Yesterday, July 1st, they announced the Alpha release of this next-generation mod manager and their new Product Manager got in touch to mention they “would be really keen to get feedback from Linux users”. So this is your chance to ensure Linux (and Steam Deck) finally become a first-class citizen for game modding.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/17546163
Modding is one of those few gaming things that still remains a massive pain on Linux compared to doing it on Windows, if they actually commit to supporting Linux and making sure it works on Wine/Proton games as well this would be massive! I’ve been modding my games manually ever since switching but having a mod manager is just so so so much nicer.
I wish more devs would just use Steam Workshop. It’s incredibly painless on Linux.
Edit: the word “just” seems to be triggering some people. Rest assured I meant it as in “just do it already”, and not “just do this and nothing else”
Porn and nudity mods are ones of the most numerous\popular categories for decades. Steam can’t allow that.
Not to mention there could easily be a court case where Valve gets told they can’t host mods that infringe on copyright and are told to remove it all and not accept anything like it.
Kiss goodbye to your Skyrim mods that add Thomas the tank engine characters as dragons, Spiderman as a playable character, LOTR characters and weapons, etc.
As much as I think steam workshop is great and convenient, it shouldn’t be the only accessible option.
Sure, but please after a general solution. I don’t want to be forced to use Steam to mod my games. Many of my games aren’t even on Steam!
Also I want it optional, so can control if Steam gets to see my Playtime.
I very much welcome the Nexusmods solution in comparision
Yeah, I have a friend who was very interested in switching to Linux on his gaming computer.
His game of choice is Arma 3, which I play and runs great on Linux. But then he asked me, “what about mods?” He plays Arma with a massive amount of mods, and not just Steam workshop ones, all kinds.
I tried to replicate all his mods on my installation as a proof of concept, but after over 2 hours, it still didn’t work.
Having really solid and easy modding would be awesome.
I’ve been fortunate that the main games I want mods for, support it rather seamlessly on linux. R2modman for Lethal Company and other unity games, and Mod.io for Deep Rock Galactic.
I have used both and can confirm they worked great. There is also REFramework for recent Capcom games like Devil May Cry 5, Resident Evil entries and Monster Hunter Rise. Steam workshop compatible games like Rust and Don’t Starve Together also work great. My observation is it depends on if the mod framework the community chooses is compatible, or if the mod/framework author care enough for Linux support.
There’s r2modman for a lot of games, which is a native Linux mod manager using the Thunderstore for its mods. There’s also ModOrganizer2 which can work somewhat okayish on Linux but Protontricks, which is a dependency, is currently a sore spot. https://github.com/rockerbacon/modorganizer2-linux-installer
Hopefully it is not as unintuitive and confusing as Vortex. That was probably the absolute worst mod manager I have ever used. But we definitely do need some Linux compatible mod manager for Bethesda games (r2modman covers a lot of other ones already).
Hey! I don’t know when the last time you used Vortex, but is is SO much better now. They’ve even added mod collections that allow you to one click install a few to all the way to over 1000 mods (Looking at you Skyrim mod collections, Constellations and Gate to Sovngarde!) and have it ready to play as soon as it is done.
I have played Oblivion, Skyrim, and Stardew Valley with collections and not once had a collection not work! It’s crazy how good it is now!
I know some people don’t like Nexus for whatever reasons, but I give them so much credit for making modding easy enough that my friends could finally mod their games without going, “You sit here and go through pages and pages of mods? And that’s fun?” Or “That seems like too much stuff. I’d rather not mess with that…”.
I would love to hear your opinion if you do try it again! :)
Not sure when the last time was exactly, a couple years ago maybe. Until it refused to work without updating it, and the update of course caused it to not work anymore and also nuke all my Skyrim mods with it.
My main gripe with it is how confusing and unintuitive it is though. So even if I were to go through the bother of trying to get it running on Linux again, I’d have to first know that it would’ve improved on that front. But with the new app coming and MO2 running much better and being much more intuitive, I don’t really see the point.
Their mod managers were the ones I tried first, and then I tried MO2, and just didn’t get a feel for it so I stuck to manual modding until they revamped their own mod manager. I then tried the newer version out, and it just clicked for me.
I don’t blame you for sticking with what works now and has always worked though! :)
Vortex is going to be linux compatible? This is amazing, I can delete my windows image now.
Just last month I was wondering how I would get Vortex working in Linux and decided my backlog is long enough to not bother. Guess it’s time to start another playthrough of New Vegas.
Vortex seems to work fine using Lutris now. I’m not sure when it changed, but at some point recently I figured I’d give it a shot again and just downloaded and ran their installer exe and it worked.
Feedback: allow me to register an account with an email on my self-hosted domains. The validation on the form sucks, either by design or accident.
First time I am hearing of this, I hope it’s a lot better than shitty Vortex!
No-one has ever told me what’s actually wrong with Vortex.
UX is pretty painful. I’m never sure if its bugging or if I’m doing it wrong or working and now needs me to do some other step.
I’ve modded to hell and back with Minecraft, Skyrim, and every Paradox game. So it was kind of shocking just how hard modding in Linux was with Vortex.
The same reputation extends to Windows too so I don’t think it’s a Linux specific issue.
I like the UX as it’s pretty powerful but I’m mindful of being ancient and having spent nearly a decade working with arcane telco applications. I have the opposite of your complaint - I like that it does periodic checks and will notify you of detected problems and usually give you a button to press to solve it.
My biggest pain usually comes in load order management. Usually this is because this is mentioned nowhere but in a note at the bottom of the mod description that might say something like “near the top” or “after mod x”. I don’t know how Steam just handles this mostly but I have a feeling it might be strong categorisation of mods.
It seems alright, until you use almost any other mod manager, then you wonder why Vortex is so clunky. It works fine for simple modding, but once you want to adjust load orders its annoying af. The UI is pretty atrocious in places and it takes more clicks than it should to do things. Admittedly I havent used it for a few years, so it might have been updated a lot.
It hasn’t been. It’s just as clunky as it’s ever been.
Then here’s hoping they don’t make the same mistakes with the Nexus app!
I’ve been eagerly waiting for this. With the announcement of official modding tools for Baldurs Gate 3, I’ll be happy jumping back in since switching to Linux on my gaming pc.
I wrote an ESO addon manager for the steam deck. They don’t use nexus modes but I could probably figure that out.
The current build only supports Stardew Valley on Steam or GOG.com
Which is exactly what I’d use this for, were it not for the fact that I switched to the windows version of SV anyways. It wants an old system OpenSSL lib that’s insecure and I don’t have it. So wine with Windows version it is.
If I played Stardew I’d be all over this. Alas, I am not a farmer.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
I wrote about the brand new Nexus mods app before, as it’s quite a promising exciting development for the future of modding (especially for Linux and Steam Deck).
This is going to replace their previous apps like Vortex, eventually anyway.
Right now, it’s only made ready for Stardew Valley, since it’s a very popular game for mods and is also cross-platform so it makes it simpler for them to get all the features of the app ready.
Yesterday, July 1st, they announced the Alpha release of this next-generation mod manager and their new Product Manager got in touch to mention they “would be really keen to get feedback from Linux users”.
So this is your chance to ensure Linux (and Steam Deck) finally become a first-class citizen for game modding.
You can grab it from their download page, and the source code is on GitHub.
The original article contains 196 words, the summary contains 145 words. Saved 26%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
