Since this thread was exhumed, some additional thoughts by me.
True volumetric light with dynamic shadows would be nice, but I think it's not really neccessary.
One thing should be clear:
lightmapped meshes ARE fullbright, the lightmap will then be blended using the multiplying mode. So DX lights won't affect the scene.
You won't be able to override the FX of a loaded B3D in Blitz3D, so you need to save it with the wanted FX. If WordStudio doesn't allow to do that, then you may patch the file, using something like B3DTweak.
You need then to find a good balance of "halffullbright" geometry USING AMBIENTLIGHT, mixed with the lightmap and finally the dynamic DX flashlight. The lack of shadows with the flashlight may look unnatural.
Ross your idea with two renders may allow to do some interesting combinations. Personally I'm not a fan of additional renders. I think in the end of the day there are still more than enough things that will force you to do additional renders. So we should try to keep this overhead on a low level.
One cone shaped flaslight I have seen that was looking really nice was in Deus Ex 2 the flashlight of the drones. It is made of a row of add-blended sprites. The row starts with a small sprite, then they are getting bigger, but also less opaque. The sprites are circular lights with very blured borders. If the flaslight is parallel to the camera, it will be about 25% opaque. If the camera is looking right into the flashlight, the sprites will blind the camera in their addition. The number of sprites is about 10 or so. Since its additional blending, it won't be very slow (compared to alpha)
Additionally you may use a DX light, positioned on a location that is determined using a linepick from the flashlight body. Or you could use a DX light in Cone Mode, tho I think this may be not very efficient, I could be wrong here.
So this sprite-row flashlight is also cone shaped, but it has no sharp edges as a cone mesh based solution usually suffers of.
True volumetric light with dynamic shadows would be nice, but I think it's not really neccessary.
One thing should be clear:
lightmapped meshes ARE fullbright, the lightmap will then be blended using the multiplying mode. So DX lights won't affect the scene.
You won't be able to override the FX of a loaded B3D in Blitz3D, so you need to save it with the wanted FX. If WordStudio doesn't allow to do that, then you may patch the file, using something like B3DTweak.
You need then to find a good balance of "halffullbright" geometry USING AMBIENTLIGHT, mixed with the lightmap and finally the dynamic DX flashlight. The lack of shadows with the flashlight may look unnatural.
Ross your idea with two renders may allow to do some interesting combinations. Personally I'm not a fan of additional renders. I think in the end of the day there are still more than enough things that will force you to do additional renders. So we should try to keep this overhead on a low level.
One cone shaped flaslight I have seen that was looking really nice was in Deus Ex 2 the flashlight of the drones. It is made of a row of add-blended sprites. The row starts with a small sprite, then they are getting bigger, but also less opaque. The sprites are circular lights with very blured borders. If the flaslight is parallel to the camera, it will be about 25% opaque. If the camera is looking right into the flashlight, the sprites will blind the camera in their addition. The number of sprites is about 10 or so. Since its additional blending, it won't be very slow (compared to alpha)
Additionally you may use a DX light, positioned on a location that is determined using a linepick from the flashlight body. Or you could use a DX light in Cone Mode, tho I think this may be not very efficient, I could be wrong here.
So this sprite-row flashlight is also cone shaped, but it has no sharp edges as a cone mesh based solution usually suffers of.