Skyrim mods with POL/Wine?

After owning Skyrim for ages, I've just now started to really get into it. I love the graphics, atmosphere and story line!

But I'm greedy, and I've seen what some of these amazing graphics mods can do.

Is it possible to install Skyrim mods on Linux? Preferably without too much tinkering and swearing!

Thanks

thanks for the reply. do you play Skyrim at all? I found this free DLC, and was wondering if it would work on Wine (and whether the improvements it gives are worth the 4Gb download) - http://store.steampowered.com/app/202485/

Thanks for the update Booman. I've not had time to game much recently, I'll get this one downloading though now you've tested it works.

I've bothered with horses though, if I remember right, it was because it does that thing all your followers do - namely charging headlong into battle when you're trying to hang back and do some decent stealth archery!

that should be "I've never bothered with horses.."

I managed to get an ENB installed - it's pretty straightforward, I read that you should use the ENB 'Injection Version' rather than the 'Wrapper Version' with Wine, don't know if that's true but it works for me. It does mean you need to keep the ENBInjector program running while you play - I think this program intercepts calls to Direct3D and sends them to the ENB DLL instead.

I followed this guy's instructions to do it -

Basically grab the latest ENB download from http://enbdev.com/download_mod_tesskyrim.html, extract the four files from InjectorVersion mentioned in the above YouTube into your TESV.exe directory, and change a couple of config files.

Then get the ENB you want from Nexus Mods - True Vision ENB seems to work well - http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/15983/ Installation is just extracting the relevant files into your TESV.exe directory and changing a couple of config settings.

Definitely well worth doing!

I ran Skyrim (and Oblivion) in wine for quite a while, with a large number of mods (200+). I haven't tried to run it in wine in a couple years. When I did, there were three issues I tended to run into:

Mod Management
Nexus mod manage always failed for me in wine (dll and .net dependences) and mod organizer uses a virtual filesystem which left wrye bash--even it could be flakey. I ended up using a windows VM to run wrye bash with its own skyrim install. I synced the VM's install with the wineprefix's install with ssh.

I tried to use various content repositories for mod management, but none seemed to handle various file issues well. Especially since bethisda uses file dating to organize file overwriting during loads.

Filenames/Calls
Windows isn't case sensitive, but linux is. Wine has a translator which tries to match calls to windows files with linux files, but a heavily modded skyrim can have thousands of files to search and pattern match. At first it doesn't seem like much of an issue, but consider the case where a mod author writes a script which calls a common file and uses a case which doesn't match ANY other mod author. Including the developers. (Even the developers aren't consistent with file names.)

Now toss in how the graphics files (models, textures, etc) all have internal references to the other files needed... it can be quite a mess.

The result is randomly missing textures, models, etc. Sometimes the game will just be ugly, other times it crashes because a script isn't able to load what it wants. When problems occur is random, sometimes wine will be able to pass the right file, sometimes not. Remember, 10s of thousands of calls are made during a load.

Mods which packaged in BSAs tended to work best--but these could make for some surprise conflicts.

(The explanation in regards to the file matching may not be altogether accurate, I'm working on memory from a couple years ago. Also, considerable improvements could have been made since then!)

Dlls/apps
Any mod which has its own dll libraries or an executable can be an issue. Much of the reason I used a VM for animations and body slide. Some of these could work in wine, some may not, some may change from version to version--all depends on what they require.

SKSE brings to the table additional weirdness. I had several mods which used SKSE which worked quite well. Others (usually ones with their own dlls) didn't.

The Fun Stuff
The most important thing to remember when modding in linux is to keep it simple. If you love modding, like I do, then doing it in linux is Hard Mode. When troubleshooting an issue it's difficult to tell if it's an script, mod, or wine problem.

It can be quite a headache.

My linux box is 8core, 3.7ghz, 32gb ram, sata3 drives, etc. Pretty solid. My windows comp is a dual-core, 2.2ghz, 8GB ram machine with sata 1.1. Sjyrim runs better on the windows box, and it's easier to manage everything with Mod Organizer, bodyslide, ENB, etc. At last count, I had almost 350 mods shoved into my skyrim install.

So, it's a bit of a mixed bag. Most mods will run fine in linux. Some will drive you insane* trying to figure out what's wrong.

Though I'm tempted to give modded Skyrim in wine a try again, especially with staging...

*in this case, insane means "back to windows"

Hey, been a while.

