@Ratchett:
It's not a model, it's a BSP-Brush. So no Skins, just the required Wood.tga and Wood_n.tga as texes. Sorry if that wasn't clear.
@3run;
Tinkering with the specular values in mtlFX.c just renders it red or whatever I change, totally unimpressed by ambient light. I am currently tinkering, however with ambient_blue etc. and this seems to at least point in the direction of the desired result. So maybe you fixed my problem, thank you (at least you gave me something to try ;)) Still tweaking, however.
If anyone wants to suggest something different here, I'll be all ears.