TEXTURED LIGHTS

 

Textured lights then, many mappers swear by them and others just hate them. I personally can't map without them because the mood it gives levels is really good. Let's look at the difference first:

This first screen shot is with entity lights. It doesn't look too bad I suppose but they are on a very low brightness yet still light the ceiling. It would be nicer to make the ceiling dim and give the room some depth.

Ahhh that looks much better doesn't it? The best thing is you don't have to mess around with light entities.

OK OK, SO HOW DO I GET THEM WORKING?

Well there is a file that is called LIGHTS.RAD and this stores names of textures and what light they give off.

Right, go to your VALVE HAMMER EDITOR folder and open up the TOOLS folder.

See the two .rad files? Well the lights.rad file is empty and the valve.rad file is the one with the information in. You can check yourself by opening it in wordpad. Ok now DELETE the lights.rad, yes thats right. Then click on valve.rad so it is highlighted and the press F2 to re-name it and call it lights.rad.

Once you have done that copy it back into the root of VHE. Like this:

Right, there we go.

WHAT TEXTURES GIVE OFF LIGHT?

The following ones will give off light:

+0~GENERIC65 255 255 255 750
+0~GENERIC85 110 140 235 20000
+0~GENERIC86 255 230 125 10000
+0~GENERIC86B 60 220 170 20000
+0~GENERIC86R 128 0 0 60000
GENERIC87A 100 255 100 1000
GENERIC88A 255 100 100 1000
GENERIC89A 40 40 130 1000
GENERIC90A 200 255 200 1000
GENERIC105 255 100 100 1000
GENERIC106 120 120 100 1000
GENERIC107 180 50 180 1000
GEN_VEND1 50 180 50 1000
EMERGLIGHT 255 200 100 50000
+0~FIFTS_LGHT01 160 170 220 4000
+0~FIFTIES_LGT2 160 170 220 5000
+0~FIFTS_LGHT4 160 170 220 4000
+0~LIGHT1 40 60 150 3000
+0~LIGHT3A 180 180 230 10000
+0~LIGHT4A 200 190 130 11000
+0~LIGHT5A 80 150 200 10000
+0~LIGHT6A 150 5 5 25000
+0~TNNL_LGT1 240 230 100 10000
+0~TNNL_LGT2 190 255 255 12000
+0~TNNL_LGT3 150 150 210 17000
+0~TNNL_LGT4 170 90 40 10000
+0LAB1_W6D 165 230 255 4000
+0LAB1_W6 150 160 210 8800
+0LAB1_W7 245 240 210 4000
SKKYLITE 165 230 255 1000
+0~DRKMTLS1 205 0 0 6000
+0~DRKMTLGT1 200 200 180 6000
+0~DRKMTLS2 150 120 20 30000
+0~DRKMTLS2C 255 200 100 50000
+0DRKMTL_SCRN 60 80 255 10000
~LAB_CRT9A 225 150 150 100
~LAB_CRT9B 100 100 255 100
~LAB_CRT9C 100 200 150 100
~LIGHT3A 190 20 20 3000
~LIGHT3B 155 155 235 2000
~LIGHT3C 220 210 150 2500
~LIGHT3E 90 190 140 6000
C1A3C_MAP 100 100 255 100
FIFTIES_MON1B 100 100 180 30
+0~LAB_CRT8 50 50 255 100
ELEV2_CIEL 255 200 100 800
YELLOW 255 200 100 2000
RED 255 0 0 1000

The words on the left are the name of the texture and the numbers are it's brightness settings. Some of the light textures in the game don't give off light and it is possible to add them to this file.

To work out the brightness get yourself a light entity, then pick a colour and did you notice the number it leaves in that box? Well all you have to do is copy that and the name of your texture in to the lights.rad file, save it and it will work.

Don't forget that if you want no light choose the off texture of the particular light.

Also if the lights.rad file has been copied correctly the compile window will say:

[Reading texlights from 'C:\PROGRAM FILES\VALVE HAMMER EDITOR\lights.rad']
[48 texlights parsed from 'C:\PROGRAM FILES\VALVE HAMMER EDITOR\lights.rad']

That means you are on the right track.

In the words of that mong off art attack "Go on, Try it yourself!"

 

By Blink