OK, here's my unsolicited 2 cents ...

You're going to have to let go. :) Quake is over 20 years old so you're not going to realize any great lighting schemes or whatever you have planned. Quake can look great, don't get me wrong. But on the whole, you have to go for broad strokes rather than specific lighting set ups. 

but Quake is only 19. 

I saw screenshots of a map with excellent light/shadow interplay using spotlights in parallel with overlapping edges. It was some kind of lava-castle type thing... don't remember name off the top of my head. But I just want to do something like what that map did! I'm not expecting some kind of rendering voodoo that instantly makes it work like a modern engine, just having working spotlights would be peachy. (Currently my best guess is the light util is treating them as regular lights...) 

I'll check out Quakespasm... The GLQuake faithfulness does make me a little uneasy, but that's only because I'm sorta uncomfortable with older OGL games in general. Bad memories of antediluvian gaming machines having random BSOD seizures. I'm sure I'll get over it. 

If .lits aren't loaded you get greyscale lighting. Anything else is a bug.

Little warning here: if you have an OUT OF DATE .lit file, it might be overriding the light settings in subsequent compilations. This might result in unconnected patterns of lighting, unexpected colours, or just the map failing to update in-engine as you recompile with new settings. 

The map jams might be helpful:
https://www.quaddicted.com/reviews/?filtered=mapjam
most/all maps have sources included, so if you see a lighting effect you like, you can check out how it was done.

Or, post a screenshot + map file. Spotlights can be a pain to set up, I haven't used them much but did use them a bit in jam3_ericw.
IIRC there are two choices, either set "mangle" "yaw pitch roll", or target the light to an info_null (?) which is the spotlight target. 

but which light compiler are you using? 

The .lits are up to date, I doublecheck timestamps before I copy over files to the id1/maps folder, to prevent unexpected frustration. Maybe it's just that colored spotlights don't work (i.e., you can have color or spotlights but not both)? That would be awful but manageable.

I'm using the latest version of light.exe available here: http://disenchant.net/utils/ as per FifthElephant's tutorial. I don't know any of the settings, however. Do I need to add something to the commandline to make it work well with certain lighting?

I'll see about grabbing a screenshot but this may take me some time (I'm technically at work...). 

The top map (The Living End?) is the one that has the spotlights, clearly visible, that I am trying to emulate. https://www.quaddicted.com/reviews/ne_lend_doom.html

I'd offer a screenshot, but I just tried the map in Quakespasm and there are no spotlights. None, not even the ugly kind. So at this point I'll link my awful piece of crap thing (technically I'm building the end room of my first map, and the proportions are actually wrong) and see if anyone can spot the problem... because I can't. Please excuse the hideousness, this is very far from final-touch-up. The missing wall is because I have yet to build the rest of the map, of course.

http://dropcanvas.com/khdtx/1 

Mangle looks strange. Try 0 -90 0 and an angle of 80 - 120 for a lightcone facing down.

Mangle is 0-360 around z-axis, 90(up) to -90(down), and 0. 

your spotlights are too faint compared to all the other bright lights in the room which totally drown them out. 

I clearly remember that I set mangle to -90. And despite the slipgate lights being at 170, they're very dim (no idea why). By far the brightest light-set is the one associated with the two conical lights in the corners, despite them being set to 120.

I'm starting to suspect shenanigans in how Trenchbroom handles things. But let's see how it works now...

I fix the values, save and compile and no changes. I wonder what will happen if I reload the .map file. Hmm. Everything's still set up right (mangle of -90, etc). I brightened the light value to 190 and set a wait of 0.5, so I don't understand how it wouldn't show up, not even in the very rear corners where no other light makes it. Maybe the angle/_softangle size?

Recompile: no dice. angle 120/_softangle 80 gives me absolutely nothing (using mfx's suggested range), so I'm stumped. Here's a link to the latest version. http://dropcanvas.com/khdtx/2 

if you are seeing very dim red lights, but I am seeing very bright red lights, then that sounds like an issue with the way the light compiler treats _color values

I see you are using _color components in the 0-1 range - try using the 0-255 range see if that fixes it 

I can see the spotlights:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lp6cfr6yng9rz4x/spasm0048.jpg?dl=0

This is quakespasm with "r_lightmap 1" set in the console, handy for seeing the lightmaps. No special compile flags used, just -extra to smooth it out a bit.

The "angle" "120" is making them have a pretty wide cone.
Also the fading lights on the slipgate seem really bright.

Edit: ahhh, I know what's going on, tyrutils didn't originally support colors in the 0-1 range, it's only my modded version that supports that. Try with this light.exe:
http://celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=60967&start=287&end=287 

Alright, that did it. And GOD that is hideously garish. Definitely toning that way waaay down. Out of curiosity, what light compiler were YOU using Kinn? That one might be better for me.

FTR: I arrived at the color values I was using though Trenchbroom's built in color editor, which is much faster to use than manually inputting the values until it kinda looks right in the tiny preview pane. 

 

I'm using the latest version of ericw's modification of tyrutils - i.e. the one he posted. It's the bee's knees. 

https://community.renderman.pixar.com/article/114/library-pixar-one-twenty-eight.html 

Hi, I've recently started to learn to use the map making tool Trenchbroom to create some quake 2 jumpmode maps. I don't seem to be able to find a way to add ladders and ice to a map. Does anyone have any idea how I could do it or if not who might know? 

you may not be able to, as those require surface attributes which Trenchbroom does not support.

you could temporarily jump in with another editor, but the attributes may get clobbered when saving. 

A random brief defense of DarkPlaces:
The real time lights exist in a separate "layer" from the lightmaps (though they can coexist). IIRC DP will see a torch entity and add color to its light value in real time mode. If a lit file isn't loading, this could be why a map has colored lighting with real time lights, and colorless lighting with static lights. 

Stupid question probably, but how do I know the position of my brushes relative to the world, when I'm in an editor (using TrenchBroom 2 at the moment)? I recall someone on this thread once made a map that had all sorts of issues because it was off-centre, and I have no idea how you ascertain that...

Should I be asking this in the TrenchBroom thread instead? 

Would someone be so kind as to tell me how to compile Tyrutils on Linux? I've downloaded the source code, but I don't know where to go from here. 

Found the answer here http://quakewiki.org/wiki/QBSP

Sorry for wasting everyone's time! 

Still looking for the answer to #14935...