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Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://mintlify.com/HarbourMasters/Starship/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

Starship’s modding system lets you replace or add game assets—textures, models, audio, scripts, and more—by dropping .o2r or .otr archive files into a single folder. No recompilation is required to install a mod; building one requires the retro tool and an understanding of Starship’s two archive types.

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Archive formats

Starship ships with two first-party archives that together provide every asset the game needs at runtime:
ArchiveRole
sf64.o2rExtracted from your US ROM; contains all original Star Fox 64 assets
starship.o2rPort-specific assets added by the Starship team (UI elements, enhancements, etc.)
Both formats share the same zip-based container (see O2R Format for the full spec). .otr files are the legacy equivalent used by Ship of Harkinian and are accepted everywhere .o2r files are.

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Installing mods

Place any .o2r or .otr file into the mods/ folder next to your Starship executable. The engine scans that folder recursively at startup and loads every compatible archive it finds—after the two base archives—so mod assets take priority over the originals. 
starship/
├── sf64.o2r          # ROM-extracted base assets
├── starship.o2r      # Port-specific assets
├── starship.exe
└── mods/
    └── my-skin-pack.o2r   # ← drop your mod here
Starship creates the mods/ directory automatically on first launch if it does not already exist.

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Toggling alternate assets

Starship supports a runtime Alternate Assets toggle that swaps the active asset set without restarting the game.
MethodHow
Keyboard shortcutPress Tab during gameplay
CVarSet gEnhancements.Mods.AlternateAssets to 1 in starship.cfg.json
This is useful for A/B comparisons between original and modded visuals, or for distributing a single mod archive that bundles both an original and a replacement variant of each asset.

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Modding tools

retro — OTR & O2R Generator

The official command-line tool for packing asset definitions into .o2r or .otr archives. Use this to bundle your custom textures, models, and audio into a distributable mod file.

fast64 — Blender Plugin

A Blender add-on for authoring N64-style assets. Note: SF64-specific export is not yet supported. fast64 can still be useful for general mesh and texture work before manual packing with retro.

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Mod loading order

The engine loads archives in the following priority order. Assets in later archives override those with the same path in earlier ones:
  1. sf64.o2r — base ROM assets (lowest priority)
  2. starship.o2r — port-specific assets
  3. Files in mods/ — user mods (highest priority)
This means a mod file in mods/ can transparently replace any asset from either base archive simply by using the same internal archive path.
If you are shipping a texture replacement mod, match the internal archive paths exactly as they appear in sf64.o2r so the override takes effect at every location the asset is referenced.

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