that's an Octon, which I really think could use a different name, but there's only so much you can do with the prefix octo-. But secondly, I've implemented a fancy water system! I spent all day working on this even though it's completely meaningless. But it was fun to do. Anywhere there would be water tiles, there is instead this smooth animated water. It ripples gently, and the octons/aquazoids leave wakes where they travel (that's an example in the lower right, I'll explain in a moment why), and make big ripples when they pop up to shoot you, like that one is doing there.
There's just one problem, evidenced by the wake in the lower right with no monster attached. The problem is, to save memory and keep the code simple, the water 'texture' which gets rippled is only 256x256 pixels, and it's then doubled up in size to take up 512x512 space. What that means is that you get odd repeats of ripples. You don't notice it at all with the regular ripples, but the ones caused by monsters can be noticeable sometimes. That wake in the lower right? It's the wake of an octon just off the screen to the lower left - you can see it's a duplicate of the wake on the lower left. I've minimized this effect by not allowing off-screen guys to make any wake (that wake was made just before he left the screen, if you can't guess by the direction it's headed!), but it still is a problem. My only real options are to enjoy it as is, or to make monsters not make any wake (or change it to be bigger, but I don't count that, because I don't want to change the code!). I think I like what they do enough to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous criticism. What do you say? Assuming you understood that intense explanation, that is. (Oh, also, this is one of the new levels from Chapter 1, "The Docks").
