Researching deformation modifiers to make a water animation

For my college project I was tasked with creating a symposium research topic for an advanced 3d concept. For my project I decided to investigate deformations and how they could be used to model and animate water. The reason I am making water is for my final year project which requires my team to make a game based on the theme of well being enhanced technology. Our game is called Haven. In this game you play as yourself and you have have to complete a serious tasks which involve interacting with animals in our game. The point of this interaction is to try engage empathy with player and get an emotional response back from playing. The idea is that the player will be playing the game in a therapy session alongside a therapist who can make evaluations of the players activities. We have chosen to use a poly style art for our art style. This is child friendly and appeals to all audiences. For this reason I needed to model and animate poly water and I have chosen to do so using deformation modifiers. Deformations have been used for animation before with great success but I haven't found much people who tried to use them for water. I will be looking at various deformation modifiers: Free form deformation, patch deformation, noise, wave and ripple. Since I am a mainly a computer programmer and a student I have limited knowledge and experience in animation. I will be looking at which techniques I personally found best making the water and animating it for my work.