Spawning Lights? How do I get it working?

[Cubez]

Hello,

I'm looking in the creative menu and see all these lights and lamps but they don't work. How can I get them to light up?

What lights can connect to a generator? Or what lights work by themselves? My buddy and I took over a POI and most lights are broken, so I thought I could replace them with working lights. The only one I found was a basic light bulb, is that all we get to play with? is there some sort of command I can use to get the nicer looking ones working?

Any help will be appreciated.
Thanks!

[seven]

There are mods that add more working lights but I don't know if they work with A21 yet. In vanilla you're stuck with the basic bulb and the industrial bulb I believe. You can spawn in other lights but as you found they don't work in game.

[Bnn1]

AFAIK the lamps that emit light are the lamp object, and a scripted light that is attached to the object when it is created.

I remember a really, really, really old version waaaaay before electricity and when you destroyed a lightbulb, the tiny little glowing light would remain.

But yeah. There are some lights that work. You can change the model of the light too, but I forgot which lightbulb and light models work if you model swap them with the player created light.

On the other hand, lights have never been easier and better to get than in this update, get the Lamps that the traders sell every now and then. They can be glued to any surface, even the ceiling, upside down, and they have a very large lighting radius, and need no power to work.

[daggaz]

Imagine buying a lamp at your local IKEA when everybody at IKEA and your whole ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ neighborhood are DEAD.

[carl.wear]

You can light up the lamp table by putting a candle in it.

[CatPerson]

What you see in the creative is just the "blocks" as it were. The light function is not attached because they are POI lights and (I'm assuming) those POI's have specific script bits you cannot emulate per se. There is a method one can use if you really want the pretty, or just like to tinker, but it can be a lot of work. EDIT: of course the craftable lamp, candles, torches and crafted electric lights all work if you just want...light. :)

Cut and pasting my post from another thread:

Originally posted by CatPerson:

Since you don't mind using creative, for working POI lamps there is a workaround, although it's not perfect and it's some work.

Open the Creative menu. Click on that PC-looking-icon named "Dev blocks on". Type replace in the search bar. Pick up the purple wrench.

Holding that wrench, l-click on a POI light that you like. Then r-click on a block that you want to *replace* (you can put down a wood frame for this purpose first, say). There, working lamp.

There are three caveats:
---obviously you have to find the lamp in some POI, first, in order to copy it. So if you're lucky, something is close by. If you're not, it's a lot of walking. Also, f you copy a block into the wrench and then unequip the wrench from hotbar (or use the cheat teleport travel function) that block info is deleted and you'd have to repeat.
---copying the block over another block does not rotate the lamp/copied block for you, so when you place it, it may not face the direction you want. Thus whatever block you use to *replace* with (that wood frame) you may have to rotate that first before placing,, copy over it, see if it faces like you want. If not, repeat until it does.

Lastly, copying like this does allow for working POI design lights, but the amount of brightness they produce as a copy can differ from what you see in the POI - usually they are a fair bit brighter, don't flicker, etc. Defaults to some basic light setting I guess.

Originally posted by CatPerson:

^ Yeah it's kind of a PITA if you want to go really crazy with it, but fun/useful for specific wants.

One thing I did when I messed around with it a while back was create a small room, lined walls with wooden blocks, and first thing was to copy fave/new lights there as a reserve library, so if I made mistakes (like misclicking...) I wouldn't have to march all over to reacquire copy examples. Worked pretty well.

[Cubez]

Originally posted by CatPerson:

What you see in the creative is just the "blocks" as it were. The light function is not attached because they are POI lights and (I'm assuming) those POI's have specific script bits you cannot emulate per se. There is a method one can use if you really want the pretty, or just like to tinker, but it can be a lot of work. EDIT: of course the craftable lamp, candles, torches and crafted electric lights all work if you just want...light. :)

Cut and pasting my post from another thread:

Originally posted by CatPerson:

Since you don't mind using creative, for working POI lamps there is a workaround, although it's not perfect and it's some work.

