DayZ Command Line Launcher

dayz-ctl — this is an experimental launcher (server explorer and launcher) DayZ on Steam Proton for Linux.

This document is available in languages: eng 🇬🇧, rus 🇷🇺, ua 🇺🇦

At the time of this project, Bohemia Interactive was still unable to make a working launcher for the game that could correctly install modifications and connect to game servers. That is why this project was born.

Key Features:

• Server Explorer with information about each server
• Fuzzy search in Server Explorer based on fzf
• Automatic installation of mods (as an option)
• A wide range of filters for searching servers (map, time of day, modifications, number of players, first person, password, etc.)
• Additional information in the form of country of location (using geoip base) and ping for each server
• Favorites list, last 10 games history and creation of quick launch shortcuts to connect to servers
• Offline mode DayZCommunityOfflineMode with automatic installation, updates and the ability to select modifications
• Configuration menu with game launch options, launcher settings, mod controls and statistics
• Provides a link with detailed server information to battlemetrics

Special thanks to dayz-linux-cli-launcher for the idea and dayzsalauncher for the API.

Preview

Launcher Demo

More screenshots 👈

Main menu	Server browser
Server filters	Filter by map
Applied selected filters	Favorites browser
History browser	Fuzzy search
Offline mode	Mods for offline
Server mods	Mods info
Config menu	Launch options
About menu	DayZ News

Features of using SteamCMD

There are two modes of operation of the launcher with and without using SteamCMD to manage mods in manual mode.

You can combine both approaches, for example, subscribe to those modifications that you will definitely need in the future by clicking on the link, and check for updates or force update mods using the launcher. Also, you can not subscribe to the "doubtful 50 mods" of the next server and easily remove them with one action from the launcher, while maintaining all the mods for which you have a subscription.

Using SteamCMD

• 🟢 Everything happens automatically
• 🟢 Automatically check for mod updates right now (forced)
• 🟡 Mod subscriptions are not created, they are just downloaded
• 🟡 Requires closing the Steam client to download mods
• 🔴 Sometimes you need to re-login to Steam

Not using SteamCMD

• 🟢 Familiar behavior if you have already used other solutions, for example dayz-linux-cli-launcher
• 🟡 The game itself will not start after downloading mods
• 🟡 Steam sometimes delays checking for updates and downloads them only after restarting or subscribing/unsubscribing from the mod
• 🔴 You need to subscribe to mods with your own hands

Installation

With installer

For ease of installation, there is a small script that will do everything for you (at least try to do it)

Execute this:

curl -sSfLA dayz-ctl bit.ly/3Vf2zz3 | bash

Manual installation

For the launcher to work, you need to make sure that you have all the dependencies installed:

• jq - JSON processing utility
• fzf - fuzzy search utility
• gum - utility for creating dialogs and styling output
• ping (iputils-ping) - find out the ping to the server (where ICMP is enabled)
• geoiplookup (geoip-bin) - find out the country where the server is located
• whois - fallback for geoiplookup, less accurate and slower, but not all entries are in the standard geoip database
• curl - utility for communicating with various APIs over HTTP/S
• cut, tr, grep, pgrep, pkill, killal, timeout, sed, awk (gawk) - where without classic utilities in scripts
• Steam - online service for digital distribution of computer games
• SteamCMD - steamcmd Steam console client
• DayZ - and of course the game itself

Then you can clone the repository:

git clone git@github.com:WoozyMasta/dayz-ctl.git
# or
git clone https://github.com/WoozyMasta/dayz-ctl.git
# and run
cd dayz-ctl
./dayz-ctl

Or download the script file itself:

curl -sSfL -o ~/.local/bin/dayz-ctl \
  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/WoozyMasta/dayz-ctl/master/dayz-ctl
chmod +x ~/.local/bin/dayz-ctl
# and run
dayz-ctl

Emoji

Emojis can be used to properly display elements, you may need to install them, for example, you can use the Noto font from Google.

Below is a list with the package name for different distributions:

• fonts-noto-color-emoji - debian/ubuntu
• google-noto-emoji-color-fonts - centos
• google-noto-emoji-fonts - fedora
• noto-fonts-emoji - arch
• font-noto-emoji - alpine
• noto-coloremoji-fonts - suse

Or if you don't like emoji or can't use them for some reason, you can apply a patch to replace them with strings:

sed -e 's/▫️/•/g' -e 's/🟩/✕/g' -e 's/⬛/ /g' -e 's/🕒/time/g' -e 's/❔/?/g' \
  -e 's/🟢/ok/g' -e 's/🔴/no/g' -e 's/🌙/night/g' -e 's/☀️/day/g' \
  -e 's/🔒/yes/g' -e 's/🔓/no/g' -e 's/✅/ok/g' -e 's/❌/no/g' \
  -i "$(which dayz-ctl)"

Tested distros

• 🟢 Debian bookworm
• 🟢 Debian bullseye
• 🟢 Debian buster
• 🟢 Ubuntu 18.04
• 🟢 Ubuntu 20.04 💯
• 🟢 Ubuntu 22.04 💯
• 🟢 Fedora latest
• 🟡 Centos 7 (small bugs)
• 🟡 Centos stream9 (small bugs)
• 🟢 Alpine latest
• 🟢 Alpine edge
• 🟢 Archlinux
• 🟡 Opensuse leap (small bugs)

Other

Steam

It is better to remove all DayZ launch options in Steam and manage them from the launcher or vice versa. Since the keys can be duplicated and this can cause confusion, or in the worst case, cut off some of the keys, because the argument string has a length limit, and on servers with a large number of mods, a very long launch parameter is also used.

