Classes

Hollow Knight uses various classes to control different functions of the game. For example, enemy health is controlled through the HealthManager class and the player’s movement is controlled through the HeroController class.

Note

This section will not cover every single class in the game nor will it describe everything in the classes it does feature. Our hope is that you will eventually be able to figure out other classes by yourself and if not, you can always ask on Discord.

Tip

You can use DnSpy to look at each class’s code and understand what it does.

HeroController

The HeroController class is attached to the player’s gameobject and handles their movement as well as other things related to the control of the player such as the soul level.

This class is a singleton which means there is always only one instance of it in the game which you can access with HeroController.instance. One common way to access the player’s gameobject is through HeroController.instance.gameobject.

Note

There are times such as during scene transitions where HeroController.instance may not exist so be sure to check if it is not null when you are not sure

cState

This can be used to check and set whether the player is doing a certain action. For example, HeroController.instance.cState.attacking is a bool that tells you whether the player is slashing horizontally.

Access FSMs

You can access different FSMs (covered in the PlaymakerFSM section) related to the player such as HeroController.instance.spellControl which gives you the FSM that handles the player’s spells.

Player Constants

Some of the player’s constants like HeroController.instance.SHADOW_DASH_TIME, which is the cooldown time between each shadow dash, can be read/changed here.

Prefabs

Some gameobjects that are related to the player such as the Grubberfly elegy beams (HeroController.instance.grubberFlyBeamPrefabL) can be reached in HeroController.

PlayerData

This class contains all of the player’s data. This includes but is not limited to player’s health, boss defeats, dialogue, charms, abilities, upgrades, and levers hit. Like HeroController, PlayerData is also a singleton which means you can access its data with PlayerData.instance.

Health, Soul, and Geo Management

PlayerData has methods specifically for adding and removing health, soul, and geo. I will go over the health ones which should give you a good idea of how the rest work.

PlayerData.instance.AddHealth(int amount) // Add 'amount' hp to the player.
PlayerData.instance.TakeHealth(int amount) // Remove 'amount' hp from the player.
PlayerData.instance.AddToMaxHealth(int amount) // Increase player's max hp by 'amount'.

A near-full reference list to PlayerData can be found in the PlayerData section.

HealthManager

The HealthManager class controls enemy health and death. Unlike the HeroController class, this class is not a singleton since each enemy has their own instance of HealthManager. Remember that you can obtain the HealthManager (or any Unity component) of your desired enemy using the command: yourEnemyGameObject.GetComponent<HealthManager>().

HP

Once you have a HealthManager, you can read/change the hp of the enemy using healthManager.hp.

Methods

Use healthManager.Hit(HitInstance hit) to manually force the enemy to take damage in a customized fashion. HitInstance contains parameters such as DamageDealt, AttackType, Direction, and more.

You can manually kill an enemy using healthManager.Die(float? attackDir, AttackType attType, bool ignoreEvasion).

OnDeath

HealthManager also contains a hook that runs when the enemy dies (healthManager.hp reaches 0). This hook works the same way as the hooks in hook section.

Tip

If you are adding a new enemy and want to copy a preexisting enemy’s hit effects, you can do this:

// Add HealthManager to your new enemy and get the HealthManager of old enemy.
HealthManager newEnemyHM = newEnemyGO.AddComponent<HealthManager>();
HealthManager oldEnemyHM = oldEnemyGO.GetComponent<HealthManager>();
// Copies the different properties of oldEnemyHM into newEnemyHM
foreach (FieldInfo fi in typeof(HealthManager).GetFields(BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.NonPublic)
    .Where(x => x.Name.Contains("Prefab")))
{
    fi.SetValue(newEnemyHM, fi.GetValue(oldEnemyHM));
}

// Add EnemyHitEffectsUninfected to your new enemy and get the EnemyHitEffectsUninfected of old enemy.
// EnemyHitEffectsUninfected is the class that contains getting hit effects for uninfected enemies (like the mantis).
EnemyHitEffectsUninfected newEnemyHF = newEnemyGO.AddComponent<EnemyHitEffectsUninfected>();
EnemyHitEffectsUninfected oldEnemyHF = oldEnemyGO.GetComponent<EnemyHitEffectsUninfected>();
// Copies the different properties of oldEnemyHF into newEnemyHF
foreach (FieldInfo fi in typeof(EnemyHitEffectsUninfected).GetFields())
{
    fi.SetValue(newEnemyHF, fi.GetValue(oldEnemyHF));
}

DamageHero

DamageHero is a component you can add to your gameobjects to make them damage the player.

damageHero.damageDealt allows you to change how much damage your object does. damageHero.hazardType indicates how the player should act when hit by your object. So if we set the hazardType to two, that puts it into spike mode where everytime the player gets hit by your object, the player gets teleported back. damageHero.shadowDashHazard forces the player to take damage even if they use shadow dash.

Note

In addition to adding the DamageHero compoenent, do not forget that your object must have a Collider of some type and its layer must be set to one that damages the player.