A BepInEx mod for Hollow Knight: Silksong that lets you change the color of Hornet's cloak.
Works single-player out of the box. If SSMP (Silksong Multiplayer) is also installed, the chosen color is automatically synchronized to every other player on the server so everyone sees your custom cloak in real time.
Source: github.com/Michael4d45/HornetCloakColor
cloak_palette.json) and recolors only cloak-like pixels. Edit cloak_palette.json next to the DLL to tune masking when an animation/atlas still looks wrong.HornetCloakColor.dll and cloak_palette.json into BepInEx/plugins/HornetCloakColor/ (Thunderstore builds include both).BepInEx/plugins/SSMP/ for multiplayer sync.#FFFFFF, not that the cloak is dyed white.Custom and provide a color in the Custom Cloak Color field.
Accepted formats: #AA3344, AA3344, or 170,51,68 (decimal 0–255).cloakColors / avoidColors entries in cloak_palette.json only define which texels the shader treats as cloak vs protected — they are not the same as this tint preset.Players without this mod will still see vanilla Hornet — they simply won't receive the color updates. You'll still see their vanilla cloaks correctly.
cloak_palette.jsonShipped next to HornetCloakColor.dll. It tells the cloak shader which source colors in the
sprite count as the cloak (so only those pixels are recolored to your preset). You normally do
not need to edit it.
{
"cloakColors": ["#79404b", "..."],
"avoidColors": ["#ffffff", "..."],
"matchRadius": 0.135,
"avoidMatchRadius": 0.12,
"debugLogging": false,
"sceneScanTextureContains": ["hornet"],
"sceneScanPathContains": ["hornet"],
"sceneScanIntervalFrames": 3
}
(Full default lists are in Config/cloak_palette.json in the repo.)
cloakColors: reference hex colors from the vanilla atlases. Up to 16 entries.
Texels close to any of them count as cloak. Add more hexes if a specific animation
(recoil from a steam vent, dive, dash, etc.) still shows the original red — sample the
cloak pixels from the matching atlas in an image editor and append them here.avoidColors: optional; up to 16 hex colors. Texels close to any of these in RGB get
their recolor mask reduced (same smoothstep idea as matching, using avoidMatchRadius),
so skin, metal trim, etc. can stay vanilla even if they sit near a cloak reference. Leave
empty [] if you do not need masking.matchRadius: how far a pixel may deviate in RGB space and still count as cloak (roughly 0.05–0.35).
Raise slightly if some cloak pixels are missed after a game update.avoidMatchRadius: same scale as matchRadius, used only for the avoid list. If omitted, it
defaults to whatever matchRadius is after loading the file.debugLogging: when true, logs extra lines (e.g. each cloak color change, how many
reference colors loaded, and which scene textures the scanner is matching/ignoring).
Default false.sceneScanTextureContains: substrings (case-insensitive) matched against the texture's
.name. Rarely useful on its own (Hornet's atlases are named atlas0/atlas1/…), but
any name match is also promoted into the texture-instance registry so future scans of
the same atlas hit the fast path.sceneScanPathContains: substrings (case-insensitive) matched against the full
GameObject transform path. Rescues scene-specific poses (resting in bed, sitting at
things) whose atlas the active hero never renders directly. If a pose still shows red,
enable debugLogging, trigger the pose, and look for
[Scanner] Ignored texture (no match): atlas0 … on '<path>' lines — add a substring of
that path here.dumpDiscoveredTextures: when true, the first time each Hornet atlas is recognized
the mod writes a PNG of it to BepInEx/plugins/HornetCloakColor/TextureDumps/. Files are
named <texName>_id<InstanceID>_<width>x<height>_<source>.png so you can correlate
runtime instance IDs (from the [Registry] / [Scanner] log lines) with actual sprite
sheets, and sample colors to add to cloakColors. Default false — turn on
temporarily, capture the textures you care about, then turn off again.sceneScanIntervalFrames: how often (in frames) the scanner walks every tk2dSprite
in the scene. 1 = every frame; 3 is a good default. Higher = cheaper but slightly
slower to color newly-spawned poses.If the file is missing or invalid, the built-in defaults are used.
