Question Lights got way too dark

I've been working on a game for some time now, haven't opened the project in months, but when I did, my scenes got way darker than they used to be (screenshots attached).
I'm only using spot and point lights and I want unlit areas to be pitch black. Changing lights' range and intensity doesn't seem to change much and objects get illuminated only when extremely close to the light. I'm not sure if something updated without me being fully aware or if I did some change myself, but I could use some tips. Still pretty new to Unity, so excuse me if I'm missing something obvious.

 

check to see if your render is setup correctly in project settings.
just a shot in the dark

When i'm workin' in hdrp, and add a decal then delete it; that switches the renderer from forward to broken. have to manually go back and toggle it from deferred to forward to get the lights not to flicker ^.^

for me, this is always the problem. But could be somthin' completely unrelated. lol

 

I figured it out.
For whatever reason a script file I was using for my shader got deleted and I forgot to implement some functions when remaking it. It was handling light intensity wrong