The Three Panels#
Zone Weather is run from three in-game panels, each behind its own permission. An admin with all three can move between them from the header.
Panel | Opened with | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
Weather control |
| Driving the weather live: force, hold, lock and reroll a zone, set every zone at once, set the clock, cut the power. |
Zone creator |
| Drawing zones on the GTA map and giving each one its cycle, clock and blip. |
Weather settings |
| Every value the resource reads, in 22 sections, saved to the database. |
Nothing in the panels needs a restart. A saved zone starts running at once, and a saved setting reaches every player in the same second.
What a Fresh Server Opens With#
Seven zones that together cover the whole map, each with a climate of its own, so the weather already differs from one end of San Andreas to the other on the first start:
Zone | Default | Character |
|---|---|---|
Los Angeles Country | Smog | Mostly sunny and clear, smog over the city, rare rain and storms. |
Imperial Country | Extra sunny | Desert heat: long sunny spells, almost no rain. |
Riverside Country | Clear | Clear and sunny with clouds, some rain, fog and storms. |
Kern Country | Cloudy | Cloud and fog with sunny breaks. |
Santa Barbara Country | Fog | Coastal fog and cloud that clears now and then. |
San Benardino Country | Overcast | Grey skies, rain, fog, storms and the odd light snow. |
Ventura Country | Clearing | The wettest zone: rain, showers clearing, cloud and fog. |
Every one of them can be redrawn, retuned, switched off or deleted like a zone you made yourself.
Zones#
A zone is a polygon on the ground with a floor and a ceiling, a default weather, a transition time and a weather cycle. Each player's client works out which zone it stands in, and its sky follows that zone. Where two zones overlap, the one with the higher priority wins; a player outside every zone gets the Outside every zone weather from the settings.
Drawing a zone#
/weathercreator → New zone. The form has five parts:
Part | What you set there |
|---|---|
Identity | The ID (letters, numbers and underscores — fixed once saved, because exports refer to it), the name shown in the panels, a map colour, the priority and whether the zone is active. |
Area | The outline, at least three points, and the floor and ceiling heights. The area in km² is shown as you draw. |
Weather cycle | The default weather, the transition in seconds, and the list of weathers the zone rolls through. |
Own clock | An optional clock for anyone inside: start hour and minute, speed, or frozen. |
Map blip | A marker at the middle of the zone: name, icon, colour and size, picked from searchable lists with pictures. |
There are two ways to place the points, and they can be mixed:
On the map — left click adds a point, drag one to move it, click it to remove it. Right click another zone to jump to it. The map comes in three styles — atlas, satellite and grid — that line up exactly, with zoom and Fit the zone.
In the world — Add where I stand closes the panel; walk or drive to the spot and press
E(Backspacecancels). Ideal for tracing a coastline or a street exactly.
While the creator is open, the zone you are editing is outlined in the world as well. Undo and Clear are beside the map, and Teleport on a zone's row drops you into its middle. By default a server holds up to 32 zones of up to 64 points each; both limits are in Settings → Zones.
The weather cycle#
Each entry is a weather, a weight and a length range in minutes. When the running weather's time is up, the server draws the next one from the weights — an entry of 20 comes up twice as often as one of 10 — and holds it for a random length inside its range. It avoids drawing the weather that is already running, and each zone's first roll after a restart is spread out so the whole map does not change in the same second.
A zone with no entries stays on its default weather for good — the right choice for an interior or an island that should never change. The running weather of every zone is saved, so a restart picks up where it left off.
A zone's own clock#
Switch it on and everyone inside the zone sees that clock instead of the server's: an island stuck at sunset, a mountain where days run slower, a nightmare zone always at midnight. Speed is in game minutes per real second — at 0.5 a full day takes 48 real minutes — and Freeze holds it at the start time.
Crossing a border#
The sky cross-fades frame by frame between the two zones' weathers over the zone's transition time, on an eased curve so it reads as weather moving in. A player has to stay on the other side for a moment before the change starts, so driving along a border does not flicker. A teleport across the map sets the new weather at once instead of blending across it.
Weather Types#
Twenty-five weathers, in six groups. The first five are GTA's own; the last group is simulated by Zone Weather on top of an ordinary sky.
Group | Weathers |
|---|---|
Clear |
|
Rain |
|
Fog |
|
Snow |
|
Seasonal |
|
Custom effects |
|
Two rules apply to some of the custom ones:
Rule | Weathers | What it means |
|---|---|---|
Manual only |
| Never drawn by a cycle — the creator will not add them and the server skips them even if an old cycle names one. Somebody has to choose them, from the panel or an export. |
Whole map only |
| A flood or a red sky does not stop at a border, so these can only be set on every zone at once. Picking one for a single zone offers to apply it everywhere instead. |
Simulated Weather#
The eight custom weathers are ordinary skies with an effect painted on top. Each has its own section in /weatherconfig where every part of it is tuned.