I'm currently in the middle of giving Skyrim another shot in wine. While a challenge, the amount of things which work now are considerable.

I have over 300 mods in in my Skyrim install, including a full STEP Extended install. ( http://wiki.step-project.com/Main_Page )

• Skyrim: The vanilla game runs very well. Video is very smooth and responsive. Much what can be expected of vanilla, but that's not where all the fun is at.
• Mod Organizer: As far as I can tell, Mod Organizer and it's virtual file system run as well in wine as windows. There are a couple wine-issues, but I'd give it a platinum rating. Even almost all of its plugins work great. It's the working VFS which is the key to mod management. One of the sweet things about the VFS is you have one installation of a mod, in MO's file tree, which the magic of VFS gives to skyrim when you run it. Makes installing and uninstalling, or just toggling on and off, mods a breeze. It also means no clutter in your main skyrim install.
• LOOT: This took some work, but once I got past the CEF challenge, it ran great. Loot is imperative for sorting your mod plugins and their load orders to prevent instability and crashes. You can run a modded skyrim without loot, but having it is invaluable.
• Tes5Edit: There were no issues with xEdit. Install it and run it. xEdit is used to clean and fix errors in mod plugin files, usually "dirty edits" accidentally left by mod authors. (The creation kit is notorious for screwing up the mod you're writing.)
• Wrye Bash: one of the key programs for managing a large number of mods, WB is used to make a bashed patch. The bashed patch not only streamlines how the mods work with each other (patching earlier mods with the later mods info) but can reduce your mod load. Very useful. It actually worked before in wine, but it's performance was abysmal. Now it seems to run faster than in windows.
• FNIS: When you start customizing Skyrim, one of the funnest types of mods are those which add animations. Unfortunately, with Skyrim, bethisda made adding animations a pain in the ass. This is where Fores New Idles in Skyrim comes in and saves the day. It's a windows executable which is run from within the Skyrim install to add animations from various mods (as well as applying a few skeleton patches).
• Bodyslide: Another program which is run from inside the Skyrim install. Not crucial, but it does some awesome things which result in a nicer, more consistent Skyrim. (Though I should note I've not actually used bodyslide to modify files yet, just made sure it ran and the UI worked.)
• ENB and enBoost: ENB is a directX injector which does some really awesome post processing. Took a little work, but got it going! EnBoost does some memory management and fixes a few things.
• ENB Manager: a java app for managing your ENB profile files. Fairly important if you plan to experiment with several ENB profiles.

In my journey to get this all working, I ended up doing all sorts of things to the Skyrim wineprefix. I frankly can't remember all the dlls which were installed.

Here are some highlights:

• All the MS and linux fonts (POL and winetricks)
• wine 2.x-staging versions
• For Loot, add the executable to the application settings list in wine config with windows version 7. Make sure the application is selected, then switch to the library tab. Add libcef and dwrite as new overrides. Set them both to native,builtin.
• For Steam, add it to the application settings list and make sure its windows version is set to XP. In its library tab, add dwrite and set it to disabled. Also, in playonlinux's advanced configuration window, select Steam and put -no-cef-sandbox in the arguments box. (My version of POL is a bit broken, so I had to edit the text file in ~/.PlayOnLinux/shortcuts.)
• Add ModOrganizer to the application settings list and make sure its windows version is set to XP. It doesn't need library settings.
• Default settings should be windows version XP with d3d9 (native,builtin) and libcef (native) added. d3d9 is needed for ENB
• Remember, the lib files shown in the library tab depends on which program is selected in the application tab.
• the java installer doesn't run right in wine, so had to follow the instructions at https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=31528&iTestingId=95508 (why this isn't the default for jdk install I'll never know, took like 5 seconds.)
• I used wine's regedit to add the java binary directories to wine's path.
• With a native windows java installed, several little java apps relating to mods worked.
• I also installed firefox in the prefix to download files
• I installed total commander (32 bit) in the prefix for a file manager which I could run from MO (so it can see the VFS).

There's probably more which I've forgotten. But it's enough to get someone started.

Basically, a very robust install of a heavily modded Skyrim is now possible!

A last couple notes:
There is a linux version of LOOT, but I couldn't use it for my purposes since it can't see the virtual file system created by mod organizer.
The same goes for many python or java programs. While they could run in linux, they had to run from within the wine container so they could see the VFS.
If there was a mod manager which ran well in linux, quite a few issues would disappear.