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

sentoz/dayz-ctl