A build time of hours has nothing to do with the light range at all, since you're only using 4 lights, the light range is of little influence. This seems more a case of using the wrong settings.
Cruise McClarren, a building time of 2 hours for just 4 static lights isn't normal. If you using test game then do the following: Go to prefences in the file menu. Switch off dynamic lighting (since you don't use it) Select quick light mapping, NEVER use full light mapping. Full lught mapping increases the time it takes to load the test game, sometimes with hours..... Now select No Shader Effects. Also it's best to avoid using Automatic Floor, make sure you add your own floor as needed.
If you use build game then do this: Go to the Textures tab and make sure is soft light mapping is on and dynamic lights are switched off and no shader effects is selected in the Build Settings tab. Do not use shaders, dynamic lights (since you have none in your level) and never use full shadow lightmas. Full shadow lightmaps does increase the build time and doesn't add anything to your game at all.
Quote: "you can right click the light and change the distance as well i recommend no more than 75 for range."
No more then 75 for range? Then your lights simply look terible. I never go under 85 range, since under 85 you get the terrible looking half lighted segments and diagonal shadows on the floor instead of smooth rounded ones.
I'm working on a level at the moment. There are about 60 lights in it. The light range ranges from 85 to 225. The level takes about 5.40 minutes to load.
Followed RF's advice just for testing purposes. First test did load in 3.40 minutes, but the level wasn't lighted enough.
To get the level lighted close to the original set up I needed to place over 150 lights. but still it didn't look as nice as before. The level took 5 minutes to load, but still it didn't look as nice as my original setup.
So in the end placing 75 range lights gained me about 50 secs loading time, but made my level look terrible (but I knew that before, since I never go under 85 light range). So I'll stick with a bit larger light range and have good looking well lighted levels.
I'm going to bring my lights down to 85 - 150 light range, to see the effect of that. Let you know later.
Imo 75 light range is a very bad idea, then you suffer way to much quality.
