Modding

Modding

steamtinkerlaunch currently has support for the following modding tools:

• Mod-Organizer 2
• Vortex Mod Manager

This wiki page is meant to become a little collection of tutorials on how to get certain moddings tools/components working. So if you have any hints which might be helpful for others feel free to share them.

General

Resident Evil 4 HD

Getting Resident Evil 4 HD to install and run is very simple with SteamTinkerLaunch. The following steps should get you up and running on Linux desktop and Steam Deck, and you shouldn't need to worry about the specific steps on the website for the most part. On Steam Deck, it is highly recommended to do this from Desktop Mode.

1. Download and run Resident Evil 4 from Steam at least once, with or without SteamTinkerLaunch.
2. Download and extract the Resident Evil 4 HD mod from the official website to a sensible location, noting the password for the archive.
3. Run Resident Evil 4 from Steam with SteamTinkerLaunch selected as a compatibility tool and go to the Main Menu
4. Go to the Game Files menu and select the "Gamedir" checkbox, then click "Select" to open it in Dolphin.
5. Right click on the path and select "Copy", then paste this into a text editor such as KWrite. Add Z: to the start of your path, keeping the beginning forward slash. Don't worry about the forward slashes. Keep this text editor open.
   • Your path should now look something like Z:/home/gaben/gamefolder/steamapps/common/Resident Evil 4/
   • On Steam Deck, if your game is on the SD card, you might need to instead add E:.
6. Check the "Use custom command" and "Only custom command" checkboxes.
7. Click the "Custom command" box, and navigate to and select the Resident Evil 4 setup executable (re4HDProject-setup.exe) as your custom command, then press "Save and Play".
8. Run through the installer and when you are prompted for the installation path, use the path from Step 5.
9. Once installation completes, close the game from Steam if it does not automatically close, re-run the game with SteamTinkerLaunch and go to the Game Menu again.
10. In the Game Menu, uncheck "Use custom command" and "Only custom command"
11. Under "Wine Options" towards the bottom of the Game Menu, under Wine DLL overrides, either enter dinput8=n,b manually or select it if available from the list of dropdowns.
12. Press "Save and Play", and you should be using the Resident Evil 4 HD mod!
    • It should automatically prompt you to run the 4GB patcher. This should work fine in Game Mode but it might be a good idea to do an initial launch in Desktop Mode to ensure there are no issues with windowing
    • The re4tweaks mod that comes with RE4HD should work as well. In testing the few options tested seemed to work fine.

And that's basically it. If you find any corrections that need to be made to these steps, leave a comment on #457, preferably with some background on what is incorrect, why it is incorrect, and what can be improved.

FNIS

(Modding tool for Skyrim SE)

contributed by niiyoooom via reddit:

"I found out how to get FNIS working... create a symlink from the Skyrim Data folder to the FNIS tools folder. Example;"

cd '/home/user/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/Skyrim Special Edition/Data/'
ln -s '/home/user/.config/steamtinkerlaunch/mo2/compatdata/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/AppData/Local/ModOrganizer/Skyrim Special Edition/mods/Fores New Idles in Skyrim SE - FNIS SE/tools' tools

"And if anyone can't seem to install FNIS because of an error or if FNIS refuses to launch (I forget the error code;;) try deleting all of the files in the GenerateFNIS_for_Users/Languages folder, except for the English file (some computers might not be able to understand some of the languages). If you can't install it, unzip the mod, delete those files, then rezip it and install with MO2"

MO2

Mod-Manager-Specific files

Several mods for various older Bethesda games such as Oblivion or Fallout: New Vegas may have mod-manager-specific installer files (such as FOMOD or OMOD) or archives (such as .7z files) designed to be used with a specific mod manager (such as OBMM, Wyre Bash or FOMM). While these mod managers can be launched and used from MO2 on Windows and Linux, MO2 can install them too, but on Linux there is an extra step required that is not normally required on Windows.

When installing one of these mods, you will see a prompt different from that of a "regular" mod. Below is an example, using the Mod Configuration Menu for Fallout: New Vegas

To install a mod like this, simply clicking "Start" may fail and may in fact produce undesirable results. For example, if you're trying to install your mod while MO2 is running in Game Mode, it will likely fail and MO2 may start showing errors such as "failed to update mod list". This can prevent you from using LOOT and creates annoying error dialogs while trying to use MO2. The "Use NCC" option may or may not work either.

The best way to install these kinds of mod files is to select the "Manual" button. When clicked it will show you the structure of the FOMOD file as shown below:

You do not need to do anything else here and you can safely click "OK" to install the mod. No manual installation configuration is actually required provided you see text telling you the content of <data> looks valid. Some mods may require manual installation for a specific reason even on Windows. Refer to that mod's documentation if this is the case, but manual configuration should not be necessary in the majority of cases.

If you experience the mod list error messages, see the below section on how to fix it.

Errors around "Failed to update mod list: Failed to save '{}'"...

(Thanks to 17hoehbr for their comment on this issue for figuring out how to fix this! The image shown is from their issue.)

This is a semi-common problem with MO2 and even seems to occur on Windows from time to time. One cause is if a mod-manager-specific mod fails to install as mentioned above. It creates annoying error dialogs that will get in the way, prevent you from using LOOT and it gets in the way of installing other mods. You can still launch your game if you want, but your mods may become unstable. Below is an example of the error you might see:

The cause is that either MO2 expects there to be a folder in C:\users\username called Temp and it is not present, or it is present but it contains bad data and needs to be deleted. In the case of Wine/Proton, this path would be either:

• /path/to/steamapps/compatdata/appid/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/Temp if running MO2 in Game Mode (clicking the "MO2 GUI" option when starting a game)
• ~/.config/steamtinkerlaunch/mo2/compatdata/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/Temp if running MO2 in Standalone Mode (using MO2 through the option on the Main Menu)

SteamTinkerLaunch attempts to mitigate this issue by having an option to delete this folder when SteamTinkerLaunch is closed, and also creates the Temp folder within the Game Mode path when MO2 is launched if it doesn't already exist. These should mitigate the problem of corrupted or Temp folders, but it is not perfect as sometimes the Temp folder goes missing while installing mods such as mod-manager-specific mod files. If this happens, you can manually create the Temp folder (or delete and re-create if applicable) at one or both of the listed paths above. You will need to restart MO2 after this if it is running for your changes to take effect. After that you should be able to use MO2 normally again.

Missing options.ini file in "The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth"

You may get errors when trying to use "The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth" with mods/mod managers, complaining about a missing options.ini file. To fix this:

1. Use SteamTinkerLaunch's Game Files menu to open the Wine prefix (or go there yourself if you know where it is)
2. Go to drive_c/users/steamuser/My Documents/My Games
3. Open the relevant folder for your installation of The Binding of Isaac. It might have a different name depending on which DLC you do/don't have, but ignore the the one that ends with "Mods" (if it is present)
4. Inside that folder, create an empty options.ini file.

Now when you try to mod The Binding of Isaac again, it should work. This seems to be a general problem with modding this game that is not exclusive to Linux.