Ground Lighting
I then went and asked TitanMarkII if he noticed it and if so if he knew what it did. He said he had noticed it but told me that he didn't think it did anything. Provided....we are talking about TitanMarkII here so he could have very well said that so I would find out for myself. Anyways on to what I found.
This is your normal text for lighting in a map opened in wordpad. The two things in bold are what I noticed.
[Lighting]
Red=0.734167
Blue=0.428463
Green=0.992142
Level=0.000100
Ground=0.000000
IonRed=1.792941
Ambient=0.745424
IonBlue=0.019666
IonGreen=1.483521
IonLevel=0.002000
IonGround=0.000000
IonAmbient=0.351665
As you notice there is another section of lighting not presented in Final Sun. So what does it do?
Well after experimenting with it a little bit I found that the Ground lighting seems to act almost as a global negative light post to the map. If you set Ground=1.0000000 it makes the map pitch black and the only visible things will be Tiberium and building animations such as the refinery flame. Yet, when set lower to say Ground=0.1000000 it simply darkens areas of maps with no other lighting from light posts.
So What does this mean or how can it be useful?
Well using a higher value you can initially make a more real 'night' themed map. With a lower level you can make it seem as if there is a negative light post all across the map where no other lighting via lamps is present. The higher level would be very difficult to handle but if done properly you could get areas of the map that are really dark and somewhat hide your units and then unsuspecting players would come across and be hit from within the shadows.
AKA a nice big canyon could become a dark can't see too well area while the rest be fairly lit and if trying to move through the canyon you can have your tanks and stuff just lurking unseen for the most part. Or, you can have a nice dense forest of some sort and have it really dark above it and thus infantry can be hidden in the forest in darkness. Now thats just some ideas for 'night' like maps.
This feature seems more useful to me as a negative light that affects the whole map where no other light is present.
I am not sure yet to see if the IonGround does the same but I am pretty sure it will be.
I looked in all other maps I have in my directory and all the TS/FS maps (well most of them) and did not notice this feature being used. Which makes me wonder if WW intended to just leave it out or what it was originally planned to be used for in the game. :huh:
Anyways I have yet to produce good pics as I haven't been messing with this lately but I can tell you that Yelcraz Island does use the Ground lighting. (but not the ion storm one) Its values on Yelcraz are relatively low.
Ground=0.095000
This is hard to tell on Yelcraz though simply because Yelcraz as you know has many cities/villages around it. The best place to notice this is in the water. Especially though in the water in the lower left corner.
Anyways thats my crappy find and now its time to go make screenies for this topic.
I might end up posting it, but I don't think it'll be of any use and besides, I'm busy writing tuts for the SMMC atm. 
