Overview
This guide covers information in regards to running oblivion using proton on linux. WIthout some config changes some stuff will not work with proton. This focuses on modding based issues.
Introduction
Hello, If you are reading this guide you likely have realized not everything is working perfectly with proton and Oblivion. I do not know if this extends to the vanilla game, but proton has some problems with modding setups.
This will consolidate and cover the information I found to fix some of these issues.
Warning: Some OBSE based mods will not function at all no matter what I have tried
-This seems to be related to how proton handles paths and where the DLL’s point to
Lastly for reference, This was tested on my Linux Mint 19.3 with kernel 5.3
General Path information
Oblivion INI File:
(Steam Library Location)/Steam/steamapps/compatdata/22330/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/My Documents/My Games/Oblivion/Oblivion.ini
Install Folder:
(Steam Library)/Steam/steamapps/common/Oblivion/
Installing OBSE
For installing OBSE,
-There is one Special step after the normal installation instructions
-Download and follow the install instructions provided [link]
Once installed open your terminal of choice:
In summary this does the following
-Move to the installation folder
-makes the oblivion executables point to OBSE for loading
Without this change OBSE will never load due to how proton launches the game
INI Tweaks
One step that will be required for any OBSE mods that utilize Keybinding is editing two lines in the INI.
In the Oblivion INI:
Edit These two lines to the values listed
This will enable OBSE scripts to see keyboard events.
File Structure Notes
This can be extended to non proton installations
This section covers some perils related to folder structures and oblivion modding.
Oblivion mods live in the data folder, with their loose files living in folder within the data folder.
Interestingly, Oblivion seems case insensitive to the folder names, which creates an issue if two folders have the same name with different cases.
if two folders have the same name with only a case difference, Any mods relying on either will not be able to load their resources
This is simple enough to fix by merging the two folders into one, however this also applies to subdirectories.
Unfortunately based on what I have seen there was no concensus on the best practice of this leading to Mods from different authors using folder names such as “Textures” while others used “textures”.
While installing mods, pick either Uppercase or Lowercase on your folder names and convert/merge folders as needed.
Credits
OBSE INI Changes:
[link]
–Wine specific Oblivion.ini tweaks
Finding the Oblivion INI
[link]
OBSE Fix
[link]
General Reference:
[link]