In Final Alert2, you have the option of changing lighting values for both storm and non-storm modes. Storm mode is what you see whenever the Weather Storm is launched during a game. Non-storm mode is simply regular lighting you see during the game. Temperate and Snow maps  have their own color settings for Morning, Afternoon, Dusk, and Nighttime. I like to call them "Mood Settings". There are other ways in Final Alert to add special lighting. Those will be covered in another tutorial. This section is only for general over-all lighting during the game.

Basic Light changes: written by lion

Accessing the Light Options:

Step #1: Under the Edit menu, select Lighting. Just take a look at the pic to your left if your unsure where to find it. When you click on "Lighting", a window will pop up and you'll see all the lighting attributes you have the option of changing. 

Step #2: You'll find five settings each for the Normal and Storm lighting modes. Take a look at the picture to your right. The values you have the option of changing are on a decimal-percentage scale. That means the value 1.00 is normal lighting, and 0.5 is 50% lighting. The five settings in the lighting section are as follows:

NOTE: You'll find these lighting controls for both storm and non-storm modes in the lightning window. Again, look at the picture. 

• Ambient: Controls the general lighting for objects on the map for things like structures, units, and terrain, etc.
• Level: Controls how much the lighting changes for each tile of elevation. It's important to NOT set the level to a value greater than  0.30 (30%) or the lighting will change so dramatically that higher elevations (cliffs, etc.) will be almost pure white, and lower elevation will be so black you won't be able to see anything. The standard setting for most maps is 0.032 (3.2 % change), and is a good starting point. 
• Red: Adjusts how red the terrain will look. More red would be used for morning or afternoon settings, etc.
• Green: Adjusts how green the terrain will look. 
• Blue: Adjusts how blue the terrain will look. Use more blue for night settings, etc.

Here's some example settings you can use for your map. As in anything, experiment with the color variables (tweak) to set the mood your after. If you do make a night map, just don't go too dark that units are hard to see in the game. 

Temperate/Urban map (non-storm settings)

Snow map (non-storm settings)

Storm settings for all maps: This is a good setting below to use when the Weather Storm is activated. It makes the map turn darker, and the sky turn red, which adds a bit of drama and excitement to the game. You can adjust the colors to your liking. If you want a blue skylight while the Weather Storm is activated, then turn up the blue...more green? same thing. Just experiment till you find what you want. 

a. Ambient = 0.400000 // Decreases the normal lighting to 40%
b. Level = 0.032000 // This is the level standard for maps.
c. Red = 1.400000 // Increases red (by 40%)
d. Green = 0.500000 // Decreases green to 50%
e. Blue = 0.600000 // Decreases blue to 60%

Advanced Light Editing: written by Cannis

Level/IonLevel: The effect of these increases as Ambient/IonAmbient is
decreased. FA uses a default of 0.032000, which is too high if your map has any cliffs at all and you're using less than full daylight. This is because cliff cells are at 2 different elevations, and you may see wedge-shaped dark areas at the tops of the cliffs where the cell looks like it's at the top of the cliff, but the referenced cell is really at the bottom. If you have multiple-level cliffs the effect just gets worse. If you were to ask me, I would set the default Ambient=0.018000 (at maximum) and the default IonAmbient=0.000000. (Westwood's recently released maps have tended to use Ambient=0.006000, which I'm pretty happy with). If the map is both dark and has multiple level cliffs, there's nothing to do but set Ambient=0.000000.

Ground/IonGround: These are only accessible from the FA INI editor (or a text editor). I'm not real sure what they do exactly, beyond the observation that they appear to set a contrast level between buildings/units and the surrounding terrain. Useful in a brightly lit map, a conservative setting of Ground=0.050000 or less tends to take the edge off building/terrain contrast so the buildings look more realistic (see Westwood's recent release, "Powderkeg"). In a dark map, Ground should be left at 0.000000, or else you won't see things very well at all. Negative values can be used, which makes buildings/units stand out more... but this makes them look cartoonish. However, if you're using dark Ion* values, an IonGround=-0.050000 can be helpful to a player trying to move his units around during a Weather Storm.

You can set your own FA lighting defaults, if you wish. In the FA program folder, there's a file named "StdMapRA2.ini". Open it in a text editor, and you'll immediately see Matze's warnings not to edit the file... that means if you're not comfortable editing it, don't! Anyhow, scroll down to the [Lighting] section, and you'll see the light settings used when you create a new map. You can change these to reflect the starting settings *you* would like to use. The lighting settings in my file look like this:

[Lighting]
Ambient=1.000000
Red=1.000000
Green=1.000000
Blue=1.000000
Ground=0.050000
Level=0.006000
IonAmbient=0.870000
IonRed=0.300000
IonGreen=0.400000
IonBlue=0.750000
IonGround=-0.050000
IonLevel=0.000000