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EDIT 5-20-2020: This guide advises using a 64-bit wrapper, under the belief it was necessary to take advantage of Large Address Awareness. This seems not only to be wrong, but deleterious. A major revision to this guide may be in order. In the meantime, see what happens if you use a 32-bit wrapper instead.
Just over two years ago, I posted a guide on how to run Oblivion natively in OS X, using Wine and Wineskin. I can only hope that some people found it useful, but since that time, a lot has changed. Wine and Wineskin (via the Unofficial Wineskin Project) have continued to develop and improve. I've changed too, both in what I've learned about modding and in my approach to modding Oblivion. For these reasons an update has long been due; this guide represents my efforts to provide such an update.
Note that one unfortunate thing that's changed is that since its most recent update (OS 10.15, or "Catalina"), Mac OS will no longer support 32-bit applications. I have not tested this guide with this most recent OS, but since Oblivion is a 32-bit application, there's reason to believe it won't work with this new version of OS X, even though the guide calls for a 64-bit engine. There's reason for hope: CodeWeavers just released a new version of Crossover that supports 32-bit applications without 32-bit support for OS X, and since CrossOver and Wine are closely tied projects, we may see such support in Wine as well. In the the very, very (very) distant future, we may see the excellent OpenMW open-source engine project expand to fully support Oblivion, enabling even better cross-platform support for Oblivion and eliminating several modding headaches as well. Until then, if you want to use this guide, avoid the new OS while you can, and attempt to downgrade if you are able.
How Wine and Wineskin work
Wine is a compatibility layer that allows certain Unix-based operating systems, including Mac OS X, run Windows software. It does not actually run Windows like an emulator or virtual machine does; rather, it translates Windows instructions so that Unix systems can use them. Therefore, it’s much faster than emulation and doesn’t require a Windows license to use. Wine is not faster than dual-booting, but has the advantage of being integrated into your OS, so you don’t need to reboot every time you want to use software made for a different operating system.
Wine usually runs in the command line and is likely beyond the computer skills of many users (this writer included). Luckily there’s Wineskin, a GUI front-end for Wine and many of its tools. This makes installing and modifying programs using Wine much easier. To use Wineskin, you create a wrapper, which is a self-contained group of files that contain everything you need to run a particular program, including a Wine engine, the program itself, and any other support files required to make the game run.
A thing to realize about Wineskin wrappers is that since they are self-contained, each wrapper has its own copy of what’s needed to run a game. On Windows, if you need, say, a particular DirectX library to run a certain game, you just download it once and it will work for every other game that needs it. With Wineskin, every program that needs that library will have its own copy of that library. Same with everything else the game needs to run, including the Wine engine itself. This may seem odd, but the fact that each wrapper is so self-contained is what makes them useful. Think of each wrapper like a little ecosystem that’s independent of anything else on your computer, including other wrappers. It makes managing these little environments much simpler, more reliable, and conflict-free.
Creating a wrapper
- Download Unofficial Wineskin Project.
- Double-click to unpack (If you have a third-party archive tool like Keka, bypass it by right-clicking the file and selecting Open With > The Unarchiver. This prevents a bug that won't let the program run properly.).
- Move the Unofficial Wineskin Winery application to a different location to work around a security issue.
- Click Update if available to make sure your Wrapper Version is up to date.
- Download an engine by clicking the + button and selecting an engine. Currently I use WS9WineStaging64bit4.16. As of this writing, more recent versions suffer various bugs.
- Click Create New Blank Wrapper and name it Oblivion.
- Click View wrapper in Finder when Wineskin creates the wrapper and move it to your desired location. New wrappers are in [username]/Applications/Wineskin folder.
Installing Oblivion
- Purchase and download Oblivion from GOG. The GOG version is the only one recommended for this guide and is highly recommended over Steam or retail. If you wait for a sale, it’s less than $7.
- Download the three “offline backup game installers” instead of trying to download through GOG Galaxy.
