I use MO2 for modding and am trying to switch from Steam's FO4 to GOG's. It's easy to point my existing MO2 set-up to the GOG installation folder, but mods that include an F4SE DLL aren't working correctly with the GOG version. In particular, the relevant DLLs aren't loaded at runtime even though they show up in the virtual folder.

A post to the MO2 Discord suggests this is a known problem with GOG's version of the game, but I thought I'd ask here in case somebody's managed to get it working.

I'm following The Midnight Ride's installation guide, and I have the same issue: the mods aren't getting loaded, despite being visible in the virtual folders hierarchy produced by MO2.

I made MCM and XDI work (MCM appears in the pause menu; I get the XDI text dialogs which are an absolute must for me since I usually have to play Fo3, FoNV and now Fo4 without audio) by uncompressing them manually to Data/ . It means that I have their prerequisites right - if I didn't have the appropriate MSVC Redistributable Runtime, the DLLs would still not load - but that's not the way to go for production use.
In this configuration, the game's been running for ~3h under Debian Linux sid amd64 + 64-bit Wine 8.0.x and a Zen 3 CPU's IGP. I've just successfully cleared hostiles in Concord. The mouse is extremely janky, which makes portions of the gameplay (lock picking, accurate non-VATS targeting) very annoying. I'll stop there waiting for more information.

If you want the GOG edition to get messed up fast just dump lots of mods untested on it especially SE mods instead of loading them one-by-one which is the sensible way.

And of course have the DRM edition on the same system just to be extra sure the GOG is messed up. lol

Having the same issue.
Trying to use The Midnight Ride with Mo2. I found out through trial and error the .dll's had to be placed manually in the plugin folder to work. This is creating a mess so for now, I'm reverting back to the Steam version.

Yes, I discovered the same thing. F4SE plugin mods work if you manually/physically install them to the game folder. It's only when they're "installed" virtually at runtime through MO2 that they fail to load. At least there's a workaround (although not a particularly good one).

FWIW a chat on the MO2 Discord reveals that others have this issue, both with FO4 and with other Bethesda games that have recently come to GOG. Apparently, something that's done to remove the Steam DRM also interferes with MO2's VFS.

Interesting...
Are all mod files affected, all F4SE mod files affected, or only the F4SE DLLs ?

From what I've seen, and what I've read on Discord, only F4SE PEX files (scripts) and DLLs from F4SE mods are affected (i.e., not loaded). All other kinds of mods appear to be working properly.

Whatever the issue is, it seems to happen only during early start-up when F4SE is loading stuff.

Especially when you want to start modding a game it's a VERY bad idea to have two versions installed that share the same save location and .ini files. It's almost guaranteed to go south (at least - that's my experience from years of modding games).

I advise to start with a "clean" state. That means if you use Vortex or MO2, remove all mods (you can back-up all downloaded mods for later use). Make a back-up of all your save files (the Fallout4 folder that should be in \Documents\My Games). Then completely uninstall the Steam version. Make sure really everything is gone, so the game directory should be completely gone. And lastly delete the Fallout4 save directory. Also make sure all profiles are removed from Vortex/MO2, so you really start completely "clean".

When everything is gone install the GOG version. I advise using the off-line installers, so Galaxy cannot mess things up (another experience from the past). I personally have two high-speed SSD M2 2Tb drives on my motherboard, and the second drive is marked as F: . So I installed the game to F:\GOG Games:\ (creating a Fallout 4 directory). I have not done too much modding so far, but what I have done seems to work without any hick-ups.

Yeah - It's a lot of work. But at the bright side - It lets you control every aspect of your mods once again. If one mod does not work, it's fairly easy to work out what's the cause. If you start with an already installed collection of mods and add a second game to the same list, it's very easy to mess up and have no idea what is really going wrong or what mod is causing havoc.

As said - It's only something I do personally so it's only an advise, nothing more.

All this said - You could try to use several profiles in your Vortex/MO2, but keep in mind that F4SE has to be installed separately in the GOG game folder and has to be linked from there, otherwise it won't work for obvious reasons.

