OK, I found a workaround — almost. I opened the text files for the .pp2 laser beam prop (lightless) and the .pz3 scene file (with the light) that I'd saved after I got the thing working right. I copied all the code for the spotlight and the accompanying shadowcam into the .pp2 file and saved that out. Tried it, and it works beautifully. Guess what, there's another problem. I can only have one beam in a scene — if I add another beam, the light from the first beam, even if I've moved it, zips back to the new beam and no extra light is created. This happens even if I rename the spotlight parented to the first beam. Is there a way of recoding the spotlight definition so that a new light is added when I add a new beam prop? Maybe the name needs to be changed? (The code I copied uses the name "spotLight 1".