light Class Reference

About this class

Tool/Server-Entity: Light Source.

QUAKED light (0 1 0) (-8 -8 -8) (8 8 8) LFL_LINEAR x LFL_DARK LFL_NOGRID x x

OVERVIEW

Infinitely small point of light illuminating the scene.

KEYS

• "targetname" : Name
• "target" : When set, targets an enity instead, becoming a spotlight
• "light" : Light intensity value. Default is '300'
• "color" : Normalized RGB color value. Default is [1,1,1]
• "color255" : RGB255 color value. e.g. '255 255 255' for white
• "extradist" : The additional distance it should attempt to travel.
• "radius" : Sets the light cone radius for spotlights. Default is '64'
• "fade" : Sets the fade-distance of a light when LFL_LINEAR is set
• "anglescale" : Sets the light angle scale of non-linear lights
• "deviance" : Sets the deviance, jitter effect for each light sample.
• "samples" : Number of light samples. This also needs to be set > 0.0 for deviance to work.
• "filter" : Setting to blur the light/shadows resulting from this light.
• "start_active" : Set to either 0 or 1 to tell the light in what mode to start in.
• "style" : Light style ID. 0-11 are defined, 12-32 are reserved for switched
  lights. List of pre-defined styles:
  0 = Normal
  1 = Flicker A
  2 = Slow strong pulse
  3 = Candle A
  4 = Fast strobe
  5 = Gentle pulse
  6 = Flicker B
  7 = Candle B
  8 = Candle C
  9 = Slow strobe
  10 = Fluorescent flicker
  11 = Slow pulse, no black
• "pattern" : Custom light style pattern. Needs unique light style ID set in the "style" field (numbers above 32). Patterns are defined with letters of the alphabet.
  'a' being dark. 'z' being fully lit. Its string of characters
  get interpreted as brightness values and are interpolated between at 10 frames-per-second in the game.

SPAWNFLAGS

• LFL_LINEAR (1) : Use linear distance falloff instead of inverse-square falloff.
• LFL_DARK (4) : Darken, instead of illuminating the lightmap.
• LFL_NOGRID (8) : This light does not affect the lightgrid.

NOTES

In idTech 2/GoldSrc etc. "spawnflag" "1" in the light entity data means it starts off, disabled, dark.
This uses the lightstyle feature from Quake, where an area of a level can be handled by up to 4 overlapping lightmap sheets from lights with different "style" values.

This doesn't exist in idTech3 because lightstyles were not a thing originally. While there are Q3 BSP compilers that try to address this, it's a significant source of of lightmap abuse. As a general piece of advice, please consider using light_dynamic or env_projectedtexture for toggled or flickering lights.

TRIVIA

This entity was introduced in Quake (1996).

Inheritance diagram for light:

Public Member Functions
void	light (void)
virtual void	Save (float)
	Handles saving a copy of this entity to a given filehandle. More...
virtual void	Restore (string, string)
	Similar to ncIO::SpawnKey() but for save-game fields. More...
virtual void	SpawnKey (string, string)
	This method handles entity key/value pairs on map load. More...
virtual void	Spawned (void)
	Called when the entity is fulled initialized. More...
virtual void	Respawn (void)
	Server: Called when the entity first spawns or when game-logic requests the entity to return to its original spawn state. More...
virtual void	RestoreComplete (void)
	Called when the entity has been successfully restored from a savegame file. More...
virtual void	Input (entity, string, string)
	Called when we are being prompted by another object/function with an input message. More...
virtual void	Trigger (entity, triggermode_t)
	Called whenever we're legacy triggered by another object or function. More...
virtual void	DebugDraw (void)

Constructor & Destructor Documentation

light()

void light::light

(

void

)

Member Function Documentation

DebugDraw()

void light::DebugDraw ( void  )

virtual

Reimplemented from ncPointTrigger.

Input()

void light::Input ( entity  eAct, string  strInput, string  strData  )

virtual

Called when we are being prompted by another object/function with an input message.

Reimplemented from ncEntity.

Respawn()

void light::Respawn ( void  )

virtual

Server: Called when the entity first spawns or when game-logic requests the entity to return to its original spawn state.

Reimplemented from ncPointTrigger.

Reimplemented in light_environment.

Restore()

void light::Restore ( string  strKey, string  strValue  )

virtual

Similar to ncIO::SpawnKey() but for save-game fields.

Whatever you write into file handles within your ncIO::Save() method needs to be read back in here.

Reimplemented from ncEntity.

RestoreComplete()

void light::RestoreComplete ( void  )

virtual

Called when the entity has been successfully restored from a savegame file.

Reimplemented from ncIO.

Save()

void light::Save ( float  handle )

virtual

Handles saving a copy of this entity to a given filehandle.

Within you want to use the ncIO::SaveFloat() etc. methods to write the internal member attributes to the specified file handle.

Reimplemented from ncEntity.

Spawned()

void light::Spawned ( void  )

virtual

Called when the entity is fulled initialized.

Any spawn key/value info pairs have already been dealt with. So now we can make full decisions on the entity. Always make sure to call super::Spawned(); inside your method when overriding.

Reimplemented from ncEntity.

Reimplemented in light_environment.

SpawnKey()

void light::SpawnKey ( string  strKey, string  strValue  )

virtual

This method handles entity key/value pairs on map load.

You can easily convert the strValue parameter using the ReadFloat etc. methods that are part of ncIO.

Reimplemented from ncEntity.

Reimplemented in light_environment, and light_environment.

Trigger()

void light::Trigger ( entity  act, triggermode_t  state  )

virtual

Called whenever we're legacy triggered by another object or function.

Reimplemented from ncTrigger.

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The documentation for this class was generated from the following file:

• src/gs-entbase/server/light.qc