- Open your Oblivion wrapper by right-clicking and selecting Open. Again, this bypasses security issues and only needs to be done once.
- Click Install Software, then Choose Setup Executable.
- Navigate to your Downloads folder and choose “setup_oblivion_1.2.0416_cs_(12788).exe
- When the installer pops up, select English.
- Click Options, deselect “Create desktop icon,” click “Yes, I have read and accept EULA,” then click Install.
- After the installation is complete, select “Exit.”
- Select OblivionLauncher.exe as the executable to start Oblivion and click OK. Note that we’ll change this later after we install OBSE.
Configuration
- Double-click the Oblivion wrapper to launch. This will create an Oblivion.ini file among other things.
- In the launcher, click Options and select Ultra High graphics. Pick a widescreen resolution (I pick 1680x944). Keep anti-aliasing off. You may or may not want to disable V-Sync as well.
- Endure the intro movies (we can turn them off later) and start a new game.
- Create a new character, then quit.
- Open your Oblivion.ini file. It’s found in your Documents/My Games/Oblivion folder.
- To turn off opening movies, find the lines for SMainMenuMovieIntro and SIntroSequence. Edit these so they have no value; i.e. look like this:
SMainMenuMovieIntro=
SIntroSequence=
Opening Wineskin and editing the wrapper
- Opening your Oblivion wrapper will simply launch Oblivion, but we’ll often want to explore and change the wrapper in more detail. To do this, right-click the wrapper and select “Show Package Contents.”
- Double-Click Wineskin to open it. Click Advanced to access the main features of Wineskin.
- From now on, when this guide says “Open Wineskin,” this is what we mean. For now, close Wineskin by clicking the red circle at the top left.
- You’re looking at the root folder of your wrapper. Click the triangle thing for Contents, then do the same for Resources, drive_c, and GOG Games. Right-click the Oblivion folder and select Make Alias.
- Click and drag “Oblivion alias” to the root folder. This will make it easier to navigate to your Oblivion files in the future.
- For a similar reason, navigate to your Documents/My Games/ folder, right-click the Oblivion folder found therein, and select Make Alias.
- Change the name of the alias file to “My Game/Oblivion alias,” then click and drag to the root folder of your wrapper. This will make it easier to navigate to your ini and saved game files in the future.
Change your wrapper icon (Optional)
- Do an image search for “Oblivion icon.” Download your favorite result.
- Open Wineskin and click Advanced.
- In the Icon pane, click Browse and navigate to the icon you just downloaded. Click “choose.”
- Locate your Oblivion wrapper in the finder. You may not see the icon you just switched too. If that’s the case, select the wrapper and hit command-I (or select Get Info from the File menu).
- If you see the new icon in the Oblivion Info window, click it, hit Command-C to copy, then hit Command-V to paste (or use the Copy and Paste commands from the Edit menu). You should now see the new icon in the Finder.
- If you don’t see the new icon in the Oblivion Info window, open the icon file you downloaded and select Copy from the Edit menu. Then click on the icon in the Oblivion Info window and Paste.
Install OBSE
OBSE is a script extender that allows Oblivion to use more advanced mods.
- Go to the OBSE website. Download Current Stable Version file at the top of the page, as well as the “Latest loader” file below it.
- Double click the obse_0021.zip file to unzip, then open the obse_0021 folder.
- Navigate to the Oblivion folder in your wrapper, using the alias we just created in the previous steps.
- Move the obse_editor_1_2.dll and obse_1_2_416.dll files from the obse_0021 folder to your Oblivion folder.
- Open the obse_0021/Data folder. Move the OBSE folder from here to your Oblivion/Data folder.
- Double click the obse_loader.zip file. Move the obse_loader.exe file to your Oblivion folder. (Keep the obse_loader.exe file from the obse_0021 where it is, as it won’t work with the GOG version of Oblivion.)
- (By the way, a useful tip for keeping track of manually installed mod file is to right-click the file and pick a color. I make all my OBSE files orange, but pick whatever color you like.)
