https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwxYkKdSD855V0RmZHBFNENRRms/view?usp=sharing

So I started using brighter blue/yellow/orange colors, and trying to figure out whether or not focus points are easy to spot. I put screen brightness very low. But I'm pretty sure there will be a lot of people who can't see even focus points or everything is unpleasantly dark.

So let me know, should I put lighting from 300 to even 450 when using delay 5. I removed even colors so I can see which colors are actually brighter and of course it seemed like yellow/orange is a bit brighter which is good thing, because it works as a main goal color. 

Or should I put bright colors in middle of rooms/hallways to add that overall visibility? And not try to increase the actual light sources.. but focus on "fake" lighting. 

I'm attracted to colour lights, but I make sure the white light stays dominate.
In that way the colours blend in at the background without destroying the texture. 

Yeah, you're right.. unless it is meant to be disturbing and texture breaking like in silent hill, if you know what I mean*

But overall I want to try to keep colors under control, everything is still quite new to me. I will try adding this white color more by placing them in middle of hallways/room/areas, and let's see what happens. I looked up some map files by other people and they were placing light sources in middle of rooms etc. For some reasons I tried to avoid using those, because I wanted to light comes from "real" light sources like lamps, torches etc. but it seems like that is not enough always.. and if light value is too high everyone sees it, even if using delay 5 - but it doesn't light that much imo. 

I wanted to light comes from "real" light sources like lamps

That's a great mindset to have when it comes to lights so stick with that idea.

In terms of fill lights like you describe those are needed to but try out the new -bounce parameter in the latest Tyrutils. Check out a bounce demo here: http://ericwa.github.io/tyrutils-ericw

For my jam map, I used almost no fill lights and just played with bounce scale and such. I am pretty impressed so far!

Another thing to mess with:

Say you have a lamp...

Place a light entity with a high wait value (7-8.5) and place it directly at the source of a lamp. Then place your actually room filling light that the lamp would give off in front of that. This will give the lamp an intense bright source which makes it seem like a real light source.

Lots of experimentation when it comes to lights. 

Ah, fantastic.. I was only using bounce 0.1, because I wanted to keep it "horror" in one level.. I want to have actual 100% dark places too. I was afraid that bounce scale would make everything "too bright" in terms of mood I'm trying to capture.. but I'm sure I can increase the value a bit higher sure* 

And maybe playing around with those wait values more, I can control it somehow* 

but i think bounce is either 1 or 0

1 being a single light bounce, 0 being off.
ericw could probably enlighten us further. 

Yeah, there is the on/off switch, plus 2 parameters:

-bounce n

Enables 1 bounce, 0=disable even if set in worldspawn. Available as a worldspawn key.

-bouncescale n

Scales brightness of bounce lighting, default 1. Available as a worldspawn key.

-bouncecolorscale n

Weight for bounce lighting to use texture colors from the map: 0=ignore map textures (default), 1=multiply bounce light color by texture color. Available as a worldspawn key.


The first screenshot on http://ericwa.github.io/tyrutils-ericw/ shows the effect of different values of -bouncescale, if you click on the buttons on the side.

I haven't mentioned "-bouncecolorscale" much, not sure if anyone is using it, but this is what makes white light bouncing off a red wall become red light (you have to turn it on; by default the map is treated as if all textures are solid gray.) 

Sorry I meant I used bouncescale 0.1 

Now I set it to default 1, and start working on lights again. Maybe after this my map is much more playable. 

Here is an example of a

light 100 wait 0.3
and a colour light of
light 300 colour 112 132 256.

As they both are the same strength 300=100/wait0.3 the colour has the same glow as the withe, producing a rare effect. 

Does it mean.. if I use 450 it is.. 450=100/wait 0.45? 

My thoughts are that too much of your light is coming from highly saturated colored light. Try setting a wait value on the sourced colored lights (those that are supposed to look like they are emitted from a texture). Try around 1.5 - 3 or more and use delay 2 or 5. Try to confine the color to just the area near the source.

Then add some white or almost white area lighting out away from any surfaces. Give those a low light value but with a small wait, so they can reach for some distance, light around 150-200, wait 0.5 - 0.7 

Trying all this, and having bouncescale 1? 

I don't use a new enough light.exe to have bounce, but it shouldn't matter much if the colored light is not allowed to extend very far.

Here is part of my map. After I made this pic I realized it was actually not a great example. There is more colored light in that room than any other room in the map. I think there is 6, maybe 7 different colors in use.

http://quaketastic.com/files/screen_shots/coloredlights.jpg 

How do you make it show like this, is it some command you need to put on engine's console?

Anyway, thanks for your suggestion - I try to understand what it means, some of words are new to me and I might not understand it 100%.. but I sure try. 

sourced colored lights = original colors from quake's palette?

..they are emitted from a texture = same colors that are used mainly to make all of original textures?

..white or almost white area lighting out away from any surfaces = means I should place white light sources to walls, ceilings, even floors even though there is no visible any "real" light sources where that light comes from? 

r_lightmap 1 

What is r_lightmap? it is not command or anything? 

Experimental options..
-lit2 -> write lit2. file
-lux -> write lux. file

what are those? 

Oh, thanks khreathor* nevermind it did that what I was asking earlier. 

So now I can actually see the lighting itself.. this will speed up the progress so much. 

lit2 allows much higher resolution lightmaps and lux probably does something similar but is designed specifically for FTE.

lit2 is not supported by many engines afaik 

And indeed Rick, base color was too saturated in overall, I need to add more white there.