Troubleshooting & uninstall

Symptom first, fix second. Almost every problem below is diagnosed from one file — BepInEx\LogOutput.log in the game folder — so keep Notepad handy.

The game boots vanilla — no BepInEx activity at all

No new folders appear, no LogOutput.log, no log banner. The loader never ran. In order of likelihood:

• The one-folder-too-deep trap. Check for Sea of Stars\SeaofStars-BepInEx-Unity_IL2CPP-…\ — if the archive's top folder made it into the game directory whole, move its six items up one level. The litmus test never lies: winhttp.dll must sit directly next to SeaOfStars.exe. Part 1 walks it through.
• Antivirus ate the proxy. If winhttp.dll is missing or 0 KB, restore it from quarantine, add the game folder as an exclusion, and re-verify against the published checksum.
• Wrong game folder. Two Steam libraries, two installs — it happens. Use Steam's Browse local files to be certain you modded the copy Steam actually launches.
• Doorstop disabled. Open doorstop_config.ini and confirm enabled = true under [General] (it ships that way).

First launch seems stuck

Interop generation legitimately takes one to five minutes of silence (Part 2). If it's genuinely wedged past the ten-minute mark with zero CPU activity and a frozen LogOutput.log: close the game, delete BepInEx\cache and BepInEx\interop, and launch again for a clean regeneration. If it fails the same way twice, read the tail of LogOutput.log — a Cpp2IL error there is the lead worth reporting.

BepInEx runs, but F10 does nothing

Open BepInEx\LogOutput.log and search for UngodlyGFX:

• No UngodlyGFX banner. The DLL isn't being loaded. Confirm SeaOfStars.UngodlyGFX.dll is inside BepInEx\plugins (Part 3), and that Part 1 used the IL2CPP x64 package from this site — a Mono/BepInEx 5 install will boot the game while silently skipping IL2CPP plugins.
• Banner present, panel absent. Another app probably owns F10 (some overlays and recorders bind function keys). Rebind it: close the game, open the config file, and set PanelToggleKey to any Unity KeyCode — F9, Backslash, Keypad5…

The panel opens, but something misbehaves

• A setting seems to do nothing. Check the Info tab's Live Status: boot grace must read "complete — modules armed" (the plugin deliberately stays hands-off for the first seconds after boot), and the relevant module switch must be on. Remember the universal rule — anything at GameDefault is untouched by design.
• Changes don't survive a restart. Press Save Config Now and watch the config file's timestamp change. If it doesn't, the file is likely read-only or blocked by folder permissions — clear the read-only flag on BepInEx\config.
• Foliage / vegetation turns flat blue. That's raw hardware MSAA fighting the game's custom lighting passes — its render pipeline ships at 1× sampling and was never authored for more. v2.0.1 fixed the delivery with MSAA Safe Mode (Display tab, on by default), which bridges your MSAA level to matching-quality SMAA instead. Seeing blue anyway? You (or an old config) turned Safe Mode off — turn it back on, or if you're still on v2.0.0, update the plugin.
• Performance dropped after going ungodly. The expensive levers are 8192 px shadow maps (VRAM), Render Scale 2.0 and MSAA X8 (GPU). Step shadows down to 4096 and MSAA to X4 first — that's the Balanced Beauty territory.
• Frame cap feels wrong after switching back to GameDefault. Expected quirk: the engine's frame-rate getter was stripped, so the game's own limiter returns only after you re-apply the frame-rate option in the game's settings menu once. Background on the Perf tab.
• Anything weird at all — the one-minute bisect. Info tab → Modules: toggle the four master switches off one at a time. Each one releases its overrides back to the game on the spot, so the moment the weirdness stops, you've named the culprit — worth including if you report an issue.

Where did the AO / GI / Bloom / Color / Effects / Water tabs go?

If you used UngodlyGFX v1.x: those post-processing tabs were retired in v2.0.0. Field testing with v1.0.5's crash-canary system proved that creating any post-processing volume component from a plugin — including bone-stock URP ones — hangs this specific heavily-stripped IL2CPP build. Rather than ship a minefield, the entire system was removed and replaced with the Resolution & Aspect module. Leftover ungodlygfx.canary / ungodlygfx.poison files from v1.x in BepInEx\config are cleaned up automatically on first launch of any v2.x version.

The game updated and things broke

A game patch can stale the generated interop. Close the game, delete BepInEx\interop and BepInEx\cache, then launch once — the Part 2 generation simply runs again against the new binary. If a major update changes the game's Unity version itself, hold tight for a plugin update before re-modding.

Steam Deck / Linux (Proton)

The doorstop proxy needs one nudge under Proton — Windows loads winhttp.dll from the game folder automatically, Wine needs to be told to. Right-click the game → Properties → set Launch Options to:

WINEDLLOVERRIDES="winhttp=n,b" %command%

Everything else in the guide is identical. (On Windows, leave launch options empty — this is not needed.)

Clean uninstall

Just the plugin (keep BepInEx for other mods)

Delete two files from the game folder:

BepInEx\plugins\SeaOfStars.UngodlyGFX.dll
BepInEx\config\com.stixsworldhd.seaofstars.ungodlygfx.cfg

Everything — back to fully vanilla

Delete these six items from the game folder (they're exactly what this guide added, plus what BepInEx generated):

BepInEx\
dotnet\
winhttp.dll
doorstop_config.ini
.doorstop_version
changelog.txt

Your save files are never touched either way — Sea of Stars keeps them outside the game folder, in your Windows user profile's app-data area (and in Steam Cloud). If you ever want a guaranteed-pristine reinstall instead, Steam's Verify integrity of game files restores anything game-original, though it leaves the mod files above for you to delete yourself.

Reporting an issue

Three things make a report instantly actionable: your BepInEx\LogOutput.log, the plugin version (v2.0.1) plus game build (the version number in the corner of the title screen — v3.0.60151 for this guide), and what you last touched before the problem appeared — ideally including which of the four module switches the bisect pointed at. Reach me through StixsworldHD's site.