1. A Simple Light Entity
2. Light_environment
3. Light_spot

Light_spot behaves a little differently than the simple light entity. It sends its cone of light in a specific direction rather than shining light equally in all directions. The result is often better-looking than that of a simple light entity. In fact, I hardly ever use the simple point-based light entity by itself.

Adjusting the Appearance of light_spot Entity

Returning to our light entity in the small room, we'll select it and bring up its properties box by double-clicking on it in the 3D view. Let's convert this point-based light entity to a light_spot entity. Just click on the Class heading of the Entity Properties dialog and replace "light" with "light_spot" and click "Apply". This should convert the point-based light entity to a light_spot entity.

There are two ways to direct the pitch of light_spot entity. We can either set the pitch by specifying it from the properties dialog, or we can direct it at a specific entity or object in our map. Let's leave the pitch as the default "-90" for now.

Change the brightness settings to "254 216 146 300" and we'll experiment with the various settings right now.

light_spot settings

The various light_spot settings and how they look in-game are illustrated below:

light_spot with "Quadratic" setting

light_spot with "Linear" setting

You can see that the difference between "Quadratic" and "Linear" is subtle. "Quadratic" has a more diffuse light, but "Linear" illuminates objects in the distance a bit brighter. We'll make the setting "Quadratic" (select Quadratic and set the number to "1") for this map, and that's all for basic lighting. Here is the screenshot of the outdoor area we made in this map:

Screenshot of the outdoor area

If you're still up to it, you can proceed to the Overlays and Decals tutorial next.