Earthquake
Not a camera shake that comes in bursts: while a zone holds EARTHQUAKE the ground moves without pause. Cars rock on their springs, loose props skitter, pedestrians lose their footing — and now and then so do you. The zone hands everyone the same seed, so everybody is thrown the same way, and nothing shakes for anyone flying or in the water. The lights go out in short bursts while it lasts.
It shakes for exactly as long as the zone holds the weather, so give its cycle entry a minute or two, not the ten to thirty a normal weather gets. Turn off Shake the world to keep only the camera.
Tornado
A tornado walks its zone. The server owns the funnel's position, so it stands in the same place for everyone, holding a heading for a few seconds at a time and turning back at the zone's edge. It shows on the map as a red marker. The column is built from rings of smoke, wider and slower as it climbs, with real junk — tyres, cones, crates — orbiting it.
Anything caught is dragged to the eye, spun around it and, after a few seconds in the core, thrown clear over the top. Cars stall, people are swept off their feet and hurt in the core, and from a quarter of a kilometre away you still hear it and feel the camera. Funnel quality sets how much smoke it is built from, and from far away it always drops to a lighter version.
Tsunami
The sea climbs metre by metre over the land — 50 metres by default, enough to put the streets under. The swell turns into a storm sea that throws boats about, cars float, anyone caught in it is pulled out of their car and swims, traffic and pedestrians stop spawning and the city's power goes out.
It drains back and the game's own water returns the moment the weather passes — and on a resource restart, so a crash never leaves the map under water. It always covers the whole map.
Supercell
A storm that throws real lightning across the zone, near and far, often several bolts in quick succession. A bolt that hits the ground sends a blast wave out: people off their feet, cars into the air, loose props scattered, vehicles within a few metres wrecked or blown up, and fires left behind. All of it is tuned in the Supercell and Thunderbolt sections, and every player near a strike sees the bolt.
Ordinary THUNDER and BLIZZARD get occasional bolts too, further away and harmless — they light the sky and roll the thunder without touching a car.
Sandstorm
It turns the whole world orange — not only the sky, but the roads, the buildings, the cars and the people. The haze starts at the camera, which puts you inside the storm instead of looking at it, the wind gusts between 1.9 and 9, and driven sand and junk fill the air.
Unlike the disasters it behaves like ordinary weather: a zone can run it on its cycle, and the lights go out in it like in any storm. One colour picker moves the sky, the light, the fog and the airborne sand together.
Heavy snow
Huge flakes, snow on the lens, blown snow at ground level and fog that closes the world down to a few metres. The Snowfall section also thickens the game's own snow on every snowy weather — amount, flake size, opacity, fog and colour.
Blood Moon
The sky, the clouds, the moon and the light on the world turn red, and lightning strikes on a clear night. It moves the clock to 23:00 and slows it right down so the moon is up for it, then gives the clock back when it ends. Colour, strength, the sky underneath and how often it strikes are all in its section. It always covers the whole map.
Dark Hour
A green sky, a green moon and fog thick enough to lose the road in, with lightning every few seconds. Its colour and strength are in its section. It always covers the whole map.
Emergency Alerts#
A disaster does not arrive without warning. When a tsunami, a tornado or an earthquake is set — from the panel, an export, or a zone's own cycle — the weather does not change straight away. An alert goes out first, and the disaster arrives when the warning time runs out (two minutes by default).
The sirens start
An emergency siren sounds for everyone in the affected zone — the whole map for a tsunami — quieter indoors. Every player there gets the instructions for that disaster and the countdown.
The phone rings
With qs-smartphone running, the same warning lands on each affected player's phone as a long notification, and stays in its notification centre.
A reminder
When 30 seconds are left the instructions are repeated. A player who walks into the zone during the warning, or joins the server, is told at once.
It arrives
The weather changes, an arrival notice goes out and the siren keeps going for a few more seconds before it fades.
Disaster | What players are told to do |
|---|---|
Tsunami | Leave the beach and low ground, get to high ground or the upper floors of a tall building, and not go back for belongings. |
Tornado | Get inside a solid building, go to the lowest floor, keep away from windows, and not shelter in a vehicle. |
Earthquake | Drop, cover and hold on, keep away from glass and anything that can fall, and pull over if driving. |
Supercell (off by default) | Get indoors and stay off open ground, water and high places. |
Players in other zones get a short notice without the siren. The admin who set it sees how long until it arrives, and setting any other weather on that zone during the warning calls the alert off for everyone. Everything — the warning time, the siren and its volume, the phone, the reminder and which disasters raise an alert — is in Settings → Emergency alerts. A warning time of 0 starts the disaster straight away and only sounds the siren.
