Background Blur Improved

A mod for Hollow Knight: Silksong that improves the quality of the blurred background, and allows some customizations.

Features

The game natively renders the background at a fixed 360p resolution. While this isn't very obvious because of the blur effect applied on top, it is noticeable and distracting when in motion, it appear flickery, as can be seen below:

Before:

before.mp4

After:

after.mp4

Image comparison:

https://imgsli.com/NDIyNDYx/0/2

This mod allows adjusting the blur effect by:

• increasing the resolution
• increasing the intensity
• disabling the effect completely

Installation

The Simple Way

Use r2modman or Gale.

Manual

1. Download BepInExPack Silksong and extract it to the game folder, next to the game executable
2. Download BepinExConfigurationManager
3. Download from github, thunderstore or nexusmods and extract it inside of <game folder>/BepInEx/plugins
4. • (Windows) Run the game normally
   • (Linux/MacOS) Run run_bepinex.sh

Configuration

Use BepinExConfigurationManager (open with F1 by default) to adjust the parameters in realtime, or edit the io.github.alexkiri.backgroundblurimproved.cfg file inside <game folder>/BepInEx/config

Using a combination of these parameters can make the game look the same, but completely remove the distracting flickering.

• Apply Presets
  • allows applying presets from the UI (BepinExConfigurationManager only)
• RenderTextureHeight
  • increases the resolution of the render target that displays the background blur effect
  • improves the quality of the effect
  • lowers the effect intensity
  • has low impact on performance
• PassGroupCount
  • increases the number of passes of the background blur effect
  • can increase intensity of the effect
  • has a medium / heavy impact on performance, values > 10 are not recommended
• EnableEffect
  • can disable the background blur effect completely
  • not recommended, some source textures are low res, and without the blur effect, the background will look inconsistent
• BloomResolution
  • resolution of the bloom effect
  • can choose between Low -> 1/4 main resolution, or High -> 1/2
• BloomBlurIterations
  • number of iterations for the bloom effect

The main menu "Blur Quality" setting is removed from the main menu, as it no longer has any effect with this mod enabled.

TODO

• Add / replace controls in the game's video menu screen
• Fix the issue where the shader slightly offsets the background, the more passes you use
• Update the background drawing logic to allow multiple background layers blurred at different intensities