The Post-Processing Disaster (or How I Lost My FPS and Sanity)

You ever wake up one day and think, "Wow, my game is running too smoothly. Let’s ruin that."? Because that’s exactly what happened when I decided to slap some post-processing onto Maze World. One moment, buttery-smooth gameplay. The next? My phone was gasping for air like a fish out of water, and my FPS had packed its bags and left.

The Problem: Post-Processing vs. Mobile Devices

If you’ve ever thought, "Hey, let’s add some post-processing to spice up the visuals!"—STOP. Right there. Put your mouse down. Walk away. Especially if you’re developing for mobile.

I went full mad scientist—bloom, ambient occlusion, color grading, the whole package. The result? My game instantly transformed into the 90s TV show. Every frame took its sweet time to show up like it was being personally delivered via pigeon mail.

The "Research" Phase (a.k.a. Staring into the Void)

After diving into countless forums, reading cryptic documentation, and having a deep one-on-one conversation with my GPU (it mostly just screamed in pain), I discovered the cold, hard truth:

🚨 Unity’s URP Post-Processing is NOT optimized for mobile! 🚨

Oh, Unity, you sweet son of a... You could have mentioned that somewhere before I spent hours turning my game into a futuristic PowerPoint presentation.

The "Solution" (???)

So, what’s next? Giving up? Crying in a corner? Switching careers? No, no, I’m going full mad scientist mode again—custom shaders. That’s right. If Unity won’t give me performance-friendly effects, I’ll just build my own. Do I know exactly how yet? Nope. But am I going to tinker with it until it works or until my brain melts? Absolutely.

So What Now?

The biggest lesson? Just because an effect looks cool doesn’t mean your game will actually run.  So if you’re a fellow dev facing similar pain, remember—question everything, trust nothing, and for the love of frame rates, test on mobile before you go wild with effects.

That’s it for this devlog! Hopefully, you had a laugh while learning from my suffering. If you’ve got any optimization horror stories, drop them in the comments—I need to know I’m not alone. 😆

🚀 Play Maze World here: https://kmhassaan.itch.io

Until next time, may your FPS stay high and your sanity-- welll intact I guess. 🎮