Satisfactory Assets Extractor

An unattended pipeline that keeps a data + icon set for the game Satisfactory in sync with Steam. On a schedule it detects new game builds, extracts the shipped documentation and icon textures, normalizes them, and hands the result off to a co-located API.

It runs headless on Linux (developed against Ubuntu Server 24.04).

What it does

For each branch (stable / experimental), once per run:

1. Detect - query Steam for the current build id (anonymous, no login).
2. Download - steamcmd-update the game client for that branch.
3. Version - read the human game version (e.g. 1.2.3.1) + engine version from the install.
4. Docs diff - locate the Docs file and skip the rest if it hasn't changed.
5. Parse - run the satisfactory-tools/docs-parser package (once per variant: default and -ficsmas), producing the item / recipe / building / schematic data and the list of referenced icon textures.
6. Extract - pull those textures out of the UE5 pak files with CUE4Parse and normalize each to 256×256 and 64×64 PNGs.
7. Content-address + dedup - name each image by a hash of its contents, so identical icons are stored once and unchanged images are never re-uploaded.
8. Rewrite + publish - replace every icon reference in the parsed data with its image id, wrap it as { "data": …, "metadata": {} }, and drop the images + versioned JSON into the API's data directory, then trigger the API import.

State (per-branch build id / docs hash, published image ids, run history) lives in MariaDB. Runs are locked per-branch, guarded for disk space and extraction failures, and report success/failure to a log file and (optionally) Discord.

Architecture

Three cooperating components, decoupled by a CLI + JSON/file contract:

Component	Tech	Role
orchestrator/	PHP 8.5 (Symfony Console)	The pipeline: version check, download, docs diff, publish, state, scheduling, notifications. Shells out to the other two.
extractor-net/	.NET 10 + CUE4Parse + SkiaSharp	Decodes UE5 textures and writes normalized PNGs + per-asset content hashes.
docs parser	satisfactory-tools/docs-parser (Composer)	Parses the game Docs into structured data. Driven as a console command.

The heavy lifting that must be .NET (CUE4Parse) is isolated in extractor-net/; everything else is PHP.

Repository layout

orchestrator/     PHP orchestrator (bin/extractor, src/, config/)
extractor-net/    .NET image extractor (Program.cs, Extractor.csproj)
systemd/          systemd units
data/             runtime working dir (git-ignored): downloads, artifacts, images

Requirements

• Linux, steamcmd, a Steam account that owns Satisfactory (the Docs + icon paks ship only with the game client, not the free dedicated server)
• PHP 8.5 (pdo_mysql, curl, iconv) + Composer
• .NET 10 SDK/runtime
• MariaDB or equivalent
• Ample disk (~30 GB per branch for the game install)

Setup

Run everything below from the repository root unless noted.

1. Build the components

# PHP orchestrator (installs the docs-parser package + Symfony)
cd orchestrator && composer install && cd ..

# .NET image extractor
cd extractor-net && dotnet build -c Release && cd ..

2. Create the database + user (MariaDB/MySQL)

sudo mariadb <<'SQL'
CREATE DATABASE IF NOT EXISTS sf_extractor CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
CREATE USER IF NOT EXISTS 'sf_extractor'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'change-me';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON sf_extractor.* TO 'sf_extractor'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
SQL

3. Configure

cp orchestrator/config/config.example.yaml orchestrator/config/config.yaml

Edit orchestrator/config/config.yaml (it's commented throughout). At minimum set:

• database.* - DSN / user / password matching step 2
• steam.username - the Steam account that owns Satisfactory
• extraction.dotnet - path to the .NET 10 runtime (e.g. dotnet) and extraction.dll - path to the built extractor-net/bin/Release/net10.0/Extractor.dll
• publish.api_data_dir - where the co-located API reads data + images
• paths.data - working dir for downloads/artifacts (needs ~30 GB per branch)
• (optional) notifications.discord.webhook_url for success/failure pings

Then create the state tables:

php orchestrator/bin/extractor db:migrate

4. Steam login (one-time)

The Docs + icon paks ship only with the game client, so downloads need an owning account. Log in once interactively so steamcmd caches the session (later non-interactive runs reuse it):

steamcmd +login <username>    # enter password + Steam Guard, then `quit`

5. First run

php orchestrator/bin/extractor run --branch=stable

6. Schedule (hourly systemd timer)

systemd/sf-extractor@.service is a template - copy the units, then edit the three CHANGE_ME/placeholder lines in the installed service to match your host:

• User= - the account that owns the cached steamcmd session + .NET runtime
• WorkingDirectory= - absolute path to this repo's orchestrator/
• ExecStart= - the php binary path if it isn't /usr/bin/php

sudo cp systemd/sf-extractor@.service systemd/sf-extractor@.timer /etc/systemd/system/
sudoedit /etc/systemd/system/sf-extractor@.service   # set User=, WorkingDirectory=, php path
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable --now sf-extractor@stable.timer   # instance name = branch

(You can instead edit the copies in systemd/ before cp - either works.) Only stable is scheduled by default; add experimental (disk permitting) with systemctl enable --now sf-extractor@experimental.timer.

Commands

php orchestrator/bin/extractor check                        # new build? (no credentials/download)
php orchestrator/bin/extractor run --branch=stable          # run one branch
php orchestrator/bin/extractor run --branch=all             # both branches (default)
php orchestrator/bin/extractor run --branch=stable --force  # ignore the "unchanged" check
php orchestrator/bin/extractor db:migrate                   # create/verify state tables

check needs no Steam credentials and works even before the DB exists (it just skips the comparison). run requires the DB.

Operating the scheduled unit:

systemctl start sf-extractor@stable.service      # trigger a run now
journalctl -u sf-extractor@stable.service -e     # the last run's logs
systemctl list-timers 'sf-extractor@*'           # next scheduled run

Failures are written to notifications.log_file and (if configured) a Discord webhook.

License

MIT - see LICENSE. Copyright (c) 2026 greeny.

Credits

Built on CUE4Parse, SkiaSharp, and satisfactory-tools/docs-parser. Not affiliated with Coffee Stain Studios.