UE4SS Path Issue for Wine/Proton

[CyrixJD115]

I've been digging into UE4SS on Wine/Proton over the past few days and noticed a pretty big difference in how DLLs get loaded compared to Windows.

On Windows, UE4SS can dynamically scan and load DLLs even when they’re in different folders. For example:

• dwmapi.dll can sit in:
  ./Pal/Binaries/Win64/
• UE4SS.dll can be in:
  ./Pal/Binaries/Win64/ue4ss/

Windows handles this just fine.

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Problem on Wine/Proton

On Wine/Proton, DLL loading is way more strict. I actually managed to get it to scan the files while keeping the same folder structure as Windows, but as soon as Palworld starts hosting a server, it crashes if the standard Windows-style paths are used.

Because of this, both dwmapi.dll and UE4SS.dll basically have to be in the same directory, which forces me to move everything from ./ue4ss/ into:

./Pal/Binaries/Win64/

This messes up the expected folder structure and ends up breaking UE4SS mods.

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Example Impact

Using the PalZones mod as an example:

• UE4SS console commands still work in-game.
• But none of the mod files actually load, which I’m assuming is due to the path resolution issue under Wine/Proton.

Also, if I try installing PalSchema inside Wine, the launcher gets stuck in a loop and Palworld won’t boot at all. So anything relying on that installer seems to fail completely on Wine/Proton.

This all makes it seem like UE4SS handles paths differently (or incorrectly) under Wine/Proton, and mods won’t load unless all DLLs are placed in one folder.

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If I'm doing something wrong in my setup, please feel free to point it out. Here's the startup script I'm currently using (Palworld + UE4SS under Wine/Proton):

Startup script:
https://pastebin.com/L8bmWNnz

Just let me know if there's something I should change or if there's a better way to handle this.

[UE4SS]

The Palworld client with UE4SS works fine for me with proton, but I will look into the server software to see if that's working differently.

[UE4SS]

Still investigating this issue, but meanwhile, I would recommend avoiding the PalZones mod, and any other mods by the same author because they've deleted the git repo containing the source code, and the public releases contain heavily obfuscated code.
This is very suspicious, and it makes it impossible to know if they are shipping malware, and the mere fact that they chose to obfuscate shows a clear intention that they don't want you to know what the code they're running on your computer does.

[dkoz]

PalZones is maintained by a respected developer. It was obfuscated for reasons of theft and re-uploads that the creator was dealing with.

UE4SS has been having issues loading on the newer versions of proton. While the official release loads fine, it's the later experimental versions that do not. I had to roll back to older versions of proton 10 just to get UE4SS to load properly. Even with LD_PRELOAD it would not work.

[UE4SS]

UE4SS has been having issues loading on the newer versions of proton. While the official release loads fine, it's the later experimental versions that do not. I had to roll back to older versions of proton 10 just to get UE4SS to load properly. Even with LD_PRELOAD it would not work.

LD_PRELOAD is for native executables, you should be using WINEDLLOVERRIDES="dwmapi.dll=n,b" %command% for proton games.
This isn't something we can do anything about unfortunately.

I'm still investigating the original issue.

[dkoz]

UE4SS has been having issues loading on the newer versions of proton. While the official release loads fine, it's the later experimental versions that do not. I had to roll back to older versions of proton 10 just to get UE4SS to load properly. Even with LD_PRELOAD it would not work.

LD_PRELOAD is for native executables, you should be using WINEDLLOVERRIDES="dwmapi.dll=n,b" %command% for proton games. This isn't something we can do anything about unfortunately.

I'm still investigating the original issue.

Sorry that's my bad I copied and pasted the wrong one from my ptero egg. That was on the Linux Port I was testing from Yangff. We did use WINEDLLOVERRIDES for the dwmappi and that did not work with it. Rolling back to a previous version of Proton 10 did fix the issue.

[UE4SS]

UE4SS has been having issues loading on the newer versions of proton. While the official release loads fine, it's the later experimental versions that do not. I had to roll back to older versions of proton 10 just to get UE4SS to load properly. Even with LD_PRELOAD it would not work.

LD_PRELOAD is for native executables, you should be using WINEDLLOVERRIDES="dwmapi.dll=n,b" %command% for proton games. This isn't something we can do anything about unfortunately.
I'm still investigating the original issue.

Sorry that's my bad I copied and pasted the wrong one from my ptero egg. That was on the Linux Port I was testing from Yangff. We did use WINEDLLOVERRIDES for the dwmappi and that did not work with it. Rolling back to a previous version of Proton 10 did fix the issue.

What version of proton exactly is being problematic ?
I'm having no issues with Proton Experimental directly from Steam: Proton: 1770737294 experimental-10.0-20260210, nor with the non-experimental Proton 10 version: 1769167055 proton-10.0-4

[narknon]

It was obfuscated for reasons of theft and re-uploads that the creator was dealing with.

Just for the record, most game specific mods are not owned by their mod authors. They are derivative works of the game, and therefore the copyright belongs to the game's copyright holder. So I always find attempts to prevent "theft" by mod authors at the expense of open source to be a bit ironic.

[UE4SS]

Current status: Unable to reproduce.

I've run my tests using Proton 9, 10, and experimental using the version of UE4SS supplied by the author of PalSchema (link below), and didn't run into any problems on either the client or the server.

I did run into crashes with PalSchema on later UE4SS versions, and this is because PalSchema needs to be updated by the author.
The author supplies a version of UE4SS that's compatible with the mod: https://github.com/Okaetsu/RE-UE4SS/releases/tag/experimental-palworld
Hopefully they will update their mod to work with the latest UE4SS version.

The PalZones mod is obfuscated so it cannot be debugged, nor do I trust it enough to run it on my computer, so this mod is a dead end as far a testing is concerned.

Do you have UE4SS installed via Workshop, Nexus, or manual installation ? And could you link me to the exact place you got it ?
This is both to confirm that you're using a version of UE4SS supported by PalSchema, and also to give me the exact version of UE4SS as you in order to run tests.

[CyrixJD115]

@UE4SS I'm actually using Wine-Staging for this, if you actually look at that startup script I made
https://pastebin.com/L8bmWNnz

On the plus side, I didn't want to host it thru steam because it supposed to run on a Linux server, and before I switched to Wine-Staging, I used Proton-GE

[CyrixJD115]

@UE4SS I already tried using Okaetsu ue4ss mod loader, but that didnt work either, I also did this WINEDLLOVERRIDES="dwmapi.dll=n,b" %command%

I used these packages - sudo pacman -S wine-staging wine-mono wine-gecko winetricks

[UE4SS]

I'm currently unable to install SteamCMD natively, but even if I could, how would I get it to download Windows binaries on a Linux machine ?
Would I need to install SteamCMD itself via wine ?

[CyrixJD115]

@UE4SS I used Depot Downloader to download the Windows version on linux in a folder called palserver

here a photo to show what I did

ignore the linux folder, I migrated the world files from there to the windows version

[CyrixJD115]

Just to make sure we are on the same page, Im not talking about Palworld client, I'm talking about the Palworld server