Lighting and Base Node

CainStar · Civilian **Joined**: 14 Dec 2009

I have placed some light posts on my map, mainly where tiberium is located, to give this nice green glow, but unfortunately it way too bright for my taste, so is there way to create these light posts but also to be able to control how much light they emit.

Oh and what are the Base Node's for?

Aro · Alcohol Fueled **Joined**: 10 Sep 2006

Lightpost tutorial for you.
Base Node's are used in Singleplayer maps do determine where and when the AI will build a certain structure, don't play about with these in Multiplayer maps.

Titan · Posted: Fri Dec 25, 2009 5:14 pm Post subject:

Damnit, that tutorial of mine is ancient and crappy... I ought to make a new and better version. #Tongue

Anyway, open up your map in a text editor such as notepad or textpad.

Now add the following somewhere:

[INGRNLMP]
LightVisibility=
LightIntensity=
LightRedTint=
LightGreenTint=
LightBlueTint=

What this does is overwrite the settings of the actual INGRNLMP structure in rules.ini.

The original TS settings for INGRNLMP are as follows:

LightVisibility=4000
LightIntensity=0.01
LightRedTint=0.01
LightGreenTint=1.5
LightBlueTint=0.01

LightVisibility controls the effective range of the lightpost (the bigger the larger the area it will affect).

LightIntensity controls the intensity of your lighting, keep this low, between 0.15 and 0.005. You can enter a negative value here to subtract lighting instead of adding it. This is useful when creation gloomy dark corridors in maps. A high intensity value causes the cells around the lightpost to be coloured separately, effectively giving you blocky lighting because the transition from cell to cell is too big a leap making everything look corny.

LightRedTint controls the red tint of your lighting, just like LightGreenTint and LightBlueTint control the green and blue hues respectively. Using these values you can closely determine the hue of your lighting.

Generally it's a good idea to just play around with these values, but the original settings are far too bright. You might go for something like:

[INGRNLMP]
LightVisibility=7000
LightIntensity=0.05
LightRedTint=0.10
LightGreenTint=0.40
LightBlueTint=0.05

Just wrote that down from the top of my head. Just add some weak other colors and keep the general intensities low.

For snow maps you could try doing the same thing, but snow is white, meaning it reflects pretty much all the light in the visible spectrum, so you can get away with a lot more. Just choose your lightpost to edit from the rules.ini and add the entry with the correct tags to your map in a text editor and test it in-game. Smile

CainStar · Civilian **Joined**: 14 Dec 2009

Thanks for the help again guys.