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The DayZ Editor is a free 3D map-editing mod by InclementDab that launches DayZ in offline mode so you can build scenes, drop in buildings and props, and export their exact coordinates for your server. This guide walks you through it from a clean install: subscribing to the right mods, flying around the map, placing and aligning objects, and pulling the X/Y/Z and angle data out of the exported file.
Get it on Steam — DayZ Editor modWork through these in order. The first two get the editor running, the middle steps cover camera movement and object placement, and the last three export and decode the coordinates you came for.
On the Steam Workshop, subscribe to three things: the DayZ Editor itself, Community Framework (CF) and Builder Items. Those three are the minimum needed to get the editor working - Builder Items adds roughly 1,700 props and objects the editor draws from, and CF is the shared framework it depends on.
InclementDab also lists a few optional recommendations on the workshop page, and the DayZ Editor Loader mod is worth grabbing separately if you later want to load your saved .dze edits onto a live server. The Community / Dabs Framework dependencies pull in automatically, so you do not have to chase them down by hand.
Get it on Steam — DayZ Editor mod
Fire up the DayZ Launcher and open the Mods tab. Put a tick next to CF, Builder Items and DayZ Editor so all three load together. You do not need to pick or join any server.
Just hit Play. The DayZ Editor launches the game straight into offline mode, dropping you into the editor itself rather than a server. If you try to join a server you are in the wrong place - the whole point is that this runs locally and free.
When the editor opens you steer the camera with the mouse to look around, and move with WASD as you would on foot. Q raises the camera and Z lowers it, so you can climb up for an overview or drop down to ground level. Hold Shift to fly noticeably faster across large distances.
Press the Space bar to toggle the cursor on and off. With the cursor off you fly the camera freely; with it on, your mouse controls the on-screen UI panels instead. You will be flipping between these two modes constantly as you build.
Press M to bring up the full map. Left-click and drag to pan around it, and use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out. To jump the camera to a spot, press the middle mouse button on the map and the camera teleports there, then press M again to return to the 3D view.
The editor can be a little buggy - occasionally a teleport drops you underneath the terrain, or you simply need to restart it. That is normal; just re-open the map and try again. Once you are positioned where you want to work, you are ready to start placing objects.
Hit Space to get your cursor back, then look at the panel on the left - that is the full list of objects you can spawn. Type into the search box to filter it; for example, search "ATC" to find an air traffic control tower, or "tent" for tents.
When you find the object you want, drag it from the list across onto the map at roughly the spot you have in mind. It will appear in the world, ready to be positioned precisely in the next steps.
A freshly dropped object often hovers slightly above or sinks below the terrain. Switch on Ground mode and the object snaps to the surface beneath it, which saves you fiddling with its height by hand.
Fly in a little closer so you can clearly see how the object meets the ground. If it still is not quite flush, do not worry - the next step covers the manual move, rotate and magnet tools that let you fine-tune the placement.
Every selected object shows a purple square - that is its anchor. Left-click and hold on the purple square to drag the object around. Hold Shift while dragging to rotate it and set the angle, and hold Alt to move it up and down.
Use the magnet tool to snap the object back down onto the ground if it ends up floating. Expect a little trial and error here, and the odd bug where an object will not settle until you nudge it; double-clicking and re-placing usually fixes it. Once your building or tent sits where you want at the right angle, the placement is done.
With your objects placed, open File - Export. The editor offers several formats: export to init.c, to .map (Terrain Builder), to VPP, to com events, and to Map Group Pos, among others. If you have done PC modding before, init.c will be familiar - it gives you the snippet you paste into your server init.c so the items spawn in where you placed them.
As a console modder you usually just want the locations, angles and coordinates, and Map Group Pos turns out to be an excellent format for that. Pick your format, give the export a clear name (for example "northeast-airfield-test"), and the editor writes the file out.
Tracking down the exported file is the part people get stuck on. The editor saves everything to your local AppData folder. In File Explorer, open This PC, then your local disk (C:), then Users, then your username, then AppData, then Local, then DayZ, and finally the editor folder.
Inside that editor folder you will find your export under the name you gave it. Every format you exported - init.c, .map, .dze and so on - lands in the same place, so you can open whichever one your workflow needs.
Open the exported file in a text editor such as Notepad++. You will see the name of each object alongside its X, Y and Z values. X runs east-west, Y is the vertical height, and Z runs north-south - so the two you normally care about for placement are X and Z, with Y as the altitude.
When you spawn items on console through a custom event, the game usually drops them to ground level automatically, so you often do not need the Y altitude. For objects placed inside buildings or at custom heights, though, the altitude does matter. The file also lists the RPY values (roll, pitch, yaw) - the rotation angle - which is easy to miss but important to copy across so your object faces the right way.
On a PC (modded) server you do not paste anything into init.c by hand. Add the separate DayZ Editor Loader mod - a server-side mod by InclementDab - to your server. On its first launch it creates an EditorFiles folder inside your mission (mpmissions/your.mission/).
Copy the .dze files you saved in the editor (they live in your client’s profiles/Editor folder) into that EditorFiles folder, then restart the server. The loader spawns every object from those files automatically. Because your edit never touches init.c, a typo can never break the whole mission.
Consoles (Xbox and PlayStation) cannot run mods, so the Editor Loader is not available there. The only way to place custom mapping on a console server is the init script: in the editor, export your edit in init.c format instead of .dze.
Open your mission’s init.c, paste the exported spawn code into it (inside the main mission function) and save. The objects are then created by code every time the mission starts - no mod needed. The trade-off is that one mistake in init.c can stop the whole mission from loading, so back it up and edit carefully.
Custom buildings you place are empty by default - the central economy does not yet know they have loot positions. To register them, add one line to your mission’s init.c, inside void main() after the CreateHive / economy init and after your object spawns:
GetCEApi().ExportProxyData(Vector(6400, GetGame().SurfaceY(6400, 6400), 6400), 100000);
The Vector is the centre point to scan and the second number is the radius, so this example sweeps a huge area. Start the server and let it run - the scan can take a few minutes depending on the area and hardware. It writes a freshly generated mapgroupproto.xml into your storage export folder (storage_1\export).
Copy that generated file over the original mapgroupproto.xml in your mission folder. Then - and this is the part people miss - comment the line out with // (or delete it). While that export line is active in init.c, NO loot spawns on the map at all; only after you comment it out and restart will your buildings (and the rest of the map) get their loot.
At minimum you need three Steam Workshop mods: the DayZ Editor, Community Framework (CF) and Builder Items. Builder Items supplies the ~1,700 placeable objects, and CF is a required dependency. The DayZ Editor Loader is optional, for pushing saved edits to a live server.
No. The editor launches DayZ in offline mode and runs entirely locally. You tick the mods in the launcher and press Play - you should not try to join any server.
Press Space for your cursor, search the left-hand panel for the object (e.g. "ATC" or "tent"), and drag it onto the map. Turn on Ground mode so it sits on the terrain, then use the purple anchor square - with Shift to rotate and Alt to move up/down - to position it.
In %LOCALAPPDATA%\DayZ\editor - that is This PC, C:, Users, your username, AppData, Local, DayZ, editor. Every export format you choose is written into that folder.
X is the east-west axis, Y is the vertical height (altitude), and Z is north-south. For ground placement you mainly use X and Z; Y matters for objects inside buildings or at custom heights. The RPY value is the rotation angle.