: If we wanted cosine lighting, we would have implemented cosine lighting!
: Use lighting for contrast between surfaces (especially to suggest negative
: space around a corner, as Hastur suggests), and use the average amount of
: light to set the mood of a level. As mentioned earlier, making things too
: bright or too dark just makes you look like a bad mapper, so you should
: avoid extremes.
: Mostly you light by feel, and feel is hard to communicate. Experiment,
: observe others, and report back.
To further expand on that subject, extreme lighting usually suggests something of interest. For example, I will usually use brightly lit light panels to highlight doors, forks, etc. in netmaps, so people immediately recognize it. Soft lighting changes look nice and help the player differentiate between angles.
