hi i'm fairly new to source and i'm curious how i should go about lighting a fairly big inside area (inside of a large supermarket) properly. I'm currently using a shit-ton of light_spots, but they seem to either be too bright or too dim.

When they are too dim i just get small cones of light on the floor that show no other ambient light at all(brightness of 500), and when i boost it up(around 3000) i just get a super-unnaturally-bright room with weird hdr effects...

should i use normal lighting in conjunction with light_spots?

Ah, i miss lighting in goldsource, so much simpler...

(

I don't have much experience with Source either, but try andincrease the angle of the light spot, to maybe 90 degrees or something like that.

chea i think your right i had the inner/outer agles set at 5/10 degrees! =P

try a regular env_light? i dunno, i never finish most of my maps so i kinda dont worry about lighting till i get there.

You should be able to turn the spread on those lights up :/

Also.. you can use regular lights to provide the 'actual' lighting, but then use the spot lights as well to accent places on the ground.

Don't forget the "Constant"/"Linear"/"Quadratic" settings, or the 50/0% falloff settings, alternatively. They can be pretty handy; you can make a single spotlight illuminate a huge hall or open space without getting nasty over-brightening on the surfaces near the light.

You could make some texlights. I know most people don't recommend using them, but valve's fluorescent light texture (forget what it's called, but it's the 'office' style fluorescent, not 2 tubes) works well.