Enderal: Emissaries of Tux
Emissaries of Tux is a performance friendly Wabbajack list for the Steam version of Enderal SE, aiming to give the world of Vyn a more unique feel over Skyrim, targeting at minimum the hardware of the Steam Deck. The list has optional modern combat and EGO, plus some custom overhauls for enemies and armor.
The following has been tested on Emissaries of Tux v0.1
This guide only covers getting the Modlist running. It does not cover downloading the Modlist via Wabbajack, or how to copy the Modlist to your Steam Deck/Linux system. If playing on the Steam Deck, these steps will need to be carried out in Desktop mode, but once complete you will be able to launch the Modlist and play the game from Game Mode. This guide assumes you have installed Emissaries of Tux and followed any post-install steps and can successfully load and play the modlist on the system used to download it.
I also assume that you have set a user password on the Steam Deck (or have sudo access if on a general Linux system).
Install Enderal on your Steam Deck/Linux system and set the Proton compatibility to Proton Experimental. You can of course use alternative Proton versions such as ProtonGE, but I have no visibility of anything being different with those.
Next, start Enderal and from the Launcher, load into the Main Menu of the game, and then exit.
Once Wabbajack has successfully completed the download and installation of the Modlist on your Wabbajack system, create a new directory on the Steam Deck to house the required files - this can either be on the internal storage, or with the use of a specific launch parameter described below, can live on the SD Card. Open up a Konsole terminal and run only one of the following, depending on where you want to store the Modlist (adjust the command to fit your system if on a general Linux system):
Create Directory on Internal Storage:
mkdir -p /home/deck/Games/Enderal/EmissariesOfTux
OR
Create Directory on SD Card:
mkdir -p /run/media/mmcblk0p1/Games/Enderal/EmissariesOfTux
(Note: Valve plan to change the default mount point of SD Cards within SteamOS soon, I'll update this guide once that chance is in place)
Technically you can use any path or naming convention you like, but for simplicity of following this guide it may be best just to copy the paths I use. I recommend not including any spaces in the Directory Name - it does not play well with the Proton/MO2 combination even with the spaces being escaped, for whatever reason..
Copy the Modlist directory from your Wabbajack system into this newly created directory. There are many ways to do this. I chose to enable ssh on my Deck, and then use rsync to transfer. There are too many options to discuss here, but it should be relatively easy to search for methods of copying data to Steam Deck. I copied the Modlist Install directory contents to the newly created directory on the Deck: /home/deck/Games/Enderal/EmissariesOfTux
Finally for this step, it's best to make sure that the newly copied files have sufficient permissions for your user. Run only one of the following for each action (owner and permissions), depending on where you want to store the Modlist:
Change the owner and permissions of the directory on Internal Storage:
sudo chown -R deck:deck /home/deck/Games/Enderal/EmissariesOfTux
sudo chmod -R 755 /home/deck/Games/Enderal/EmissariesOfTux
OR
Change the owner and permissions of the directory on SD Card:
sudo chown -R deck:deck /run/media/mmcblk0p1/Games/Enderal/EmissariesOfTux
sudo chmod -R 755 /run/media/mmcblk0p1/Games/Enderal/EmissariesOfTux
If you don't already have it installed, ProtonTricks can be installed via the Discover store as a flatpak:
To enable the use of protontricks via the command line, open a Konsole terminal and run the following command to add an alias:
echo "alias protontricks='flatpak run com.github.Matoking.protontricks'" >> ~/.bashrc
then close and reopen Konsole. We can now invoke protontricks from the command line. Next, we need to allow protontricks access to the filesystem location (adjust as needed if you used a different path, such as an SD Card):
sudo flatpak override com.github.Matoking.protontricks --filesystem=/home/deck/Games
That should be protontricks installed and ready to use later in the guide.
This method of running an Enderal modlist uses steamtinkerlaunch. To get steamtinkerlaunch installed and available in Steam, we can use a program called ProtonUp-QT. If you don't already have this installed, you can install it via the Discover store on Steam Deck, or likely from your package manager on general Linux systems.
Once installed, open up ProtonUp-QT from the applications menu, ensure Steam is selected at the top, and then click Add Version:
In the "Compatibility tool" drop down, select steamtinkerlaunch if you are on Steam Deck, or steamtinkerlaunch-git if you are on a general Linux system, and then click Install:
Once the download completes, you can close ProtonUp-QT.
IMPORTANT: FOR STEAM TO RECOGNISE STEAMTINKERLAUNCH, YOU MUST FULLY EXIT AND RESTART STEAM NOW
Because this modlist utilises the vanilla Enderal game directory, we need to enable the visibility of hidden files on the filesystem (on Linux these are known as dotfiles). This is because by default Steam will create it's game library in a ~/.local or ~/.steam directory, that is hidden by default. The setting can be changed via the protontricks GUI, or just by running the following command in a konsole/terminal window:
protontricks --no-bwrap -c 'WINEDEBUG=-all wine reg add "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wine" /v ShowDotFiles /d Y /f' 976620
There are a number of Wine/Proton components required to ensure everything works with the base game and mods. Things like xact/xact_x64 to fix some audio issues, d3d additions for the use of Community Shaders as well as vcrun2022 (Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable 2022) for some of the included mods.