The Control Panel#
/weather has three tabs.
Tab | What is there |
|---|---|
Overview | Zones, locked zones, players in a zone and weather types across the map. Set every zone to one weather, the Blackout switch, and every zone with its weather and when it changes next. |
Zones | Pick a zone on the map or the list, then a weather. It shows the zone's players, priority, blend time and its cycle. |
Time | Set the hour and minute (or jump to dawn, midday, dusk or night), freeze the clock, and set its speed with the length of a day shown live. |
When you force a weather on a zone you choose how long it holds:
Option | What it does |
|---|---|
Hold for | Minutes before the cycle takes the zone back — 30 suggested by default. |
Lock the zone | Stops the cycle entirely until you unlock it. As a safety net, a forgotten lock lets go on its own after 24 hours. |
Unlock | Hands the zone back to its cycle, which rolls 30 seconds later so the sky does not jump the instant you click. |
Roll now | Draws the zone's next weather straight away, as if the current one had run out. |
Time#
The server keeps one clock for every player outside a zone with its own. It starts at the start hour, runs at 0.5 game minutes per real second — GTA's own pace, about 48 real minutes per day — and is saved, so a restart continues the day instead of resetting it. Each client advances it smoothly between syncs, so the sun and the shadows move continuously.
The default. Set it, freeze it or change its speed from the Time tab of /weather, and its starting values in Settings → Time. Turn off Control the clock there to leave the time to another resource while keeping the weather.
The game clock follows the real clock of the machine the server runs on: at 00:40 there, it is 00:40 in game. Switch it on in config/config.lua and restart:
Config.Time.realtime = true
Config.Time.realtimeOffset = 0 -- hours to add if the host sits in another time zoneWhile it is on, setting the time by hand is refused with a message saying why. A blood moon may still move the clock to night and hands it back to real time when it ends, and zones with their own clock keep it.
Blackouts#
A blackout cuts every street and building light across the map. Vehicles keep their headlights, and emergency vehicles their lights, unless Blackout hits vehicles is on.
Cause | How long |
|---|---|
The Blackout switch in | Until it is switched back, across restarts by default. |
A storm — thunder, blizzard, tornado or earthquake — in any zone | Short outages now and then, with their own length and gaps. |
A tsunami | For as long as the water is up. |
Calling Down Lightning#
Anyone with the /weather permission can type /tb to aim a bolt by hand: aim, left click to strike, Backspace to stop. It uses the same bolt, blast and fires as a supercell — for an event, a cinematic or a very bad day for one particular car.
The Settings#
/weatherconfig holds every value the resource reads, in 22 sections. Every field has a description, a search box finds a setting across all of them, changed fields are marked until you save, and Reset section or Reset everything puts back what shipped.
Section | What it holds |
|---|---|
General | Debug output, the language and the name notifications are sent under. |
Time | Whether the clock is controlled at all, start hour, speed, frozen, saved across restarts, sync and smoothing. |
Weather | The default and outside weathers, transitions, snap on spawn, the border hold, how often zones are checked, and saving the weather. |
Blend | The cross-fade, its curve, taking ownership of the sky, and teleport detection. |
Cycle | Default lengths and weights, avoiding repeats, the boot spread, lock length, manual hold and unlock delay. |
Effects | Rain intensity and ramp, snow tracks, wind, the Halloween look, and extra polish on ordinary weather. |
Tsunami · Tornado · Earthquake | Each disaster's size, strength, speed, physics and performance. |
Emergency alerts | Warning time, siren, volume indoors and out, phone notification, reminder, notice to other zones, and which disasters raise an alert. |
Blood Moon · Dark Hour | Colour, strength, lightning and, for the blood moon, the night it holds. |
Thunderbolt · Supercell | The bolt's look, its blast and fires, and how often and how far the supercell strikes. |
Sandstorm · Snowfall | Colour, wind, how thick the air gets, and how heavy every snow weather falls. |
Blackout | Vehicles, keeping it across restarts, and the storm and earthquake outages. |
Zones · Blips · Creator | Zone and point limits, default heights, priority; blip defaults, area shading and weather in the blip name; the creator's map style, snapping, teleport and world capture. |
Compatibility · Commands | The cd_easytime and qb-weathersync bridges, change events, state bags, and chat suggestions. |
These values live in your database, not in a file, so an update never resets them. Only the values you change are stored; everything else follows the shipped default.