Open the Creative menu. Click on that PC-looking-icon named "Dev blocks on". Type replace in the search bar. Pick up the purple wrench.

Holding that wrench, l-click on a POI light that you like. Then r-click on a block that you want to *replace* (you can put down a wood frame for this purpose first, say). There, working lamp.

There are three caveats:
---obviously you have to find the lamp in some POI, first, in order to copy it. So if you're lucky, something is close by. If you're not, it's a lot of walking. Also, f you copy a block into the wrench and then unequip the wrench from hotbar (or use the cheat teleport travel function) that block info is deleted and you'd have to repeat.
---copying the block over another block does not rotate the lamp/copied block for you, so when you place it, it may not face the direction you want. Thus whatever block you use to *replace* with (that wood frame) you may have to rotate that first before placing,, copy over it, see if it faces like you want. If not, repeat until it does.

Lastly, copying like this does allow for working POI design lights, but the amount of brightness they produce as a copy can differ from what you see in the POI - usually they are a fair bit brighter, don't flicker, etc. Defaults to some basic light setting I guess.

Originally posted by CatPerson:

^ Yeah it's kind of a PITA if you want to go really crazy with it, but fun/useful for specific wants.

One thing I did when I messed around with it a while back was create a small room, lined walls with wooden blocks, and first thing was to copy fave/new lights there as a reserve library, so if I made mistakes (like misclicking...) I wouldn't have to march all over to reacquire copy examples. Worked pretty well.

Could you also delete them afterwards? As to not overpopulate the area? Or is it stuck there forever?

Thanks

[CatPerson]

^ Yes, they're just like any other blocks. You can destroy them via melee or wrench with a wrench. Otherwise you couldn't repeatedly do what I said earlier re: getting them to rotate/face into the direction you want.

[Cubez]

Originally posted by CatPerson:

^ Yes, they're just like any other blocks. You can destroy them via melee or wrench with a wrench. Otherwise you couldn't repeatedly do what I said earlier re: getting them to rotate/face into the direction you want. :dssmile:

Much appreciated! Thanks!!

[AmyeLuxx]

if you open the blocks.xml
you can search for
<property name="Class" value="Light"
and do a replace all
<property name="Class" value="PoweredLight"
save and all lights can now be powered form the CM menu

[CatPerson]

Originally posted by AmyeLuxx:

if you open the blocks.xml
you can search for
<property name="Class" value="Light"
and do a replace all
<property name="Class" value="PoweredLight"
save and all lights can now be powered form the CM menu

Well that's interesting, but I tried it on a few specific examples and it does not work on "POI lights" - eg, ceiling fan lights, those little desklamps, flat panel lights etc. If you pull a desklamp-02 out of CM menu and plonk it down, it's still dark.

Unless you meant that "PoweredLight" makes them work with being connected to the electric power/battery system. That might make sense, but I didn't test that at all since I never use battery/electrical stuff - too much trouble, dont like it.. That would be something at least I suppose. Still, if you want oodles of deco lights like you see in POI's, I think the Replacer Wrench is still the main option (outside of 'beautiful block' mods or some such).

One thing I did notice since 1.0 (vs. what I wrote above) is that dm/teleporting does not remove the copied light from the Replacer Wrench anymore. Or at least, it hasn't yet so far, for me. So one can now copy a light/block and teleport everywhere without it disappearing off the replacer-wrench - as long as you don't remove it from the main hotbar/copy something else, of course, at least.

Edit: I don't actually light-deco my bases, headlight/nightvision is enough. Occasionally it used to be funny to deco-add tons of lit streetlamps and such. Too many POI copied lights tend to ruin FPS now, where it didn't before, too. Don't know why - candles are the least fps-intensive once again, now. Also, light distance visibility is so low now it's just meh. Ah well.