First off, I apologize for my little rant towards you in that fake lighting thread. I guess the right buttons were pushed that day, and I vented at you. I hope you can forgive me for that. Now to your question/statements:

It is perceptive of you to pick up on the Batman cartoon connection. I'm a huge fan of that show, and my look is based somewhat on it but not entirely...definitely an influence,though. That show featured simple, more cartoony designs, but realistic proportions which then(and still do) set it apart from everything else in TV animation.

As for how I do the lighting: All values are the same for each of the three RGB values. The major lights, those where lightposts will eventually be, are very intense and close if not equal to 255,255,255. Light ranges are varied, the largest being 1650. One of the "secrets" to losing the halo around lights is to use a light range that drops off at certain areas like the corner of a wall or using two sources..one which is intense but has a small range and one that is less intense but has a much larger range(I think that is called a fill light). I actually don't think I use fills, currently, but alot of my range edges are not apparent because of corners. You can see a spotlight on the alley shot above, however.

Textures are indeed flat..there's a pure black, white, and 10 shades of gray. The engine lighting takes care of much of the atmosphere, but "cleverly" applying the right textures also adds a lot of punch to the scene. For example, if a side is not lit, I make sure to put a very dark gray or even pure black on it. If it facing the lightsource and somewhat close, I place the lightest gray or white. You can also fake radiosity by doing this. It's not perfect but if done right, it looks better than not faking it.

That bright roundish light underneath the theater marquee is not the final look of that particular section. That is just he dynamic light blazing through the geometry. I'll get rid of it by making that area underneath it an entity and matching it with the surrounding level. I already do this on the right side of that slab above the marquee. This is why there is no round light on it. When the dynamic light is active, the entity is active and vice versa. There is actually a bug involving dynamic lights and entities with their unlit flag set. When fixed(it has been reported), I'll be able to prelight the entity block so that they contain some ambient light and are not flat...basically faking radiosity.