Retired Techie

Introduction

I want to go through modding Fallout 4 on Linux by the numbers. Mainly because I have tried to get any mod manager to work consistently on Linux and have failed miserably. Not sure why that is, as others seem to be able to get them working. Interestingly I have found once you get used to manual modding, and develop your own system, it can be surprisingly fast and much more intuitive in some cases.

Note the use of “Your own system!” I am going to give you the necessary steps to manual mod. However it will be up to you to develop your own system of maintenance. For example, I keep a mods folder where I have mods prepared to just copy into the fallout 4 data directory. So if I ever reinstall, it is a simple matter of dropping the contents of one folder to restore mods. I also ahve a few scripts I use for things like checking capitalization of folder names, not so important on windows, burt very important on Linux.

Also, even when on Windows, I always found those mod manager interfaces and requirements way more confusing than they need to be. Manual modding was just simpler and more practical for me.

Determine What Folders You Need to Know About!

1. From the SteamApp (assuming you installed from Steam), open your Library.
2. Find teh Fallout 4 entry and right click. From the menu that appears, select Properties.
3. From the properties window select Installed Files. Then hit browse. This should open the Fallout 4 folder.
4. We want to move up two levels to a folder called SteamApps. This will be our base folder for this article. I suggest making a shortcut in your file manager to this folder.

Modify the Fallout 4 INI Files

1. Fromm the SteamApps folder follow this path: compatdata/pfx/377160/drive_c/users/steamuser/documents/My Games/Fallout4. In case this is not obvious, this is your simulated Windows C drive.
2. In the fallout4.ini file find the entry sResourceDataDirFinal=. We want to make this equal to STRINGS\, TEXTURES\, MUSIC\, SOUND\, INTERFACE\, MESHES\, PROGRAMS\, MATERIALS\, LODSETTINGS\, VIS\, MISC\, SCRIPTS\, SHADERSFX. Note that a lot of tutorials will tell you not to do this, however some mods (those with loose files) may not work unless you add this.
3. In the fallout4prefs.ini file find the [launcher] section. make sure there is a bEnableFileSelection=1 entry in this section. Note if it exists and is equal to 0, change it to 1.
4. Note you only need to do this once per install. If you reinstall, you will want to do this again.

Examine the Mod Archive File

1. Fallout 4 Mod files or archives will be in one of several compressed formats like zip. 7zip, or rar. Some of theses may behave differently when opened form the archive. Sometimes it is better to extract them to a temporary folder before working with them.
2. Examine the archive files and look for a FOMod folder. If it exists there will be a ModuleConfig.xml file inside. This si waht the mod installers use, and while written in XML format, it should only take a few minutes to figure out what it is doing.
3. If there is no FoMod Folder, then you will just need to copy the mod files and folders straight over.
4. Speaking of copy, you want to put the mod files/folders at SteamApps/common/Fallout4/Data.
5. Note that capitalization is important on most Linux file systems. In Windows using the NTFS file system, the folders “mesh” and “Mesh” are the same location. On Linux they will be different folders. And Fallout 4 will only use one of them. So examine folder capitalization before copy. You may need to make some adjustments.
6. Optional step: When I am doing this I create a separate data folder in my home directory, and get the mods set up properly (including capitalization) first. Then I simply copy the content of the entire folder to the Fallout 4 Data directory. And if you ever reinstall Fallout 4 it makes it a simple copy all paste all to set your mods up again.

Activating Mods

1. Once a mod is copied over to teh Fallout 4 Data folder, it needs to be activated. In the Anniversary Edition of Fallout 4, this is done by going to Creations option on the title screen, and pressing “T” for load order.
2. While in Load order, any mods you installed correctly should show up with a empty box in the upper right corner. Click on the box and it should become solid. When you exit the load order screen the mod should be active. You should get a message about adjusting load order. At this point the mod is installed and active.
3. Now start the game and see if the mod is in effect.

Conclusion

In will admit my reasons for this article are somewhat selfish. I sometimes forget all the steps, and rather than digging around in my archive, I want a place I can just click on to see the process.

I do hope this does help some other players using Linux to have an easier time with modding Fallout 4.

Anyway let me know your opinions on the subject.