Those. leave the launch options empty, or specify only the set of auxiliary utilities and variables you need, for example:

MANGOHUD=1 ENABLE_VKBASALT=1 gamemoderun %command%

Search syntax

You can enter multiple search terms separated by spaces. e.g. ^namalsk DE !PVE !RP

token	match type	description
sbtrkt	fuzzy match	Items that match sbtrkt
wild	exact-match (quoted)	Items that include wild
^music	prefix-exact-match	Items that start with music
.mp3$	suffix-exact-match	Items that end with .mp3
!fire	inverse-exact-match	Items that do not include fire
!^music	inverse-prefix-exact-match	Items that do not start with music
!.mp3$	inverse-suffix-exact-match	Items that do not end with .mp3

A term with a single bar character acts as an OR operator

PVE | RP

Environment variables

You can fine-tune how the launcher works with the help of environment variables that you can pass to the environment as usual or write to the configuration file $HOME/.local/share/dayz-ctl/dayz-ctl.conf (by default)

List of available variables:

• DAYZ_CTL_VERSION — application version
• DAYZ_CTL_NAME=dayz-ctl — application name
• DAYZ_GAME_ID=221100 — Steam game ID
• APPLICATIONS_DIR=$HOME/.local/share/applications — directory for storing application shortcuts
• DAYZ_CTL_DIR=$HOME/.local/share/dayz-ctl — launcher working directory
• DAYZ_CTL_BIN_DIR=$HOME/.local/share/dayz-ctl/bin — directory for storing additional executable files
• DAYZ_REQUEST_TIMEOUT=10 — standard timeout for HTTP requests in seconds
• DAYZ_CONFIG_FILE=$DAYZ_CTL_DIR/$DAYZ_CTL_NAME.conf — dayz-ctl configuration file
• DAYZ_SERVER_DB=$DAYZ_CTL_DIR/servers.json — server database file
• DAYZ_SERVER_DB_TTL=300 — TTL for server database in seconds
• DAYZ_SERVER_REQUEST_TIMEOUT=30 — timeout for getting a list of servers in seconds
• DAYZ_NEWS_DB=$DAYZ_CTL_DIR/news.json — news base file
• DAYZ_NEWS_DB_TTL=3600 — TTL for the news database in seconds
• DAYZ_MODS_DB=$DAYZ_CTL_DIR/mods.json — modification database file
• DAYZ_PROFILE=$DAYZ_CTL_DIR/profile.json — user profile file
• DAYZ_HISTORY_SIZE=10 - server explorer history size
• DAYZ_FZF_HISTORY=$DAYZ_CTL_DIR/.$DAYZ_CTL_NAME-history — history file for fuzzy search
• DAYZ_USERAGENT="$DAYZ_CTL_NAME $DAYZ_CTL_VERSION" — User-Agent used for HTTP requests
• DAYZ_API=https://dayzsalauncher.com/api/v1 — API address for getting a list of servers
• DAYZ_STEAMCMD_ENABLED=true - switch to enable or disable the use of SteamCMD
• DAYZ_FILTER_MOD_LIMIT=10 - default mod limit filter value
• DAYZ_FILTER_PLAYERS_LIMIT=50 - default player limit filter value
• DAYZ_FILTER_PLAYERS_SLOTS=60 — default slot limit filter value for players

Useful

• https://github.com/FeralInteractive/gamemode - can help with game performance
• https://github.com/flightlessmango/MangoHud - displays information about resource usage and allows you to limit the frame rate
• https://github.com/DadSchoorse/vkBasalt - image enhancement, adds clarity to the picture
• https://github.com/crosire/reshade-shaders - additional shaders, can be used from vkBasalt
• https://github.com/StuckInLimbo/OBS-ReplayBuffer-Setup - setting up replay recording in OBS
• https://github.com/matanui159/ReplaySorcery - utility for recording replays

Steam launch options with MangoHud, vkBasalt and gamemode enabled:

MANGOHUD=1 ENABLE_VKBASALT=1 gamemoderun %command%

Also, without resorting to third-party utilities, you can display an overlay with information about resources and limit FPS using standard DXVK tools, for example:

DXVK_HUD=fps DXVK_FRAME_RATE=60 gamemoderun %command%

Meaning of DXVK_HUD=fps ... DXVK_HUD=full:

• devinfo - Displays the name of the GPU and the driver version.
• fps - Shows the current frame rate.
• frametimes - Shows a frame time graph.
• submissions - Shows the number of command buffers submitted per frame.
• drawcalls - Shows the number of draw calls and render passes per frame.
• pipelines - Shows the total number of graphics and compute pipelines.
• descriptors - Shows the number of descriptor pools and descriptor sets.
• memory - Shows the amount of device memory allocated and used.
• gpuload - Shows estimated GPU load. May be inaccurate.
• version - Shows DXVK version.
• api - Shows the D3D feature level used by the application.
• cs - Shows worker thread statistics.
• compiler — Shows shader compiler activity
• samplers - Shows the current number of sampler pairs used [D3D9 Only]
• scale=x — Scales the HUD by a factor of x (e.g. 1.5)

Frame rate limit DXVK_FRAME_RATE=0