The easiest way to install what we need is to use ProtonTricks, which should be installed already from Step 3 earlier in this guide.
Adding the required packages can be done via the ProtonTricks gui, but perhaps the easiest way is via command line. You can run the following one-liner to do it for you:
protontricks --no-bwrap 976620 -q xact xact_x64 d3dcompiler_47 d3dx11_43 d3dcompiler_43 vcrun2022 fontsmooth=rgb
With the above component install complete, we can now switch Enderal to use steamtinkerlaunch instead of Proton Experimental, in the properties of the game in Steam:
Close the properties window and launch the game from steam. However, instead of loading Enderal, this will load a SteamTinkerLaunch window, and you'll have to quickly click on "Main Menu" down the bottom:
On the next screen, click "Game Menu":
There are only a few changes needed to get things working. Firstly, ensure 'custom commands' is ticked, and then click the executable to change it, bringing up a file Browser:
Browse to your Emissaries of Tux modlist directory, and select ModOrganizer.exe:
Additionally, tick the checkbox next to "Only custom command". The window should now look like this:
Lastly, scroll down in the Steam Tinker Launch window until you see 'Proton Version', and change it to be "Proton Experimental":
Click Save and Play, and all being well, you should see the Emissaries of Tux splash screen, and then MO2 will be displayed:
As MO2 starts to launch for the first time, you may see an error regarding being unable to open the instance:
Click OK, and then click "Browse":
Navigate to the path for the vanilla Enderal directory - On Steam Deck, for Internal Storage this will be:
Z:\home\deck\.local\share\Steam\steamapps\common\Enderal Special Edition
and for SDCard:
D:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Enderal Special Edition\
In some cases, you may see an error regarding a downloads directory when MO2 is starting. To work around this you may need to blank out the path in ModOrganizer.ini, you can use the following command to do so, and then restart the game from Steam:
sed -i "/download_directory/c\download_directory =" /home/deck/Games/Enderal/EmissariesOfTux/ModOrganizer.ini
At this stage, finally, ModOrganizer2 should now be loaded successfully. We need to check the executable path is correct for the Emissaries entry in MO2. To do so, click the "Configure Executables" button:
Ensure that the executable paths for the "Enderal Special Edition (SKSE)" entry to match the following. If you are on a general Linux system, adjust the paths as necessary to your Steam Library location.
If Enderal is install on internal storage, the Binary Path should be:
Z:\home\deck\.local\share\Steam\steamapps\common\Enderal Special Edition\skse64_loader.exe
with a "Start in" path:
Z:\home\deck\.local\share\Steam\steamapps\common\Enderal Special Edition
If Enderal is installed on the SDCard, the Binary Path should be:
D:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Enderal Special Edition\skse64_loader.exe
with a "Start in" path:
D:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Enderal Special Edition\
Lastly for this step, click the Apply button, followed by OK.
It's finally time to play! Set the Launch option in MO2 back to Enderal Special Edition (SKSE), and click Play:
If you're not playing on Steam Deck, that should be things complete, and you can move to the Conclusion section.
Deck users, close the game down again, as you can now change back to Game Mode to run the game after reading and considering Step 10, and the Conclusion.
Increase Steam Deck Swap Space, Swappiness and adjust Steam Deck VRAM
This may be optional, but there have been reports of far better stability and performance after increasing the swap space available to the deck when running Modlists. If you are experiencing stability issues, it might be worth investigating. How to do so is outside the scope of this guide, but there is plenty of information available elsewhere on how to do it - CryoByte33 has an excellent set of utilities available on github that can take care of this, and more!
Personally I have increased the VRAM in the deck bios to 4GB (see here for details), 16GB Swap space, and a Swappiness of 1 - the recommended settings when you run Cryobyte33's Steam Deck Utilities. In fact, the full video of Cryobyte33 explaining what this all means, is definitely worth a watch!
At last!
If you've read this far, then well done! I'd very much appreciate a Star for this guide, just to show if I'm on the right track. I'm also open to any feedback, positive or negative.
I would love to hear your feedback on performance of this or other modlists, and any tweaks that you made!
As an addition to the disclaimer at the top of this guide, I have no visibility of longer term stability, so save often, and maybe even make backups of your save-games, just in case ;)
If you need help with any of the above, or better yet have another fix, tweak or workaround to help get these Modlists running on Linux, then please do stop by the #unofficial-linux-help channel on the Wabbajack Discord, I should be around so just @ me (@omni) on there!
Enjoy!