*-* floating version (whichever is published).# Generate the Silksong path props (once) so the output copies into your install
dotnet new -i Silksong.Templates # only if you don't already have the template
dotnet new silksongpath
# Build
dotnet build HornetCloakColor.csproj -c Release
A thunderstore/dist/*.zip is produced automatically alongside the compiled DLL if thunderstore/thunderstore.toml is configured.
A small CloakRecolor MonoBehaviour is attached to each player's root GameObject (local hero
and SSMP-spawned remote players). Every LateUpdate it walks all MeshRenderers under
that object (GetComponentsInChildren, including inactive children). Some animations use
extra meshes or toggled child objects; only updating the root renderer missed those frames.
A scene-wide CloakSceneScanner runs on its own GameObject (DontDestroyOnLoad) at a high
script-execution order. Every few frames it iterates every tk2dSprite in the scene and
applies the local cloak color to any whose main texture matches Hornet. This catches
Hornet renderers spawned outside the player hierarchy (steam-vent recoil pose,
item-get pose, etc.) where GetComponentsInChildren can't reach. Renderers that already
have a CloakRecolor ancestor are skipped so per-player remote colors keep winning in
multiplayer.
"Matches Hornet" is decided in three stages:
CloakRecolor walks (which
is, by definition, a Hornet atlas) is recorded by its Texture.GetInstanceID(). The
scanner accepts any orphan sprite whose texture has the same instance ID. This is
reliable even though Silksong ships Hornet's atlases under the generic names
atlas0–atlas3 (also used by many unrelated atlases — name-only filtering would
either miss them or recolor everything).sceneScanTextureContains) — substring match against
Texture.name. Useful when something Hornet-named exists outside any tk2dSprite
the hero has rendered yet.sceneScanPathContains) — substring match against the
full transform path. Catches scene-specific poses (e.g. resting in bed, sitting at
things) whose atlas the active hero never renders directly, so the registry never
learns about it. The pose's GameObject typically still has "Hornet" somewhere in its
path, so the path filter rescues these.When stage 2 or 3 matches, the texture is promoted into the registry so subsequent scans hit the fast path.
Sprite sheets / atlases: Hornet’s art can live in multiple atlases (e.g. idle vs sprint).
If a move still looks wrong, sample the cloak pixels from that atlas in an image editor and
add or adjust hex values in cloak_palette.json / raise matchRadius slightly — the mod
matches by RGB distance to your reference colors, so different bakes may need tuning.
Cloak shader path swaps the renderer's shader for HornetCloakColor/CloakHueShift and
pushes the chosen color in HSV. The shader measures RGB distance from each texel to up to
16 cloak reference colors (from cloak_palette.json), takes the minimum, and smoothsteps it
into a mask. Optionally, distance to up to 16 avoid colors reduces that mask so non-cloak
pixels are not recolored. It then replaces hue/saturation while preserving value for shading.
The shader is shipped as an AssetBundle embedded in the DLL.
Fallback (when the shader bundle isn't present) tints the whole character via the
tk2dSprite vertex color and the MeshRenderer material color.
Color updates are serialized as a 5-byte packet (player ID + RGB) and sent through the
standard IClientAddonNetworkSender / IServerAddonNetworkSender channels exposed by SSMP.
The server keeps a simple in-memory table of playerId -> CloakColor and replays it to any
new joiner so late arrivals see correct colors immediately.
The cloak-only path requires Resources/cloakshader.bundle. It's gitignored, so contributors
need to bake it in Unity once. See Shaders/README.md for step-by-step
instructions (TL;DR: open Unity 6000.0.50, drop the shader and editor script in, click
HornetCloakColor → Build Shader Bundle, copy the output to Resources/).
If the bundle isn't present the build still succeeds and the mod gracefully falls back to the legacy whole-character tint at runtime.
MIT — see LICENSE.txt.