LED Question - did I go wrong?

[Nox]

I am taking the huge step of creating a cube modelled after a game I love, Mechwarrior 3 - and part of the mod is I am making my own front control panel to simulate a cockpit internal (well, sort of.)
I am making small bank of LED's to backlight a copy of a display readout (as per the Doom 3 mod) and I went and used the LED array wizard to find the type of resistor I need.
After putting it all together, I find the LED's are extremely low and dull, and thats with the suggested 1 ohm resistor. With the resistor taken out, they barely got any brighter.
I am using the 12v side of a tester power supply, 4 LED's of different colors: 2 red, a yellow and a green. I bought a large package of them from radio shack and they couldnt find the actual 'specs' on the contents (ma rating, forward voltage etc) so I used a "blanket" rating I saw on an LED site, 3v forward voltage, and a 20ma rating. I know, I shouldnt have gone with Radio Hack but it is the only store within 45 miles that has electronics, and I admit i am lacking patience so the internet wasn't that great of an option.
Guess I know for the Mechwarrior Mod Mk2 eh?
Anyhoo,

Should I split the 4 into 2 sets of 2 LED's each in order to make them brighter?
I really dont care if I burn one or two out with experimentation, because I havwe a lot of 'pulls' from VCR's, DVD players, printers etc - but its alot of soldering work to keep burning them up without having the right info so if I can get some help on how to make them brighter, I'd appreciate it.
Also, do the different colors have different ratings or are they all the same?

Thanks for any and all help!

[Omega]

The package will say a little number followed by "v". that's the voltage. the mA is almost always 28.

Go back, read EVERYTHING, and do it agian.

[Nox]

Thats just it, the package doesnt have any of the ratings for the LED's, its just a 'variety package' with both 5mm and 3mm sizes, and various colors both with the colored and non-colored resin on the LED's.
I had the desk boy call the distributor and ask them what the voltage and mA ratings were for them and THEY didnt even friggin know.
I'll recalculate with a 3.2 voltage and a 28mA rating to see what comes up - they should'nt start tanking and burning till I hit 3.6v or so.

[AKA_RA]

ive bought some of those variety packs from radio shack before, and i noticed that theyre usually not meant to emit a large ammount of light. i even ran a test where i ran more than the recommended voltage through a few of them, knowing that it would fry them, and they didnt get any brighter. what you prolly need to do is look for leds with a high mcd rating. im not sure what is stands for, but basically the higher the mcd rating the brighter they are.