- Open Wineskin and click Advanced. Click Browse.
- Navigate to GOG Games/Oblivion and select obse_loader.exe. This will make your wrapper open Oblivion through OBSE, so you can use OBSE dependent mods.
- Close Wineskin and open your Oblivion wrapper to make sure it works.
- It’s possible you may want to run the Oblivion Launcher from time to time. In this case, open Wineskin, click Advanced, then Tools, then Custom EXE creator.
- Type “Oblivion Launcher” for “Name to use.” Then click Browse and Open the GOG Games/Oblivion folder. Choose OblivionLauncher.exe.
- Click Save. You’ll see an Oblivion Launcher file in the root folder of your Oblivion wrapper.
Install Wrye Bash
To make installing, uninstalling, and managing mods as easy as possible, a mod manager is essential, and Wrye Bash is the best mod manager for Oblivion. Some guides will tell you to also install Oblivion Mod Manager (OBMM), but there are Wrye Bash compatible installers for virtually every mod out there (including DarN UI). Wrye Bash is the only mod manager you need.
- Download the latest installer for Wrye Bash.
- Double click to unpack the archive.
- Open Wineskin and click Install Software.
- Click Choose Setup Executable and navigate to your Downloads folder. Choose Wrye Bash 307 Beta 4 - Installer.exe.
- Follow the Wrye Bash setup Wizard. Click Next, then make sure Install for Oblivion and Wrye Bash [Standalone] are checked. Click Next three more times.
- Deselect Start Menu Shortcuts, then click Install. This will install both Wrye Bash and the prerequisite Virtual C 2015 library.
- Click Next, deselect View Readme, then click Close.
- In Wineskin, click Advanced, then navigate to the Tools tab. Select Custom EXE Creator.
- Type “Wrye Bash” for “Name to use.” Then click Browse and navigate to GOG Games/Oblivion/Mopy. Choose Wrye Bash.exe.
- Click Save. You’ll see a Wrye Bash file in the root folder of your Oblivion wrapper. Double click to test.
- Close Wrye Bash. In your root folder, navigate to Contents/Resources/drive_c/GOG Games/Oblivion Mods.
- Right-click the Bash Installers folder and select Make Alias. Move the Bash Installers alias file to the root folder. When you want to install a mod with Wrye Bash, first put the installer in this folder.
Using Wye Bash in Wine
There are a few annoying bugs and quirks using Wrye Bash in Wine. There are a few Wrye Bash GUI features that simply don’t work in Wine. One is drag and dropping installers. To load a mod installer, you have to put the mod directly into the Bash Installers folder. I described how to create an alias for this folder in the steps above.
Another feature that doesn’t work is click and dragging installers to change your installer. I get crashes when I attempt to do this. Luckily there’s another way. Right-click the installer you want to move, then select Packages, then Move. Type the position in your install order you want to move the mod to, or type -1 to move it to the end of your list. Also useful is the Install Last command, also found in the Packages menu. Remember, you usually want newer mods at the bottom of your install order, so you have to move them first.
I’ve just figured out that there’s a major bug with WB and later versions of Wine where a mod installation will fail if it needs to add a new folder. You could try adding those folders manually, but a better, though still annoying, solution is to temporarily downgrade to an older engine.
- Open Unofficial Winery and click + to download a new engine. Choose WS9WineStaging64bit4.0.3.
- Wait for the download to finish, then close Winery.
- Open Wineskin, click Advanced, then Tools. Click Chane Engine Used.Select WS9WineStaging64bit4.0.3.
- Wait for Wineskin to finish.
The old engine introduces another bug, namely that text looks ugly and menus are barely usable. Do this to fix.
- Click Winetricks in Wineskin.
- Search for Font. Click the triangle thing and select core fonts and Tacoma. Do the same for settings and select for smooth=rgb.
