A very subtle detail that I really liked in the KEX lighting is that it casts a bright but small lighting around all flames. This fixes the problem of fullbright flame models with low lighting values looking out of place in very dark places.
It's not as effective as the effect I've implemented to
fade out the flames, but it fixes the problem without changing the original behavior of the flames.
I can accept the wrongly lit item boxes so long as they're only used for items, as it does make them stand out more in the scene.
In that case, none of the items should get ambient lighting, including the armor, weapon and powerup pickups. It doesn't make sense for some items to get ambient lighting while others don't. Neutral lighting values for all.
And items with neutral lighting should have the same treatment of flame models in the KEX engine, with a bright but small dynamic light being cast from them, to make sense for them to be bright in dark areas.
The light in the super shotgun spot in E1M2 is an evidence that id Software originally wanted for all items to cast a small light on the environment, but they probably gave up on the idea because of technical issues: dynamic lighting on all items would impact the performance too much, and switchable lights would raise the filesize & memory requirements.
I'm still unconvinced by lightmapped liquids, particularly when combined with translucency.
That's what user options are for.