Time cycle

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The timecyc.dat data file contains the most important settings about the game's appearance. Basically it stores important information like colors and lighting for different hardcoded weather situations for each time of day. The settings themselves are constant and build a cycle around the whole day. So the exact name of the setting is time cycle.

In Vice City the timecyc.dat file additionally stores settings for different interior appearances. There are 23 of those extra settings in one extra section (internally called "EXTRACOLOURS"). Each game hour represents one constant setting.

File format

A comment in the timecyc.dat file is preceded by a series of slashes ("//"). The game's parser simply ignores comments so that the number of uncommented lines must be a multiple of 24 for GTA III and Vice City (representing one for each ingame hour) and a multiple of 8 for San Andreas (representing 00am, 05am, 06am, 07am, 00pm, 07pm, 08pm and 10pm in the order they appear). Each value of one entry gets interpolated with the previous and the next setting of the current ingame weather.

Data types

The file uses the following different data types directly or indirectly on an abstract level inside structures:

• INT8/UINT8 - signed/unsigned 8 bit integer (1 byte)
• INT32/UINT32 - signed/unsigned 32 bit integer (4 byte)
• FLOAT - single precision floating point number (4 byte)
• TColor - UINT8[3] representing the red, green and blue level (in the order they appear) of a color. (3 byte)

File hierarchy

As mentioned above each setting consists out of a constant number of entries separated by whitespaces. The following table lists the entries and their descriptions in the order they appear:

			Name	Data type	Description
X			Static ambience color	TColor	The color of ambient light on map objects (see IPL).
X			Dynamic ambience color	TColor	The color of ambient light on dynamically created objects like pedestrians and vehicles.
X		–	Static ambience blur color	TColor	Blurrig color value for static ambience color.
X		–	Dynamic ambience blur color	TColor	Blurrig color value for dynamic ambience color.
X			Direct light color	TColor	The color of direct light on dynamicly created objects like pedestriants and vehicles. Present in the timecyc.dat of GTA SA, but not loaded and unused by the game.
X			Sky top color	TColor	The color of the top of the skysphere.
X			Sky bottom color	TColor	The color of the bottom of the skysphere.
X			Sun core color	TColor	The color of the core sprite of the sun.
X			Sun corona color	TColor	The color of the corona sprite of the sun.
X			Sun core size	FLOAT	The size of the core sprite of the sun.
X			Sun corona size	FLOAT	The size of the corona sprite of the sun.
X			Sprite brightness	FLOAT	The the brightness of the above mentioned sprites.
X			Shadow intensity	INT32	The intensity of the shadows of objects like pedestriants, vehicles or poles.
X			Light shading value	INT32	Value used for the shading algorithm on pedestirants and vehicles [?].
X			Pole shading value	INT32	Shading value for map objects with flag 32768.
X			Far clipping offset	FLOAT	The distance of the far clipping plane from the camera.
X			Fog start offset	FLOAT	The range of the distance fog from the camera.
X			Light on ground	FLOAT	Amount of light on the ground of the sea [?].
X			Lower clouds color	TColor	Color of the lower clounds.
X		–	Upper clouds top color	TColor	Color of the top of the upper clouds.
X			Upper clouds bottom color	TColor	Color of the bottom of the upper clouds.
X		–	Blur color	TColor	The color of trails.
X			Water color	TColor	Color of the water vertices.
X			Water alpha level	UINT8	Alpha level for water vertices.
–		X	Color correction 1 alpha	UINT8	Alpha level for first color correction value.
–		X	Color correction 1	TColor	First color correction value.
–		X	Color correction 2 alpha	UINT8	Alpha level for second color correction value.
–		X	Color correction 2	TColor	Second color correction value.
–		X	Lower clouds alpha level	UINT8	Alpha level for lower clouds.
–		X	Upper clouds alpha level	UINT8	Alpha level for upper clouds.
–		X	Water fading to white, amount of white light on water	UINT8	Usually 0.

Timecycp.dat

Timecycp is a version of timecyc.dat that came alongside the regular time cycle configuration file. Similar to the water1.dat file it is a leftover from the original PlayStation 2 version of San Andreas. The file isn't used by the game and can safely be deleted. The only difference to the actual file is the encoding method. However it's content is the same, apart from an additional character lighting setting that was absent on the PC version. Replacing the timecyc.dat with timecycp.dat by renaming the files, as stated above, will result in improved ped lighting. Other than that the game's ambient lighting and sky colours still remain the same.

Images

GTA III	Vice City	San Andreas	Liberty City Stories	Vice City Stories
Sunny Image Cloudy Image Rainy Image Foggy Image	Sunny Image Cloudy Image Rainy Image Foggy Image Extra Sunny Image Rainy (hurricane) Image	Ryosuke's website	Sunny Image Cloudy Image Rainy Image Foggy Image Extra Sunny Image Hurricane Image Extra Colors Image Snow Image	Sunny Image Cloudy Image Rainy Image Foggy Image Extra Sunny Image Hurricane Image Extra Colors Image Extra Sunny #2 Image

Tools

• VC:Weather
• G-CYC
• In-game Timecyc Editor

External links

•  GTAForums: Modding timecyc.dat for Vice City