Right now I am not using any depth information in my engine, but I just found out that it would be neat to be able to render the silhouette of important game objects that are "behind" something with a shader, though I am quite at a loss how to do this in a 2D scene with little to no depth information. I will propably have to use depth information for something like that, but I am not quite sure how.

I guess the abstract concept would be:

zn = depth of pixel that should be rendered zc = depth of pixel at current position in some sort of buffer if(zn < zc) render pixel with a "silhouette" color else render pixel with it's intended color 

Is this a proof of concept I can follow in my next few workhours? How can I use and access stuff like the Z buffer of the current framebuffer in the shader?

As an example, I most recently saw this in Titan Souls:

Also remember that I am thinking 2D only, so application of the painter's algorithm might or might not be desirable.

Right now I am not using any depth information in my engine, but I just found out that it would be neat to be able to render the silhouette of important game objects that are "behind" something with a shader, though I am quite at a loss how to do this in a 2D scene with little to no depth information. I will propably have to use depth information for something like that, but I am not quite sure how.

I guess the abstract concept would be:

zn = depth of pixel that should be rendered zc = depth of pixel at current position in some sort of buffer if(zn < zc) render pixel with a "silhouette" color else render pixel with it's intended color 

Is this a proof of concept I can follow in my next few workhours? How can I use and access stuff like the Z buffer of the current framebuffer in the shader?

As an example, I most recently saw this in Titan Souls:

Also remember that I am thinking 2D only, so application of the painter's algorithm might or might not be desirable.

EDIT: So right now, from comments and such, I got the following proof of concept:

activate stencil mechanism to set stencil render obscuing objects deactivate stencil render scene, using painter's algorithm or depth checks to obscure activate stencil mechanism to check weather or not something got rendered within the stencil area render important objects again, using a different fragment shader to render pixels within the stencil as a dark shadow 

amirite?

Right now I am not using any depth information in my engine, but I just found out that it would be neat to be able to render the silhouette of important game objects that are "behind" something with a shader, though I am quite at a loss how to do this in a 2D scene with little to no depth information. I will propably have to use depth information for something like that, but I am not quite sure how.

I guess the abstract concept would be:

zn = depth of pixel that should be rendered zc = depth of pixel at current position in some sort of buffer if(zn < zc) render pixel with a "silhouette" color else render pixel with it's intended color 

Is this a proof of concept I can follow in my next few workhours? How can I use and access stuff like the Z buffer of the current framebuffer in the shader?

Right now I am not using any depth information in my engine, but I just found out that it would be neat to be able to render the silhouette of important game objects that are "behind" something with a shader, though I am quite at a loss how to do this in a 2D scene with little to no depth information. I will propably have to use depth information for something like that, but I am not quite sure how.

I guess the abstract concept would be:

zn = depth of pixel that should be rendered zc = depth of pixel at current position in some sort of buffer if(zn < zc) render pixel with a "silhouette" color else render pixel with it's intended color 

Is this a proof of concept I can follow in my next few workhours? How can I use and access stuff like the Z buffer of the current framebuffer in the shader?

As an example, I most recently saw this in Titan Souls:

Also remember that I am thinking 2D only, so application of the painter's algorithm might or might not be desirable.