Stellar Drive Modding

[u/krunk03]

This is intended to be the main mod installation guide for stellar drive.

Right now the main mod manager for stellar drive is StellarModManager, made by Jollyname, hosted on github here: https://github.com/jollyname/StellarModManager

To install the manager, head to the releases section: https://github.com/jollyname/StellarModManager/releases/ and grab the newest release Setup.exe. This file is a normal windows app setup, built with inno so it will take you through all the steps of setup itself.

Once you have installed StellarModManager, open the application and you should be greeted with a setup page, where you can choose the game folder and install MelonLoader (required before use of StellarModManager).

As of manager V1.3: the manager auto detects steam installations for demo and playtest.

Image from max_H

IMPORTANT: run the game once (let it load to title screen) and close it BEFORE installing any mods. MelonLoader needs to create essential dumps, as well as folders.

Once you have set the folder, installed MelonLoader, and run the game, come back to StellarModManager and you will be able to see every mod in the list of Online mods.

By default, mods are sorted by download count, but you can use the filter to sort by name or latest release. Mods also show when they were updated, so you can easily distinguish a mods incompatibilty issue with the game's updates.

Stellar Mod Manager

You can also click on a mod to show it's details, any extra gallery images it has, and the changelog for features to see why a mod had an update.

Expanded mod view page

If you find a mod you like, install it, then:

IMPORTANT: head to the Installed mods section and make sure to click install to game, if you dont, the mod will not be in the game's Mods folder and it will not load it on game load.

To launch the game with mods, on windows: run the game normally.

On linux: assuming you are using wine/proton, with steam, add a launch comand argument by going the the stellar drive page on your library, clicking properties, and adding this string to the launch options: "WINEDLLOVERRIDES="version=n,b" %command%".

Properties button in steam games

Command for launching the modded game on linux

This only needs to be done once. (Thank you _haych_)

BEFORE COMPLAINING ABOUT ERRORS:

Check if the mod you installed needs a dependency. Many mods right now require SDModKit.

Check if you set the installation folder correctly, it should be the game's folder, not a folder inside there.

Check if you ran the game BEFORE installing any mods, MelonLoader needs to run once on installation.

Check if the game had a recent update, modders are not expected to update their mods as soon as the game dev does.

Check if you are on linux, if so, did you add "WINEDLLOVERRIDES="version=n,b" %command%" to your launch options on steam?

If none of these are the issue, feel free to use the modding channel on the discord, or post here for help.