- Click Okay, then wait for Winetricks to finish. When it says “Winetricks commands finished!!” you’ll know it’s done.
Test Wrye Bash to see if it works as it should now. You may notice that some menu bars won’t seem to be visible, but if you click and drag to resize them they’ll redraw. When you’re done installing mods and ready to play Oblivion, I recommend changing the engine back to WS9WineStaging64bit4.16.
Install BOSS
Any mod with a plugin (an esp or esm file) needs to be put in the proper load order, or you may experience crashes. BOSS is still the best tool for the job for Oblivion.
- Download the boss_installer.7z file.
- Double-click to unpack the archive.
- Open Wineskin and click Install Software.
- Click Choose Setup Executable and navigate to your Downloads folder. Choose BOSS Installer.exe.
- Follow the BOSS setup Wizard. Select your language, then click Next, then Install.
- Click Next, deselect the two options, then click Finish.
- In Wineskin, click Advanced, then navigate to the Tools tab. Select Custom EXE Creator.
- Type “BOSS” for “Name to use.” Then click Browse and Open the BOSS folder. Choose boss_gui.exe.
- Click Save. You’ll see a BOSS file in the root folder of your Oblivion wrapper. Double click to test. Select TES IV: Oblivion, then click Okay. You should now be able to sort your load order.
Install TES4Edit
TES4Edit is a powerful tool that lets users modify Oblivion plugin files. It has many uses, but the most common is cleaning esp files, which is explained in the next section.
- Down the latest version of the TES4Edit installer.
- Double-click to unpack the archive. Open the “TES4Edit 4_0…” folder.
- I recommend selecting all the files, right-clicking, and picking a color (I chose blue). This will allow you to keep track of what files are from TES4Edit.
- Move all the files from the TES4Edit folder to your Oblivion folder.
- In Wineskin, click Advanced, then navigate to the Tools tab. Select Custom EXE Creator.
- Type “TES4Edit” for “Name to use.” Then click Browse and Open the GOG Games/Oblivion folder. Choose TES4Edit.exe.
- Click Save. You’ll see a TES4Edit file in the root folder of your Oblivion wrapper.
- Double click to test. I recommend disabling prompts in the various dialogues before continuing.
- Close TES4Edit. Click Custom EXE Creator again.
- Type “TES4Edit Quick Auto Clean” for “Name to use.” Then click Browse and Open the GOG Games/Oblivion folder. Choose TES4EditQuickAutoClean.exe.
- Click Save. You’ll see a TES4Edit Quick Auto Clean file in the root folder of your Oblivion wrapper.
- Double click to test. Again, I recommend disabling prompts in the various dialogues before continuing.
Cleaning mods with TES4Edit Quick Auto Clean
Many mods, including most of the official DLCs, have “dirty edits.” Often true to a bug in Oblivion’s Construction Set, saved plugins sometimes contain references to the core Oblivion.esm file. This means that a “dirty” mod could undo changes made by another mod, leading to unwanted quirks at best and crashes at worst. The solution is to clean such mods. This can be a bit of a chore, but the most recent version of TES4Edit makes this as easy as possible.
- Run BOSS. If it hangs trying to update the masterlist, just force quit and try again. If hanging persists force quit, launch again, and deselect Update Masterlist. (Then install the latest masterlist manually.)
- A page should open in your browser. Navigate to Recognised Plugins. In addition to seeing your load order, this lets you see what mods need cleaning, including most official DLC.
- Run TES4Edit Quick Auto Clean. Select DLCHorseArmor.esp, then click OK.
- Let the process run. When the message window displays “Quick Clean mode finished” at the bottom, you know it’s done. Close TES4Edit.
- Relaunch TES4Edit Quick Auto Clean and repeat these steps for each esp file individually, apart from Shivering Isles. Yes, this means going through the process nine times. Do not try to save time by selecting all the esps at once, as it won’t work as intended.
- Run BOSS again and check the recognized plugins. This time the cleaning notifications should be gone. You can also see if you accidentally missed any.
