Is there a way to sync Alternative Textures animal skins in multiplayer?

[dangne]

Hi everyone,

I’m playing Stardew Valley multiplayer on a dedicated BisectHosting server. The host is basically a bot, and my friends and I join as farmhands.

I’m trying to use Em’s Farm Animals with Alternative Textures so that each animal on the farm can have its own unique skin. For example, one cow could have one skin, another cow could have a different skin, etc.

What I’m hoping for is:

• The host/server stores which skin each animal should have
• All players automatically see the same skins
• Players don’t each have to manually apply the skins on their own PC
• Everyone would still install SMAPI, Alternative Textures, and the texture pack locally, I understand the actual texture files need to exist on each client

From what I understand so far, Alternative Textures handles the visuals client-side, so just installing the mod on the server won’t sync the skin choices to everyone. I’m wondering if there is already a mod or workflow that syncs per-animal AT skin assignments in multiplayer.

If not, would this be possible with a custom SMAPI mod? My rough idea is:

1. Host keeps a saved mapping like animal unique ID -> selected texture/skin ID
2. When a player joins, the host sends that mapping to the farmhand
3. When a new animal is bought/born, the host assigns a skin and broadcasts it
4. Each client applies the correct Alternative Textures skin locally

The main thing I’m unsure about is whether Alternative Textures exposes an API for setting/getting an animal’s selected texture from another mod, or whether this would require patching/working around AT’s internal data.

Has anyone tried doing something like this before? Is there an existing mod that already handles this kind of multiplayer sync, or would I need to make a custom SMAPI mod for it?

Thanks!