I've noticed that in your maps, you tend to use almost entirely short-distance & high-intensity lights. Have you thought about having longer 'wait' or 'delay'? 

minlight is a lot less necessary if you use delay 2 or 3 (1/x and 1/x^2 falloff formulae, respectively).

Input those functions into a graphing calculator program, and you can see what the light intensity falloff looks like. There is a tight core of high intensity light, and then a long tail of slowly dimming light. Just a couple of those lights can just about light a whole room.

In fact, the light will be fullbright at the center (see the graphed function, which goes asymptotic as it approaches zero), unless you use aguire's delay 4 fix that doesn't allow the light intensity to exceed the value of the "light" key on the light. 

just a correction to avoid confusion,

1/x = delay 1
1/x^2 = delay 2
and aguirRe's capped version = delay 5

i think jpl is using delay 2 lights, but the wait setting is set way up (like 2.5 or 3+) 

my post was both obfuscated *and* incorrect! 

Actually I'm generally using

delay = 1 or 2
wait = 1
light = 80

Fait enough to obtain the desired effect, at least on my screen ;) 

settings i've been using lately which i'm pretty happy with as a standard light caster:

delay 5
wait 1.25
light 450

gives a fairly long range light but with a nice bright center. i hardly ever use delay 2 anymore. i find delay 5 is a 'safer' option because of the way the capping works, it creates a nicer falloff that's more forgiving when going up high with light values. delay 2 is kind of touchy.

if i've got multiple braziers or torches in close proximity (say 128 units apart), i'll pump the wait up to 2 or 2.5 to prevent over saturating the area with light. 

 

So is linear falloff ever useful anymore? Maybe only good for small rooms? 

I'm trying to have "real" light rendering. Any light that is not a laser, is non coherent, and generally not "directed" (i.e meaning that without any parabolic mirror, there is no way to direct it), So a non laser light is emitting in all directions... Also, the emitted light power is fading out by the square of the distance... so using wait = 1 and delay = 2 is then the most obvious way to have something close to reality... BTW, AFAIK, wait is only providing a multiplying factor to the light field.. i:e the formula becomes then

P(x) = wait * light / (x^2)

Anyway, depending of the effect ingame, these values can be tuned as desired by the mappers, and each mapper has his habits / clues... ;) 

This formula is "true" if the environment is wet air... it has to be tuned according to humidity, temperature, fog presence, etc... and then delay can increase dramatically.. though... 

I like the wonky look :) 

I experimented with Delay last night. I had never really used it before except for simulating sky light (Delay 2, Wait .25 - .4, Light 25-50). A few of those up high can give a soft skylight effect over a large area.

Maybe I'm just too used to the way the original Quake levels look, but when I tried Delay 2 for indoor lights it just didn't look right to me. The "hot spot" was too hot and the fall off extended too far causing a sort of "minlight too high" effect.

Delay 1 was a lot better looking to me, I can see using it some, but the hot spot effect is still distracting. There just seems to be too rapid of change in light level between the core and the falloff.

I tend to make mostly indoor type maps with relatively small rooms and lots of obvious light sources, so that probably has something to do with it.

What ended up looking best to me was Delay 1, Wait 2, Light 80, but I'll probably end up sticking with my usual 200-250 (sourced) Lights with lots of 125-175 (Wait .5-.8) fill lights to simulated relected light and such. 

Everyone who plays with lights, make sure you use an engine with Overbright support like Fitzquake. 

Crossposting from the Mapping Help thread:

I need someone with UnrealED3 (the UT3 version) installed to take a brief look over a map I have been slowly working on for a loooong time now to help me decide whether I should continue slowly building upon it or whether I should just put it out of it's misery.

Download it HERE. 

http://h.imagehost.org/0281/Mirage_1.jpg
http://h.imagehost.org/0576/Mirage_2.jpg
http://h.imagehost.org/0484/Mirage_3.jpg

From the other day, just showing the layout
http://h.imagehost.org/0454/OasisOfWar2.jpg

Much detailing still to be done, but it's coming along quite nicely. It's theme is unique to DoW2, being a mashup of Desert and Jungle enviroments to make a somewhat Tropical Paradise. This will be me entry to the Community Map Creation Contest run by Relic.
http://www.gamereplays.org/dawnofwar2/portals.php?show=page&name=dawn-of-war-2-map-competition 

lol i dont even know what is doW... doW2? roulf

look like a far cry map but with no details! 

Dawn of War 2.

Looks nice scamp, good fusion of themes. When I saw the game screens I was imagining something more beachy tho (compared to the layout shot), I'm aware you need to keep gameplay balanced between sides, but possibly have sea as one of the shared outer edges of the map (ie, top or bottom). Sand/beach in the middle of green hills seems strange...

And good luck with the contest :) 

Oh I fully relieze the strangeness. Originally thought of making the entire map an island, but a problem I would've had to deal with was hiding the edges of the map if you tilted the camera to a low angle. Instead, I decided 'fuck reality' and went full bore with something as unearthly as a landlocked beach. 

But more buildings - stuff without human sized apertures / dimensions. 

look like a far cry map but with no details!
Haha, indeed.

So just make it an island in a crate! Like that toilet map of yours, only 'used' this time.
(Ok, if you must, maybe in a Borg cube then, to comply with the scifi setting...) 

Noone has UnrealED3 (UT3) installed? 

jago what for?

pure crap ~:p

please come back to Quake

enought of wasting your time! 

Sure, when it does 80k tris at 100+ fps on mediocre hardware and comes with a nice assortment of prebuilt meshes. 

I have it installed, and I could run it, but I haven't used it in quite a while and am not really inclined to since I have no plans to map for or play UT3. My condolences. 

the world was pretending UT3 doesn't exist.