How to use lighting

In JCS you can change the amount of light in a level. The standard light is sort of like day light. So if you make a level of an indoor area you can lower the amount of light to make it a little more convincing.

1) Download this level and unzip it in your Jazz folder (for example C:\Games\Jazz2).

2) Open the level in JCS. Save & Run it to see how it looks without lighting changes.

As you can see it's a small level with the "Carrottus" tileset. It has a cave and a small open area.

3) Because caves tend to be dark, we're going to change the lighting a little: Go to level properties and set "start" (in the "Ambient light" group) to 40% by dragging the slider left. Save & Run the level.

The level's a lot darker now.
Okay, that was the easy way to change the lighting in a level. In most cases, this will do...but sometimes you may want change the lighting in a part of the level. In this case, it would be nice to keep the cave dark, but make the open area light again.
There is an event for this. It's called "Set Light" and you can find it in the "Environment" - "Lighting" group.

4) Place a "Set Light" event on the floor at the cave entrance. Set the intensity of the light to 100.


This changes the light to 100% when you walk out trough the cave entrance.

5) But because you can also jump through the exit you have to make a row of Set light events from the floor to the ceiling. To do this, right click on the Set light event and choose "Grab event" That makes it the current event(or copies it). Now, you can "Paste" the event above the first one 5 times.

Now every time you walk out of the cave the light changes to 100%. But...when you go back into the cave, the light stays 100%.

6)So, you have to put another row of Set light events at the left side of the first row. This new row will have an intensity of 40. The result should look something like this:


6)Save & Run

In the next tutorial we'll examine layers a little further...
But before we do, here's some more info about light events:

Set Light is a global light. That means it affects the whole level. "Reset light" sets the light to the level default(=the light you choose in the level properties).
The other light events (Dim Light, Flicker Light, Pulze Light and Steady Light) are local, which means they only affect a small area (about 6 tiles high and 6 wide). Feel free to experiment with them. For example, you could place a Steady Light at the hole in the wall in the cave.

Moving on...


© Rabbits Only 2000
tutorial written by Ninja Dodo