How to install ReShade for Star Stable Online

Open reshade.me and scroll all the way down to the “Download” section. Two buttons sit there one above the other, and the lower one is what you want: “Download ReShade 6.7.3 with full add-on support”. The upper button installs the same version without add-on support, which leaves you without access to the depth buffer that almost every ready-made Star Stable preset depends on.

The file is then called ReShade_Setup_6.7.3_Addon.exe and lands in your Downloads folder, at around four megabytes. If your browser or Windows warns you: the file is digitally signed, reshade.me is the official source, and ReShade is open source. Do not download it anywhere else, though — copies on other sites may have been altered.

ReShade needs to know which program it should extend, so you need the folder Star Stable lives in. Where that is differs from computer to computer, depending on where the game was installed. Two routes get you there reliably.

The first goes through Windows search. Type “star stable online” into the taskbar, but instead of simply clicking the result, choose “Open file location” from the menu on the right. Windows then opens an Explorer window.

If that lands you in a folder full of shortcuts rather than at the game itself, use the second route: right-click the “Star Stable Online” shortcut and choose “Properties”. The “Target” field holds the path you need. Select it with the mouse and copy it with Ctrl + C.

Open your Downloads folder and double-click ReShade_Setup_6.7.3_Addon.exe. There is no installation in the usual sense: the program runs once, drops its files into the game folder and is not needed afterwards. Keep the file anyway, because the same program is what uninstalls ReShade later.

The first thing you see is the warning discussed above. Confirm it with “OK”.

ReShade now lists the games it found on your computer. Star Stable is usually not among them, because it is not installed through Steam. Click “Browse…” at the bottom right instead.

A file dialog opens. Paste the folder path you copied earlier into the address bar at the top — without the program file at the end, or the game will start instead — and press Enter. Clicking your way there works just as well. Inside the game folder, open “client” with a double-click, select the file SSOClient and click “Open”.

The full path then appears at the bottom of the setup window. Check that it ends in client\SSOClient.exe and click “Next”.

The setup now asks which graphics interface the game draws through. ReShade guesses from the program file, and for Star Stable the guess is correct: OpenGL. There is nothing to change here, just click “Next”. You can tell it worked later by a file called opengl32.dll appearing in the “client” folder; that is how ReShade hooks in.

On the next page ReShade offers collections of effects to install alongside it. Each collection is a package of small programs that presets later draw on. If you want to reproduce a specific preset, you need exactly the collections it asks for; if you just want to try things out, the default selection serves well.

Two things worth knowing. More collections mean more effects for the game to compile on first launch, which takes correspondingly longer. And if you pick too few, you can add them any time by running the setup again. “Uncheck all” in the top right clears the selection if you would rather tick packages individually.

At the very bottom there is also a field for loading a preset file. Point it at a finished preset and ReShade pulls in exactly the effects that preset needs. If you do not have one yet, leave the field empty and click “Next”.

Finally the setup asks about add-ons. The list is long, but Star Stable needs nothing from it: the one add-on that matters for the depth buffer, “Generic Depth”, already ships with the add-on build. So leave everything unticked and click “Next” or “Skip”. ReShade itself points out here that unsuitable add-ons can cause crashes or hurt performance.

The setup then copies its files into the “client” folder and reports that it is done. You can close the window.

Launch Star Stable as usual. A narrow black banner appears in the top left of the loading screen, reporting that ReShade was installed successfully. That banner is your proof that everything is in place. Read it carefully: it also names the key that opens the tutorial, and that key is the one that applies on your machine.

On the first launch the banner also reads “Compiling … effects remaining” for a while. ReShade is translating every installed effect into a form your graphics card understands. Depending on your selection that takes anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes, and the game may stutter briefly. The second launch is much faster, because the result is cached.

In the game, press the key the loading banner named. In current builds that is Home. The first time, a short tutorial walks you through the interface; you can click through it or skip it. After that you see the menu on the left with the tabs Home, Add-ons, Settings, Statistics, Log and About.

The “Home” tab shows the active preset at the top and the list of all effects below it. A tick switches an effect on, a second click switches it off, and the result is visible immediately. That is how you feel your way towards a look of your own.

A preset is a single file ending in .ini that records which effects are active and with which values. People share these files, and adopting one takes only a few moves.

Create a new folder inside “client”, called “presets” for example, and copy your preset files into it. A separate folder is not strictly required, but it keeps things tidy: otherwise several .ini files end up side by side in “client”, where they are easy to mix up.

Then open the menu in the game and click the field with the preset name at the top. A file list unfolds; switch to your folder, click the .ini you want and confirm with “Select”. The image changes at once. The folder icon next to it opens the same folder in Explorer, which makes adding more presets convenient.

If ReShade reports in red that some effects could not be loaded, the matching effect collection is missing. Run the setup again, pick the same SSOClient.exe and add the missing packages; alternatively point the setup at your preset file and it will gather the required collections itself.

Effects like depth of field or ambient occlusion need to know how far a pixel sits from the camera. That information lives in the depth buffer, and some games hand it over upside down. You can tell because the blur lands exactly the wrong way round: sharp in front instead of behind, or shadows clinging to the wrong edge.

The switch for this sits at the bottom of the “Home” tab behind the button “Edit global preprocessor definitions”. Find the entry RESHADE_DEPTH_INPUT_IS_UPSIDE_DOWN and change the value from 0 to 1, or from 1 to 0. A click on “Apply” commits the change.

If nothing happens at all, no depth buffer is being used yet. That is handled in the “Add-ons” tab at the top of the menu, where the “Generic Depth” add-on lives. Its checkbox has to be ticked — without it no effect receives distance information, and depth of field and ambient occlusion stay inert.

Below it, the add-on lists the depth buffers it found, each with resolution, format and a count of draw calls. If more than one entry appears, tick the one that matches your screen resolution and has by far the most draw calls; that is the buffer the game draws the world into. The two options “Copy depth buffer before clear operations” and “Copy depth buffer before fullscreen draw calls” can stay enabled, they help with games that clear their buffer midway.

If the list stays empty, the game is running in a mode ReShade cannot read from. Switching between fullscreen and windowed mode in the game’s graphics settings usually solves it. And as a reminder: without the full add-on support build from step 1, “Generic Depth” is missing entirely, and only a reinstall with the right file will help.