Let there be light!
Adding light to your level is probably the hardest part of level making. It's takes a lot of time and patience to achieve good, quality lighting. There is a lot you can talk about in regards to it, but for now, I'm just going to give you a basic introduction to light. More detailed tutorials may show up on the web site in the future.
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The entity itself
Let me start out with a rundown of all the settings pertaining to the Light entity. Add a Light\Light entity to your map and open up it's properties. The first field you'll see is light. This is where you enter a value for the brightness of the light. The default of 300 is pretty bright, I usually end up using values around 150-200. The _color field allows you to set a color for your light. There are two ways you can do this: You can manually type in the numerical values ranging 0-1 in the form of RED GREEN BLUE, ie. 0 0 1 would be blue. The other, easier way is to use the pop-up slider window. (shown below) This allows you to use a slider to set the value of each color. There is a swatch that gives you a visual indication of the color you're creating as well. Next is _cone, this is where you set the diameter of the spot when making a spot light. There are additional entities involved when making spotlights which I will get into later. target and targetname are pretty obvious. style allows you to add to the attempted realism by giving the light flicker or strobing properties. This is usefull for making candle light, flourescent lights, broken lights, etc. There are quite a few options in the pulldown menu, I recomend experimenting with all of them to figure out which ones are best suited to help create the mood of your level. The Start off option in the spawnflags menu is usefull if you want your light to be triggered on by an event or a switch. OK, so there's the rundown on the entity itself. Now, lets talk about using light in your level.
 
 

Using the entity
The most basic way is to add a Light\Light entity. This is the basic light entity that emits light in your level according to it's previously mentioned properties. The actual entity itself is not visible in-game, only the light it produces is seen. The other two light entities, Light\Light Mine 1 and Light\Light Mine 2 have the same properties as the basic light minus the _cone and style properties, and they're visible in-game. These are the wall lights that were used in the mine levels in Quake 2. Each one looks a little different, but they're basically small cylindrical wall lights.
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__________________________________________Binding light to a texture
 
 
Another way to use light is to have a brush face emit it. Make the brush and texture it. Then goto the texture properties of that brush. Select the desired face of the brush and check the light checkbox. In the Value field in the bottom left of the window, enter the brightness value. This works the same as the light field in the light entity properties. Now, the color of the light that is produced is dependent on the colors in the texture of the face that it emits from. For example, if you're having a face textured with the "core1_3" texture emit light, that light would be red because red is the dominate color in that texture. In my exampe map I have a pool of water emiting light. That light is blue due to the blue color of the water.
Spotlights
Spotlights can be a usefull tool when attempting to create certain moods or dramatic effects in your level. There's a few steps to creating a spotlight, but it's a reletively easy process. First, create you Light\Light entity. In it's target field enter a name such as "spot". Now, create an Info\Null entity. In it's properties give it the targetname of "spot", or whatever you entered in the light's target field. This entity acts as the focal point of the light. So now a cone of light emits from the light entity and points toward this null entity. You can adjust the radius of the light with the previously mentioned _cone field, the default is 10. I should also mention that the Info\Null entity is the only entity that the light entity can target.

_________________________________________Color
 
Lastly, some notes on colored lighting. Just in case you didn't know, colored lighting is only available in the hardware accelerated versions of the game such as GLQuake 2 on a 3Dfx card. Colored lighting really adds to the look and feel of a level. And it's a good idea to use it whenever it's appropriate. However, you can go overboard. If you use it where it's not right, or if you use too much of it, then things start looking really bad and cheesy. Use it effectively, don't go crazy with it or your level will suffer. On the left is a picture of the slider window.

That's it! Go make some light!
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