Custom Zones
Custom Zones lets you place your own sphere or square zones anywhere on the map, each with its own colour, rules and chat messages. Think PvP arenas, safe trade spots or radiation areas.
01Free and Premium
- Free: 2 zones.
- Premium: up to 20 zones.
If you drop back to Free, your newest extra zones are paused instead of deleted.
02What it does
Custom Zones are zones you place yourself. You choose where they go, how big they are, what's allowed inside and what players see when they walk in or out. Only admins can create, spawn and remove them, and you can have up to 20 per server.
Zones are saved in Surge, so you can have some sitting ready and only spawn them when you need them (an event arena on a Saturday, for example).
03Creating a zone
Open Features > Custom Zones and add a new zone. The wizard has four steps:
- 1Name: up to 32 characters. Letters, numbers, spaces and - _ ' . ! & # are allowed. Each name has to be unique on the server, and players can see it in your zone messages.
- 2Colour: pick a preset (Cyan, Lime, Gold, Orange, Red, Pink, Purple, White) or set your own R, G, B. Default is cyan.
- 3Zone: set the position, shape, size and rules.
- 4Messages: the entry and leave messages.
At the end, choose Save & spawn zone to put it in game right away, or Save without spawning to keep it for later.
The easiest way to place a zone is to stand where you want the middle to be and click Use my location. It finds you by your linked in-game name, so link that first. You can also type or paste X, Y and Z.
04Every setting explained
- Position: the centre of the zone. Each coordinate has to be between -10000 and 10000.
- Shape: Sphere (a round dome) or Square (a box that is as tall as it is wide, centred on the position).
- Size: for a sphere it's the radius, 0.01 to 1000 metres, default 25. For a square it's the side length, 0.01 to 2000 metres, default 50. You can go smaller than 1 metre.
- Zone Rotation (square zones only): turns the square around its centre, 0 to 359 degrees, clockwise when you look down from above with north at the top. 0 keeps the sides facing north, south, east and west. Drag the slider, type a number, tap a quick angle (0, 45, 90 or 135) or nudge it 15 degrees at a time. The dial and the preview turn as you go, and the arrow shows which way the zone faces. Spheres are round, so they don't need it.
- Enable PvP: players can hurt each other inside. On by default.
- Enable NPC vs Player damage: scientists, animals and other NPCs can hurt players inside. On by default.
- Is building damage allowed?: bases inside can be raided and damaged. On by default.
- Is building allowed?: players can place and build inside. On by default.
- Radiation Damage: 0 to 100, default 0 (no radiation).
- Show Chat Message: players get a message when they enter or leave. On by default.
- Zone Entry Message / Zone Leave Message: up to 200 characters each. Defaults are "You entered {zonename}." and "You left {zonename}.".
{zonename}becomes the zone's name, and rich text like<color=#00E5FF>works. While chat messages are on, both need some text.
The zone outline is always shown in game in the colour you picked.
05Managing your zones
Every zone gets a card. Click it to open the full settings, change anything and save.
- Spawn (or Respawn if it's already live) puts the zone in game.
- Remove takes it out of the game but keeps it saved here, so you can spawn it again any time.
- Delete removes it from the game (if it was live) and from your list for good.
When you save changes to a live zone, Surge updates it in place. If you changed its name, shape, rotation or position, the zone is re-created instead. Either way you don't need to do anything else.
Each card shows a status:
- Not spawned: saved, but not in game.
- Live in game: in game and confirmed.
- Missing in game: Surge thinks it should be live but the server doesn't have it. Respawn it.
- Changes waiting for your server: you saved while your server was offline. The changes go in as soon as it reconnects.
06Restarts and the bot being offline
Server restarts can wipe zones. You don't need to worry about that. Whenever the bot reconnects to your server, it checks which of your zones should be live and puts back anything that's missing, along with any changes you saved while it was offline.
Spawn, Remove and Use my location need the bot connected. If a zone is live and the bot is offline, you can't delete it until the bot is back, because Surge needs to take it out of the game first.
07Good to know
- Custom Zones don't switch on and off by themselves like Zorp does. A zone stays exactly how you set it until you change it.
- If the server refuses to create a zone, double check the position and size, then try again.
- Free gets 2 zones and Premium gets up to 20. If you drop back to Free, extra zones are paused, not deleted.
Turn off building and building damage and you've got a safe trade spot. Turn on radiation with PvP and you've got a hot zone people have to gear up for. Use Zone Rotation to line a square zone up with a road or a monument so it covers exactly what you want.