Standard MTA fire is fire and forget: createFire lights a native GTA fire on one client and returns a boolean. There is no handle, nothing to change afterwards, and nothing the server knows about.

Neon adds managed fire: a real fire element with a persistent identity, created from the server or the client, synchronized to every player, and mutable while it burns.

The clip runs test-resources/fire-showcase. The point is not that MTA can make fire. It is that one specific fire leaves the sign, keeps its identity, and is retargeted onto a moving car without ever being extinguished and recreated.

Creating one

local fire = createFire(x, y, z, {
    duration = 10000,          -- ms, default 5000
    strength = 1.5,            -- default 1.0, minimum 0.1
    damage = true,             -- default true
    damageTargets = { players = true, peds = true, vehicles = false, objects = false },
    spread = false,            -- default false
    maxGenerations = 0,        -- 0 to 255, default 0
    source = somePlayer,       -- who is blamed for the damage
    target = nil,              -- element the fire follows
})

Passing a table as the fourth argument creates a managed fire and returns a fire element. Everything else keeps the old behavior:

Call	Result
createFire(x, y, z, optionsTable)	Managed fire element, client or server
createFire(x, y, z [, size]) on the client	The original native GTA fire, returns a boolean
createFire(x, y, z, number) on the server	Managed fire, the number is read as strength

extinguishFire(fire) destroys one managed fire. The legacy radius and no-argument forms still work on native fires.

Changing a fire while it burns

Every option has a getter and a setter, so a fire is adjusted in place rather than replaced.

Property	Functions
Strength	getFireStrength / setFireStrength
Duration and remaining time	getFireDuration / setFireDuration, getFireRemainingTime / setFireRemainingTime
Damage	isFireDamageEnabled / setFireDamageEnabled, getFireDamageTargets / setFireDamageTargets
Spread	isFireSpreadEnabled / setFireSpreadEnabled, getFireMaxGenerations / setFireMaxGenerations
Blame and targeting	getFireSource / setFireSource, getFireTarget / setFireTarget

The same twenty functions exist on both sides.

Targeting is the interesting one. setFireTarget attaches the fire to an element, and it follows that element wherever it goes:

setFireTarget(fire, theVehicle)   -- the fire now rides the car

strength around 1, 2 and 3 visibly selects GTA’s small, medium and large fire effects.

Damage

damageTargets is a mask over players, peds, vehicles and objects, all enabled by default. source sets which element is blamed.

onClientFireDamage fires on the victim’s client and can be cancelled:

addEventHandler("onClientFireDamage", root, function(victim, damage, responsibleElement)
    if getElementType(victim) == "player" and isPlayerFireproof(victim) then
        cancelEvent()
    end
end)

Event	Parameters
onClientFireDamage	element victim, float damage, element responsibleElement

Lifetime and synchronization

Server-created fires are synchronized to every client. A player who joins while a fire is burning receives it with the remaining lifetime, not a restarted one, because the lifetime is tracked as relative remaining time rather than against a wall clock.

Fires respect dimension and interior, so one in another dimension is hidden until the contexts match. Stopping the owning resource removes its fires and leaves no effect behind.

Beyond the native pool

GTA’s own fire pool holds 60. Managed fires are not limited by it: the showcase resource places 68 at once, and the harness verifies more than 60 simultaneous managed fires.

Ordinary GTA and Molotov fires keep using the native runtime and are unaffected by managed-fire settings.

Verification

test-resources/fire-test is the harness. /firetest all covers managed element creation, duration and remaining time, live strength changes, damage target masks, source and target setters, client synchronization, server expiry, one-generation spread, more than 60 simultaneous fires, local damage-mask behavior, and cancelling onClientFireDamage. Results print as explicit PASS and FAIL lines.

/firetest late creates a 30-second fire so a second client can join mid-burn and confirm it receives the reduced remaining lifetime.

test-resources/fire-showcase is the cinematic used for the clip. Neither resource is auto-deployed; copy them into the server resources directory first.

Implementation: d82ce28aa.