- Other mods may also require cleaning, in which case the process is exactly the same.
Installing ENBoost
ENBoost is highly recommended for preventing memory crashes in modded Oblivion games. It works by making Oblivion use video memory instead of RAM for some graphic processing. Oblivion Reloaded has a similar feature called Memory Manager, but I’ve found that this feature doesn’t work in Wine. ENBoost works only if you create overrides for certain DirectX libraries as described below.
- Open Wineskin, click Advanced, then Tools, then Winetricks.
- Search for “43”, then open the dlls drop down menu.
- Select d3dcompiler_43 and d3dx9_43, then select Run. Wait until the message window displays “Winetricks Commands Finished!!”, then close.
- Click Config Utility, then click the Libraries tab.
- Select d3dcompiler_43, click Edit, and select “Native, then Builtin.” Do the same for d3dx9_43.
- In “New override for library,” type d3d9, then click Add. It should be set for “native, builtin”; if not, edit as with the other dll libraries.
- Download VRamSizeTest.
- Double-click the archive and open the vramsizetest folder. Move the VRamSizeDX9.exe file to the c drive of your wrapper.
- In Wineskin, click Advanced, then navigate to the Tools tab. Select Custom EXE Creator.
- Type “VRAM Test” for “Name to use.” Then click Browse and Open the GOG Games/Oblivion folder. Choose VRamSizeDX9.exe.
- Click Save. You’ll see a VRAM Test file in the root folder of your Oblivion wrapper.
- Double click to run the VRAM Test file. Record the value it reports somewhere.
- Download ENBoost.
- Double-click the archive to unpack, then open the enbseries_oblivion_v0259enboost/WrapperVersion folder. Move the enbhost.exe and d3d9.dll files to your Oblivion folder.
- Download the ENBoost ini files.
- Double-click the archive to unpack, then open the ENBoost 1_0-45266-259/ folder.
- Open the folder corresponding to the type of video card you have, then open the 64bitOS folder.
- Open the enblocal.ini file. Change the value of VideoMemorySizeMB from 0 to the value reported by the VRAM test, then save.
- Move the enblocal.ini file to your Oblivion folder. Again, I color code all these files for easy organization. (I chose green for ENBoost files).
- Launch Oblivion. If Enboost is working properly, you should see white text in the upper left corner of the launch screen.
- To disable ENBoost temporarily, create a folder in your Oblivion folder and simply move the ENBoost files there. I called the folder “ENBoost disable” and color-coded it green. To reenable, move the files from this folder back to your Oblivion folder.
Installing other post-process graphic tools
Other tools, like ENB or SweetFX, can also work in Wine. You need to use Winetricks and Wine Config to create overrides for certain DirectX libraries, just like for ENBoost. Just follow the first few steps for ENBoost above.Note that ENB is not compatible with ENBoost. SweetFX is, however. You just need to do the following.
- Change the name of SweetFX’s d3d9.dll file to SFXd3d9.dll (or anything at all, really), before moving SweetFX files to your Oblivion folder.
- Open your enblocal.ini file. Under [PROXY], set EnableProxyLibrary and InitProxyFunctions to true, and set ProxyLibrary to SFXd3d9.dll.
Installing other mod tools (TES4LODGEN, TES4LL, BAE, LandMagic, etc.)
Most other tools will follow something like the procedure for installing TES4Edit: Download, unpack, move files, create a custom exe. Again, I recommend color coding files for a particular tool for easy organization.
One thing that’s a little unexpected is how to install TES4LL. We cannot install MpGUI because it requires dotnet, which won’t install properly in 64-bit WINE. Luckily, we can run TES4LL’s bat files as executables. Just select a bat file when creating a custom exe. tes4ll_midres.bat or tes4ll_highres.bat should be all you need. I also found that TES4LL needs to be in the “Oblivion/Data” folder.
Troubleshooting
My PC has black skin!
