Time cycle

Introduction

This document only covers gta3 and vice city at the moment.

The timecyc.dat file contains the information for how to display the sky, weather effects and time of day. It is broken into the many sections. There is one line of data per hour in the game, per weather type. In the Vice City timecyc.dat, there is an extra section at the bottom of the file named "EXTRACOLOURS". These extra colours are used for building interiors, but should function the same.

Note: A comment in the timecyc.dat file is preceded by a series of slashes ("//") and they will precede each type of weather, and time of day in the file.

TimeCyc.dat Structure (Section Name, Data Type)

Amb (Color)

Controls amount of ambient color on static map objects, like most buildings, structures and landmasses.

Amb_Obj (Color)

Controls the amount of ambient light on dynamic objects, like pedestrians, vehicles and breakable objects.

Amb_Bl (Color)

Effect unknown, changing produces no visible results.

Amb_Obj_bl (Color)

Effect unknown, changing produces no visible results.

Dir (Color)

Controls amount of direct light on pedestrians and vehicles.

Sky top (Color)

Color of the top of the sky.

Sky bot (Color)

Color of the bottom of the sky.

SunCore (Color)

Color of the sun's core image.

SunCorona (Color)

Color of the sun's corona image.

SunSz (float)

Size of the sun's corona sprite.

SprSz (float)

Size of the sun's core sprite.

SprBght (float)

Coming Soon.

Shdw (integer)

Intensity of pedestrian, vehicle, and lamp shadows. 0 is transparent, 100 seems to be about "normal", and values past that make the shadow darker and darker. 500 will produce almost pure black shadows.

LightShd (integer)

Effect unknown, changing produces no visible results.

PoleShd (integer)

Effect unknown, changing produces no visible results.

FarClp (float)

The clipping plane that limits maximum visibility. Setting the value to a smaller number produces a short visibility range, wheras larger numbers mean you can see further. If the number is set too low (i tried 20.0), the game will get glitchy, and may not load textures! The average value for this entry is 2000.0 and most of the map is visible with this value.

FogSt (float)

Begging to draw distance fog? Untested.

LightOnGround (float)

Effect unknown, changing produces no visible results.

LowCloudsRGB (Color)

Coming Soon.

TopCloudRGB (Color)

Coming Soon.

BottomCloudRGB (Color)

Coming Soon.

BlurRGB (Color)

RGB values for Trails. If you have not somehow enabled trails on your game, then the values will not be noticable. 0 for no trails, 255 for a pure white screen.

WaterRGBA (Color4)

Controls the color of the water. On the pc version of the game, the water texture is greenish-blue. It needs to be converted to grayscale to fully see the effect of changing the water color in the timecyc.dat, as the colors defined in this file, are multiplied by the water texture color ingame. The last part of RGBA, the A, is the alpha channel and it controls the level of transparency for the water. 0, will make the water totally transparent, while 255 will make the water as opaque as the game will allow.