IonAmbient
The light level the map fades toward while an ion storm runs, where 1 is full daylight.
Scenario lighting
- Applies to
- scenarios
- File
map file- Section
[Lighting]- Value
- floating point
- When omitted
- Context-dependentThe value this scenario's Ambient key sets, read before it in the same section. With neither key present that is 1, full daylight.
[Lighting]Ambient=1IonAmbient=.5When a storm breaks, the ambient fade moves the map’s light level toward this value in steps. When the storm ends, the fade moves it back to Ambient, or to the level a Set ambient light… action stored during the storm. The storm’s tint changes in one step, so a map with a low IonAmbient shows its storm colors before it reaches its storm darkness.
Random map generation
- Applies to
- random map generation
- File
map file- Section
[Lighting]- Value
- floating point
- When omitted
- Context-dependentThe time-of-day light level of the generated map. On most maps that is the light the map opens at; in an arctic theater such as SNOW it is a third brighter.
Random map generation reads this entry from the [Lighting] section of ION.INI, and only when the UseIonStorms option is on for the map being built. The file sets the storm lighting for every generated map. A loose ION.INI in the game directory takes precedence over one in an archive, as with any game file.
The value is the light level a storm fades the map to, on the Ambient scale where 1 is full daylight and 0 is no ambient light. The ambient fade moves the map to this level when a storm breaks, as it does for a scenario’s IonAmbient.
When the storm ends, the map fades back to its time-of-day light level. In an arctic theater such as SNOW, the map opens at three quarters of that level, so it ends a storm a third brighter than it began. With UseTransitions on, a transition that has already fired sets the level the map returns to instead.
[Lighting]IonAmbient=0.5 ; the stock file's value: storms fade to half daylight