I figured that part out already. I just can't find these lines of code
in the template file or the cog I'm using so I don't get where these
values fit in.

The .spr file.

I have no Idea how to get 16 bit mats.
I use a combination of adobe photo
deluxe, paintbrush and matmaster to
get my mats but they all end up as 256
color mats with only jk colormap colors.
How Can I make my own mats 16 bit?

Use mat16 to make 16bit mats.

Looking at the level - You sketched curved walls. Why didn't you build curved walls?

I chose to use a decagon or a dodecagon (I don't remember
which) for the circular part of the fort because The game
engine can only handle so many surfaces as far as I can tell.
Right now there is nothing architecturally wrong with my level
such as incorrectly ajoined surfaces but, in game, when you
move your player to an area whereyou can view a large number
of surfaces, the game freaks out and starts flashing untill you
move back into a place where you can't see as many surfaces.
Because of this problem I decided to make the level blockier than
I could have in order to at least try and prevent this problem.
Even with the level like it is I still have trouble with the flashing.
Do you know how to get rid of the flashing?

There was a JK/MOTS patch released on massassi that removes the adjoin limit (which causes HOMing if too many adjoins are visible) as well as the thing limit. Check for it at the JKHub

wow, this dude is a really sincere, nice guy. good luck on this!

I found the patches on the hub but they seem
to only remove the ajoin limit for JK and not
MOTS. Is there a patch for MOTS as well? I
got the patch to work for JK but this Level is on
MOTS and I specifically want colored lighting so
I can't just transfer the level over.

Ah, there is one for mots, I'll dig it up in a few.

I don't know if you found this page, but it at least patches MotS so that you can render unlimited things - http://hellraiser64.com/JK/

Just scroll down a bit. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if there ever was an adjoin limit patcher for MotS...

I just searched through the original thread , and sadly could find no mention of an Adjoin Patcher for MotS, only a thing patcher.

Perhaps if you ask HellRaiser, he might get his friend to release a copy.

Hmm, you're right. I only have a JK adjoin patch. I could have sworn there was a MOTS one. Guess not...

It was really hard for Sige to track down the adjoin limit in jk.exe, I think I remember him saying mots.exe did stuff differently, thus being harder to make an adjoin limit remover for mots.

Do you think I should just scrap the colored lightning
Idea and try and cope with just sector tinting and
switch the whole proect over to JK? Is there other
alternatives to colored lighting other than sector
tinting that turn out better and can be seen from
outside the sector?

I just downloaded it and fooled with it a bit.
I don't really understand the concept I guess.
Does it replace the lighting system in jed and
tell the vertices how much light to emmit?
That's sorta what I got from the readme. I
guess, in short, I am saying that I have hardly
any understanding of lighting at all and would
like some tips (I'd at least like to figure out
this lighter plugin dealy that everyone seems
to be drooling over lately

OK, lighting in JK is pretty tricky. In our world, light bounces off of stuff and tends to fill a whole room with light with only 1 light source. This, however, is untrue in JK. JK tells a single vertex how much light to emit. In JED, a single round light is built at a certain cercomference based on the light size, and a certain intensity. If a vertex falls within the bounds of the light, it is lit. Light lives in vertices as well as the edges and cleaves that follow them. Thus 2 vertices that have a cleave intersecting them will 'scue' light in that direction. To get realistic shadows, an editor has to find all the angles and cotrol all of the different vertices to make sure the lighting looks good.

The lighter plugin, however, takes the location of a single light[that's the drawback, but surface lighting can fix that] and calculates all of the angles and cleaves everything up to maximize the light you've added to your level. It also works on multiple layers. That is, if you have one room on one layer, you can light it with a single light, and another room on another layer with another light.

A small note about lighting: Surface lights tell a certain surface in a level how much light to have. The only drawback to this is that it won't be effected by dynamic lighting like shooting it with a blaster or turning on the field light. However, surface lighting can be added to a lit surface to simulate 'bouncing' of light. Surface lighting is controled via face mode by pressing enter and changing the surface light value at the bottom.

Dynamic lights are thing lights [see the tutorial about them] that light levels dynamically so that they effect 3DOs. Normal light doesn't touch 3DOs except a general overal surface tinting. Dynamic lighting will cast semi-shadows on your models, but isn't really 'hindered' by objects so you might get some odd lighting [see the worms model thread in the editing forum].

Hopefuly that all makes sense to you. Ask if you don't understand.

The modern JED editor's got two possibilities:

- Go for 3do architecture and use dynamic lights (probably needs an instance of GBK's flicker cog, too)
- Go for sector architecture and use JED lights combined with the lighter plugin

Everything else is outdated. A mix of the two is difficult, because the lighter plugin doesn't affect 3do architecture. Dynamic lights used on sector architecture can be done, but don't have many advantages over standard JED lights. They light/shade the player models, but that's about it.
If you go for 3do architecture, be warned that some mods will have HUGE problems in your level, because JK has troubles to correctly detect collisions between 3dos and extremely fast projectiles.

Thanks. I think I get this a bit more now. I'll
post some pics with the results if I get anything
spectacular.