I have a hunch this is going to be a "Layers!" answer, but here's the breakdown of what I'm trying to do:
I have a static background image that is constant in the scene, and all the images that make up the stage are all white and semi transparent. Against the dark background, the level of transparency versus opacity becomes a shorthand for shadows and light.
Eventually that flicker will be powered by torch light.So the trick I'm trying to solve for is how to obscure objects as they step back in space, while still displaying my unified background? My initial thought is a separate object drawn to the shape of the object in front, and then specifically tied to the object's that it will be obscuring behind it telling each of them not to draw. That is a huge amount of by-hand-work considering the entire game has this style, and the environments are intended to be parallaxing, zooming in and out, and having characters moving across it all. I need something a little more automated.
My next thought is a more abstracted solution, where I have a prefabbed "environment object" with a childed "obscuring object" and I have one of them for every layer I intend to make use of, specifically targeting each of the layers they are to obscure. Then I swap in and out the various images I need attached to them, and that solution doesn't seem quite as bad.
The ultimate solution would be a one time shader applied to the obscuring object, so that it doesn't matter where or how I place it; anything behind it gets obscured. That would allow me to have a single prefab environment object that I can place anywhere in the environment in 3D space and just have to let the game handle the occlusion and parallaxing rather than managing it by hand.
Any suggestions?