Your message of caution is useful, as I do understand that attempting to mix the Steam version and the GOG version can create issues, but let's not get sidetracked :)

This issue demonstrably occurs with a clean Fo4 install (made from offline files, I've never used Galaxy) and a new MO2 install on a computer which has never had a Steam client installed. There's another instance of MO2 in a different directory, for FoNV Viva New Vegas: that one has worked properly for over a year, and is unharmed by the new MO2 instance for Fo4.

I run into the same problem, but I found a simple solution.

I should say that I run Fallout 4 under Linux mint, I don't use Windows anymore since many years.

Let me explain my solution step by step:
1. After the Installation of Fallout 4 I installed F4SE manually using the normal procedure.
Then I started Fallout 4 using f4se_loader.exe.
All works fine.

2. Now I installed MO2.
First mod (besides Unofficial Fallout 4 Patch) was MCM (Mod Configuration Menu). Installation with MO2 was OK, but when I started Fallout 4, no MCM menu.

3. I decited to copy manually the mcm.dll in the F4SE directory (Data/F4SE/Plugins/).

4. When I start Fallout 4, suddenly it recognized the dll and I had the MCM menu available.

My suggestion is to copy all the mod dlls for F4SE manually after the installation of the Mod in MO2.

I'm hoping my solution helps a little.

Thanks for that. :-)

Yes, that does work as was mentioned previously, and it's a reasonable workaround. Unfortunately, it also subverts MO2's profile system which permits different mods in different profiles. That is, any mods physically placed in the game folder will participate in every profile. Of course, I typically play using one particular profile, so I can use this approach for that case. However, being a perfectionist, I'm dissatisfied with this as a long-term solution.

I'm find myself getting obsessed with this issue (uh oh). I've sent an email to the F4SE dev team asking for information about how the PEX and DLL files get loaded. If I hear back, perhaps that will provide a clue leading to a more complete fix.

On my side:
* I tried to investigate a bit with several of Wine's debug channels (WINEDEBUG environment variable): mostly +loaddll, +file, +exec. +loaddll is a superfluous confirmation of the fact that the DLLs aren't getting loaded, +file produces megabytes of traces and it's a bit hard to sift through that... but there don't seem to be occurrences of e.g. "AmmoRemover.dll" in there, so the issue may be well ahead of F4SE: within the VFS layer, or how MO2 invokes it ?
* after that, I saw that most F4SE plugin DLLs for the mods listed by The Midnight Run can be put manually in Data/F4SE/Plugins, and end up being loaded: they show up in /proc/<PID of Fallout4.exe>/maps . Several make either f4se_loader.exe crash early, or Fallout4.exe crash later when loading a previous save. I didn't write down the list of offending ones.

No more investigations on my side until tomorrow evening, at best.

And FTR, in case it helps someone else: I fixed the mouse's jankiness I was experiencing (fortunately, I don't suffer from motion sickness...), by defining bBackgroundMouse=1 in fallout4.ini as described at https://www.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/i3o4kw/fallout_4_glitches_out_when_moving_mouse/ . It shall make the playing experience much smoother...

I should have tried emailing the F4SE team at the start. :-)

Thanks to Ian Patterson who responded quickly, the solution is to put -forcesteamloader in the Arguments field for the "f4se_loader.exe" entry in MO2's executables list. You'll also need to have "f4se_steam_loader.dll" (from the F4SE distribution) in the game folder. (I'd initially omitted that file figuring I didn't need it for the GOG game.)

Thanks for the information, I'll test it on my side as well... tomorrow, at best :)
And maybe restart the game from scratch, I'm only several hours into it and it might avoid technical issues later...

If forcing the load of f4se_steam_loader.dll through -forcesteamloader has purely positive impact on the current GOG version, no negative impact on the current Steam version, and the technical reasons behind this forced loading of the f4se_steam_loader.dll being necessary even on the GOG version are here to stay, then I guess The Midnight Ride should be amended to add the information about (unconditionally) passing -forcesteamloader to f4se_loader.exe ?

It works. GOG version now working with all mods I used on the Steam version. Fully compatible.