Using the latest Wineskin wrapper and the engine I recommended, I did not encounter the black skin bug, but I’ve encountered it before. The solution is to create an override for d3dx9_27, just like we did for other dll files when installing ENBoost. That is, open Wine Config, click Libraries, create an override for the file and set it to “Native, then Builtin.”
The font looks really ugly in tools like Wrye Bash or TES4Edit. Or, menus in these programs don’t display properly and are almost unusable.
Again, with this latest setup, I haven’t noticed these issues. In an earlier wrapper, I needed to use Winetricks to run the corefonts, tahoma, and fontsmooth=rgb commands to make these programs look right.
Gameplay seems really slow
I noticed slow gameplay using engines later than WS9WineStaging64bit4.16, so if you’re using a later engine for some reason, use Winery to install this engine, then use the Change Engine Used tool in Wineskin to switch. Another thing to check is to make sure CMST is enabled. Do this using Wine Config, under the Staging tab. (Note that the Staging tab won’t appear if you aren’t running a Staging version of your Wine engine.)
A tool I want to install requires dotnet, but I can’t get it to install properly!
Dotnet has some compatibility with 32-bit Wineskin but none in 64-bit Wineskin. If you create a fresh wrapper using a 32-bit engine, you might be able to get dotnet and these programs to work, but you’d miss out on the memory use advantages of running Oblivion in Large Address Aware mode. Or, you could create a new 32-bit wrapper just for these programs if you don’t mind moving files around between wrappers. Luckily, the main tools we need can function in 64-bit Wineskin without issue.
Speaking of LAA, I can’t get the 4gb patch to run properly.
Good news, if you followed this guide, you bought the GOG version of Oblivion, which is already LAA!
Okay, suppose I want to use the Steam version instead…
Ah. In that case, I had no luck getting the 4gb patch to work in Wine, but there’s an alternative that does. The Large Address Aware application does exactly what the 4gb patch does and actually works in Wine. It’s a little more complicated since it requires dotnet, so you’ll have to install it in its own 32-bit wrapper and move the Oblivion.exe file (the only file you need to modify, fwiw) back and forth between wrappers. It can work, though.
Steps for this and other issues involving Steam can be found in the old version of my guide but are unsupported here. The Steam version of Oblivion has many additional headaches that the GOG version avoids. You’re simply better off waiting for a sale and spending $6.
7 comments
OBSE also works as intended, using xOBSE 22.7 from Github.
Wrye Bash did not work on my setup but to my surprise, Mod Organizer 2 works perfectly (manually selecting mods to install, cannot use "mod manager download" button). Installing Mod Organizer 2 is as simple as following the same instructions on this page for Wrye Bash, except selecting the exe installer for MO2 instead. I selected to run MO2 as a portable installation, but maybe creating several instances works too, don't know. I recommend changing the wineskin exe to MO2 if you do plan on using it, as you need to launch OBSE through the mod manager to load your mods.
Overall, great experience. The only issue I'm having is that every time an NPC is going to speak there is a freeze (lasts about 1 - 2 seconds). The FPS is otherwise great if not for these hiccups. I have no idea what solutions there may be for this issue, if anyone has some knowledge to impart I would love to discuss it here. Frankly, I'm just happy to see the game launch at all to begin with
Also exist a patch for wine that activate globally the Large address aware flag.
Uesp page for Oblivion on Linux, may have some useful information that may also apply to OSX.
For example on Linux some OBSE mods that use keypresses don't work without bBackground Keyboard=1 into the ini (this beheviour is present also in MWSE), untested on OSX.
I do plan to expand that page also on common workarounds for mods and tools, as tes4ll,mpgui, Oblivion Reloaded, ecc.
Also don't report issue to the wine developers using wineskin.
It's not supported in the wine bugtracker.
Most of winetricks dotnet work for 64bit prefixes (notable exception is dotnet30 and maybe dotnet35).
(Everyone should listen to Ilde by the way. He knows way more about this stuff than me.)